Lord, let them know that we are not dummies

Dear Father:

You know, growing up back then there was this television drama, from where came this phrase use so often to describe people returning from the diasporas -Johnny Just Come or JJC.

These returning people in their little minds adjudged themselves as better educated and by far better civilized than their relatives and friends they left behind. So true, many of them are but not all.

Father, bearing these air of sophistications in the figment of their imaginations over their fellow compatriots, they tend to look down upon everybody they ever left behind. And so, it is commonly heard among them questioning our level of education, our intelligence, civilization among others.

In fact, some of them are of the view that we don’t know what we are doing here, you know. But these are people many of whom are very empty academically, except for a few.

For frequently travelers, visiting relatives and discussing our village can develop into a heated argument especially if you are a patriotic son or daughter of our village who looks at everything unfolding here differently from the way the ordinary man would look at it.

Trust me Father, I have often heard relatives condemned everything down to the houses we sleep in and the clothes we wear as being substandard all because they have been privileged to live outside of our village. And when they come, because they have not been able to build one zinc round they end up in hotels and there too, they condemn.

I remembered an argument between my cousin and a family friend on one hand and me on the other during my recent visit to Uncle Sam’s village. The argument was about our village corrupt systems, which to me sounded interesting because I was eager to know their thoughts about the allegations of  corruption here, rather they were more disappointing than the ordinary market woman on the streets. Their arguments for me define their level of understanding.

I was even more disappointed when my cousin tried to say that even the schools were corrupt because authorities were charging individual parents school fees based on their appearance. As stupid as his example of corruption sounds, this family friend of ours, a truck driver, was quick to support my cousin’s claim that it was true.

So I allowed them to display their stupidity further by asking them to give examples of their experiences.

My cousin came up to say how his brother stopped dropping his son to school, because whenever authorities there saw his appearance, they would increase the fees of his son alone.

“Is that true?” I asked, and before he could answer this family friend jumped in and said yes, he personally experienced it. I said good, tell me how yours happened. He said during one of his numerous visits back home, he used to drop his son to school in a jeep and from his frequent appearance in jeep, the school authorities wrote him informing him that his son had been selected to context as King for the school.

Now, these are suppose to be very intelligent sons of our village after all, they live and work in Uncle Sam’s village. But their analytical abilities are very poor. They, like many other speak before they think rather than thinking before speaking.

Now, for my cousin, what he considers as authorities upping school fees based on his brother’s appearance could have been teachers begging him for scratch cards or lunch whenever he dropped his son off because of his position in our village.

But that was misunderstood and misinterpreted. With the family friend, whose level of education, I have since continue to question whenever this argument comes to mind is what does request to allow your child partake in a competition has to do with charging huge fees based on your appearance.

This where the both show their stupidity. In the first place school fees are fixed and cut across depending on the school and class of your child. Secondly, schools these days do not accept cash, rather fees are deposited at banks and deposit slips shown as proof for official receipt to be given in return.

What both saw as charging based on appearance could have been little request from class teachers based on your child appearance in school.

I told them how often my son had volunteered to take jollof rice and fried chicken to school whenever they had programs that demanded them to carry varieties of food.

These are extra curriculum activities that has nothing to do with school fees, but yet these two fools use it as school fees and form of extortion from “wealthy parents.”

But I don’t blame most of them running around in Uncle Sam and his Cousin villages thinking they are by far sophisticated than all those living here. It is as a result of their mind sets, which need a 360 degree change to man up or else they cannot survive in this current village, because they will continue to be JJCs while we move on.