THIS SHIP IS SINKING

We set out on our journey in a hurry. We mounted pressure on the ship builder to find all means possible to complete building our ship in time and hand it over to us. Enough of being ferried about in the others’ ship. We have come of age to board on our own ship.

But wait, why ship? A curious observer would have expected us to be talking of canoes. In Africa, our needs were limited and our life was simple. We used canoes only to cross from one village to another. We did not fill the water with sand in order to construct roads. We did not build bridges over them in order to ride our vehicles over the water. We appreciated nature and enjoyed its gift without altering it. We left it as it was and nature used to smile back at us. We built the canoes ourselves with little skill but it served our purpose sufficiently. We did not envy a more beautiful and bigger canoe if it served a purpose differently from the intended purpose we had built our canoe for. Our neighbours exploited canoes for other purposes than just crossing from one village to another. They exploited their canoes for economic activities such as salt extraction, fishing, tourism and of course, basic transportation. But if my small canoe was only intended for crossing villages, there was no reason for envy of the bigger and more beautiful canoe built for other economic activities. And we were satisfied.

Just then, some aliens with different colour and tongue meandered their way through our abode and we welcomed them. We were very accommodating and had an innate networking skill. We appreciated everyone as part of nature. When they visited as friends, we did not mistrust their intention. We gave them food and home. We were marveled by the colour of their skin and the twisted tongue with which they spoke. Their nasal string appeared so thin and their speech was like music, although we did not understand it. But because of our beautiful heart, we took them for friends. As friends that they pretended that they were, they started building schools and religious houses. They started encouraging us to learn their language so that we could also speak in a melodious way as they did. The older generation began encouraging the younger generation to be friends with the aliens and learn their language. Just for the fun of it. No special status. Nothing attached. But perhaps, to be able to visit the aliens in their own home too. Arrogantly, the aliens began feeling superior and began brainwashing their wards that their fathers were doomed and that they had come to redeem them. The aliens introduced their religion which was a diversion from paganism in that the pagans invoked many gods, the aliens’ religion invoked three gods which they styled a holy trinity.

Just then, they began manifesting their economic intention of exploiting our resources and destroying our ways of life. Then, resistance began. We began warning our neighbours and friends that these aliens had begun exhibiting some confrontational traits and we should be very careful with them. The aliens took advantage of our hospitality and then mobilized their soldiers to subdue us when we resisted the manifestation of their economic exploitation. They succeeded. But with this success came some status for those who had been friends with the aliens because they spoke their language and observed their religion. They became ‘aliens’ in their own land. They became arrogant too, and perhaps, were happy with how the aliens had overcome their people and subdued their fathers. They betrayed their own people and shared in the ransom, loot and plunder of their land. But also, they were placed strategically to see things for themselves from the aliens’ world. They had visited the aliens in their home and had seen many modern furniture and vehicles. They resented their own hitherto way of life and had become greedy. They wanted the aliens’ lifestyle and despised nature. They would return home to advocate clearing all the bushes to build industries and fill the bodies of water with land to create motorable roads. They did not learn the adverse consequences of this lifestyle from the aliens and the price the aliens were paying for disturbing and disrupting nature. The aliens did not teach them that there would be climate challenge, possible volcanic eruption and tsunami. All they saw was the shining and temporal enjoyment of the aliens’ lifestyle. And they wanted it, having despised and abandoned their fathers’ ways.

So, when they returned they taught how bigger, faster and more beautiful a ship would look like. And they taught that canoes served no useful purpose. And that they were capable to steer the ship. So they placed the ship builder, who of course was an alien too, in a very uncomfortable position to complete the ship building process in time and hand it over to them. The ship builder had delayed his completion of ship building because his kinsmen were raking in huge economic returns from the patronage of our young men who have now adopted the use of ship against the use of our traditional canoes. They paid heavily for each trip and the aliens won while we lost, all through. So, our young men who are now the incarnate of the aliens ‘fought’ the aliens and forced them to hand over the ship we had commissioned them to build. The ship builder agreed to their timeline. And so, as a result of unpreparedness on the part of the ship builder, he had to source for substandard materials to complete the ship building process. He had agreed to the timeline of our ambitious, unsuspecting young men.

Finally, the ship builder handed over the ship to our young men.

Amidst the joy of taking charge of the ship, our gullible young men failed to inspect what the aliens had handed over to them. As the aliens had predicted, our young men were too much in a hurry to have the patience to inspect the ship and they were too arrogant to learn how to mend the ship in case of any major damage or change its spare parts. They did not know how to service its engine and they barely knew how to steer it. They just hoped it would move when someone sits at its steering dragging it. They had assumed that it was much similar to the canoes of their fathers, which unfortunately they also rarely knew how to paddle. You will agree we are yet to see anyone more confused than these young men.

So, from this very beginning, they began arguing among themselves which direction the ship should go and how it would successfully land on the shore. They fought over who should steer the ship and the person they eventually picked was not the most skilled among them, even though the most skilled should have been an apprentice. But the ship was staggering and we were clapping and singing in our euphoria that it was our own children who were steering the ship. It was a great feat. And so, we set out on the journey with no clear roadmap, no navigational skill, and the worst of it all, on a badly constructed ship. Our ambitious young men who were steering the ship had become greedy having learnt from the aliens. They no longer desired the early morning sunshine or the late night moon. They improvised heat and cold, warmth and breeze. They adjusted the temperature level to their fashion and taste. They no longer waited for nature. We were cheering them on. The aliens had taught them that all the glory was for those who steer the ship and they saw this as a special status, doing what only the aliens could do. And so, they fought one another over who should steer the ship. And they became very desperate about it. They were no longer satisfied with merely crossing from one village to another and spending each day of life as it came. They were interested in more than just living and enjoying nature. They now want status, the highest of which is to steer the ship. But they rarely know anything about how to turn what neither do they have the navigational competence to arrive the shore, any shore at all.

Certainly, groups were being formed along the new biases of our young men and each group was criticizing the other, although they were no different from one another. Suddenly, a frustrated group proposed to break the ship so that it might have many parts and it might steer its own part separately from the main ship. The larger group overwhelmed that small ambitious group, knowing well that fragmenting the ship while sailing would drown all those aboard. But then, given the failure of the captains the ship was not making any progress. It was just roaming in a zigzag manner and neither the captain nor the passengers aboard knew where they were or where they were going. The captain would announce occasionally that they were advancing the shore, but other members of the crew would tell the passengers that it was not true. And when any passenger peeped out of the ship, he would realize that the captain had told a lie. Lost in the middle of the ocean, our men and women were crying for new flyboats to rescue them. Ostensibly, the new flyboats belong exclusively to the aliens. We are now disenchanted that our canoes would have served the best purpose and there would have been no need to embark on a senseless adventure with an ignorant captain and an incompetent crew.

Many passengers jumped aboard because they were confused. The crew too became frustrated and began applying highhandedness in dealing with the passengers. They transferred their aggression from frustration and loss of direction and they would therefore not hesitate to push any passenger into the ocean. Some of them even mooted the idea of reducing the size of the passengers on the ship because it was the load on the ship that prevented it from sailing fast. They argued that by reducing the size of the passengers aboard the ship, the load would be lighter and it would be able to sail fast. The passengers were murmuring. Everyone became disenchanted and frustrated. We are still in the middle of the ocean.

Then, some corrupt elements among the passengers removed one of the boats on the ship. Nobody knew where he loosed the boat from and he himself could not even identify where he loosed it from. He also did not know why he did so. And this is not surprising. Many passengers and the members of the crew had begun doing so many irrational things that clearly demonstrated the level of their frustration and anger. So, a fellow passenger saw it and called the attention of the captain to it. They took the boat and started looking for where it was loosed. They could not locate it. They however kept it a top secret among themselves and did not want to reveal that a boat had loosed from the ship, lest they would add panic to the anger of the passengers. But the news soon filtered through the members of the crew to the passengers. They became terrified. But they were expecting the crew to announce officially and prepare them for disaster and provide them with safety information in the event of such disaster. But nothing came from the crew. The captain rather announced that the ship was in perfect condition and that it was now moving faster. After the crew had searched for the place of the boat to fix it back, with no success and there was yet no alarm from any angle, they thought to themselves, well the boat is inconsequential; after all the ship was still sailing well.

Then, after a while they lost the boat as they did not bother anymore to fix it where it had loosed. Another nut was removed with no immediate fix. And the ship was still staggering. So, it was becoming clear that the ship was gradually going down but no one noticed it. The captain and the members of his cabinet and the entire crew were well aware that the ship was not in good order. They had ordered for flyboats to rescue those whom they held dearly in the event of any mishap. All their family members had been taken on a rescue boat to the home of the aliens, but they kept lying to the passengers that the ship would sail through and would take them to the promised land. They continued encouraging the passengers to keep making sacrifices for the journey to be a success.

And then among the sections of the passenger are prayer warriors who would rather pray that the nut and boat of the ship which had been loosed, should miraculously fix themselves, than engage the services of the experts to help them fix them.

But who has the authority of engaging the services of experts? The captain and his crew. Would they employ them? No. Why would they not? They had lied to the passengers that the ship was in good order and it was not in any need for a repair. The prayer warriors got themselves into factions and started fighting one group for another. The entire cross sections of the passengers reveal various sections of disenchanted, frustrated people who pass each day disinterested in what nature brings.

Suddenly in this gloom, some frustrated passengers dented the ship by the side. They said they would be happy to see everybody drown and those who can, should swim for their survival. Afraid that they would drown, with little or no concern for the other passengers, the captain and the entire members of the crew rushed to the dented portion of the ship and left its steering. They all packed all they could to patch the dented portion so that water should not enter the ship. They are still struggling with this while the passengers are telling them that the ship is heading towards a rock.