Image source: DevianArt

I have decided to tell you what has been happening in the hermetic echo chamber since you’ve decided to copout in a lacerated manner in September 2011 when all was good with you. I know you will say you’ve fought it, swerved it and distanced yourself from it, but it hunted you down like a bush rat; and so you couldn’t have waited for me to return from my journey into the Gamashieland of La, for an academic pursuit you’ve innocuously sent me to in a popular place called Legon. 

It was at this strange land that your copout was reported to me by one of your illustrious sons, Ampoloo, the second born of Mba Adamu Carpenter, your favourite younger brother, that fateful morning you decided to copout.

You may be wondering why I chose to write to you and not your kid brother, the eulogized Mba Adamu Carpenter. Your guess might have been as good as mine. He copout in 2007, several years before you also decided to and by default it makes you the ideal person to write to since you’ve stayed a little longer to see some of the things that your kid brother might not be privy to. Not only after his copout, you came several years into the spaceship of Maamaniland before him, indeed, you’re the eldest. In either ways, you’ve qualified more than him. 

But what I don’t understand about you and your brothers is that, those who came early leaves late and the vice versa. Yes! You know it. Your youngest brother, Mba Yaaya, who came very late, leaves very early; Mba Adamu came before him and had to follow him few years after he left; and just within some few years time, you the eldest also decided to follow suit. It wouldn’t have been a big problem if I wasn’t the next one in line, only to my younger brother who copout several years ago. Am I afraid? Considering the flowchart, I have to be. I have every reason to be. You might have bequeathed it to us. Anyways, let’s get to the meat of the matter.

Don’t ask me how I’m able to breached the iron gates of PARADISE with my flowing deep black ink to get you. I can still recollect the expression on your hilly jaws marrying your torturous smile, buried deep in a mood of surprising eyes when I mentioned FACEBOOK to you for the first time and you cajolingly responded, what about FACEBOARD. We all laughed. Yes we did. So much had happened since then.

If you had stayed a little longer, you would’ve seen how your granddaughter, the daughter of your son, Mba Baba, displayed her pictures on Facebook. Don’t open your eyes wide? Or your mouth agape? For flies might enter for no reason. I know you might have forgotten the Facebook drama. I know you and your old ways; insomnia. Facebook is a device that connect people from all walks of life, from Gao in Mali, through Dahomey in Benin, meandering the maze whales in the Atlantic ocean to the farthest East in China, took an upturn to the former Berlin wall, surge to Chicago and sojourn at the famous Samba beach of Brazil. 

It is everywhere. I understand it has not reach your embers yet, but it will soon reach the gates of heaven and Paradise will be affected by pictures of the half naked guys, nude ladies at the beaches, night clubs, swimming pools, even at funerals. Now, ladies consume all sorts of concoctions in the name of maintaining weight and the semi-insane guys who have been religiously carrying irons in heavy quantities, bloated their muscles.

I’m sure you’re already laughing your heart out. If it is only your heart out, then cool. I know your teeth is not firmly rooted in their nest and could easily fallout as well if you laugh so much. But it is not only Facebook, like you and your siblings, it also has siblings. They are Tweeter, Instagram, Snapchat, and WhatsApp; what my old Professor called watsop. 

These are just few, but be rest assured that Facebook has more siblings than you. Interestingly, you have some similarities; like you, it’s also the elderly brother too; it’s also cool, calm and collected; very cunning and beastly with emotions when toyed with; and it also likes beautiful women and intelligent people. However, their family is cutting into our tradition without any regard for its history, methods or iconography, creating and forming amorous lynching mobs across your so much treasured African values.

Can you remember the day you sent me to Mba Imoro, to announce the passing of one of your relatives at the village? The comments I told you he made about him not attending any funeral told him through a phone call; that he wanted a full grown up tuo be sent to him and he referred that as an honor? If he was still around in this our era, then he wouldn’t have attended any funeral or any function because those things are sent through Facebook and its siblings. And the message has been communicated. 

You either take it or leave it, but this is the reality of our generation. Civilizing is an arduous task. Yes it is. You knew nothing was itself for more than a decade, even in your era. I know you never liked farming, even at its sophisticated stage. Yet you did farming when there wasn’t machines. Now, machines have entered into every stage and even helipads are used in farming. There is no need to use a cutlass or a hoe or even bend down. So much has happened in a short period.

You once said culture is just a page. A page that we will soon turnover. However, history is a whole book. A book that will take a long stride to complete. This is the page we are currently writing for ourselves. When all these people shout in their new cultures, those in the era of Nebuchadnezzar stooped to the ground and laughed silently. 

In the upper ancestry, where you sent me to learn about the white man’s ways taught me a lot about the world. This is often referred to as Modernity. Modernity has risen our sense above the normal realm of reasoning. We have taken keen interest in materialism than the african values. One of them, confused with gender mainstreaming is called FEMINISM. But they often forget that feminism is like measles that badly infect anyone who is not prepared to handle same yet comes into contact with same.

Let me also be quick to add that what could’ve been an escape route has been blocked. This muddied all the clean waters that could’ve helped same in the right realization of same in same manner. Knowledge is the best guide to identifying with ideology while information is the best tool for effective advocacy. And if we talk off charity these days, it means commenting on a facebook page or instagram post, instead of the usual stretch of a helping hand to another. 

This indeed, is now seen as a strange happening that connotes some mystic ways about the human race. It’s quite absurd to clear the air this way while fondling with the dust. Such a hilarious alacrity that has engulfed us whiles the sun is still shinning. I am sure by the time the sun rays dims, it will no longer be a subject under discussion but a failed ancient coup swept under the blankets of MODERNITY.

To be Continued…

By Al Latif Kambonaang

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