We are set to become billionaires pretty soon

When it comes to bright ideas, as bright as the sunshine of Dar es Salaam as opposed to Moshi sunshine which is a big joke because it is like moonshine, my best friend James Kalubandika (Jimmy Kalu) is simply the best.

I sat next to Jimmy throughout the schooling career spanning 15 years. During our infancy, someone mistook children for insects, and so, we spent one year in a nursery school that was known as ``vidudu``.

We, the insects, were mostly taught how to mix with fellow ``vidudu``, as well as to sing and fashion various objects from mud.

Our schools were not as fanciful as today`s, whereby insects are ferried in buses, are fed on chocolate, and some schools bear fanciful names that match some American cities as well as real and imaginary saints.

We were also cheap insects to educate, unlike modern ``vidudu`` that compel parents to pay fees through the nose. Some of the noses block their nostrils, through which non-existent money can`t pass.

When this happens, the insect concerned ceases to become a ``kidudu`` and is demoted to an ordinary neighbourhood child, until the parents get money to re-enroll their insect in school .

We were not very bright insects. In the tests the teachers pretended to give us and which we pretended to do, none of us got number one.

We got numbers that were close to the bottom and seemed to enjoy it, because being a failure seemed to be as glorious as being an achiever.

When we moved to primary school, we thought we would be called small animals as a promotion from insects, but we were instead called pupils.

Whoever coined the expression ``vidudu`` was apparently afraid of being killed by adult education seekers for insulting them.

For, after insects, those higher up, by progression, would have been called small animals, full animals, beasts and monsters !

In primary school and beyond, we were poor performers as well. Jimmy`s father, Mzee Mutaboyelwa (Muta) sought the help of a witchdoctor, Mushaija Mulogo, who demanded three cows as consultation and prescription fees combined, to enable my friend shoot to the top of the class in the final standard six exams.

Jimmy had been made to drink half a cup of a darkish, porridge-like substance that tasted like warm beer, and a bit of which he offered me, two hours before the exams. But he was last and I was last but one.

When Kalu confronted Mulogo for an explanation, the latter laughed like a madman and said that the medicine was not meant to make a pupil bright, but to enhance the intelligence of an already bright one!

Muta didn`t pursue the matter verbally. Two days later, the witchdoctor`s cows were stolen by four thieves and sold in the third village. You have correctly guessed who the ``thief-in-chief`` was.

Mulogo went around the village broadcasting a threat that unless the thief or thieves confessed and returned the cows within three days, they would be transformed into harmless but dancing foxes that would provide free entertainment on village streets !

It didn`t happen and most people were upset because they were denied of the much-hoped-for entertainment. Mulogo left the village quietly and transferred his daylight robbery skills to another village.

Somehow, some positive wind blew us from one class to the next and we finally completed high school.

We tried a hand at various jobs, but without much success. Our hands repaired cars, painted houses, made furniture and bricks.

We then used the legs, by playing soccer, but that didn`t help either. The legs were more effective at kicking stones at night when we were sauntering home from bars.

We also tried the hands-and-legs combination by becoming tailors, but didn?t succeed, because customers dwindled, thanks to our incurable habit of not delivering clothes to customers on time.

Our career as tailors was terminated by a short-tempered man who we strongly suspect is distantly related to the president of Burma.

He came to our tailoring mart once, wielding a super-sharp axe. He had been angered by our delays in making clothes for a grandson of his, who was due to get Holy Communion.

He said he would do us a favour by letting us decide who wanted to have his head chopped off first, in order not to be alive to witness the death of his best friend, whose head would be chopped off next.

We turned down the offer by speeding off to Ubungo upcountry bus terminal and thereafter to temporary exile in Morogoro.

We then tried to use our eyes, by seeing passengers eager for transport at bus stations, and guiding them to specific buses on specific routes. It was the least-paying job under the Tanzanian sky.

We tried to use our voices to sing, but when people in the audience kept asking whether we were frogs that pretended to be human beings, we gave up.

Then the other day, Kalu came up with a bright idea: to form a college for offering a diploma course in ``Field Propaganda Skills``. He will be the principal and I will be his assistant.

We will train the battalion of jobless youths on how to participate noisily in processions and cheer popularity-seeking politicians at rallies even when what they say makes little or no sense.

The diploma holders would also clap their hands to dangerous levels that would cause the palms to catch fire, when the politicians tell naked lies, such as plans by leaders in the other parties to commit geographical crimes. The crimes would be in the form of shifting certain rivers to their water-starved constituencies!

A preliminary survey shows that we will get lots of students, graduates of whom such politicians would automatically hire.
Kalu and I are already visualizing ourselves as, not millionaires, but billionaires.

SOURCE: Guardian