extra from the upcoming novel:
The Tears of A Villager
by Mazuba Mwiinga
“What happened Zach is that, when
a manufacturer wanted to test the popularity of their drink, they would go in
the street and pitch up a tent shop where passers-by would be invited to sip
their drink and that of their competitor and then be asked to judge which was
the better drink, and why the sipper preferred drink x to y; and based on those
results the manufacturer would go and celebrate if the result favoured them, or
re-branded their drink if the result became negative”, Jethro elucidated. I
wondered where the drink theory was coming from and where he was taking us.
“Is that the reason you prefer
Mosi to Castle Light?” Zachariah asked, wiping his face with a handkerchief. I
sensed it had nothing to do with alcohol if anything. There was no way the
whole lot of Jethro with his lopsided mind could bring out a topic of drinks
just to discuss alcohol.
“The fun thing is that, based on
the CLT results, manufacturers still got huge sales losses”, Jethro announced.
And Zachariah and I chorused a ‘why’ if at all they used to get positive
results during their researches.
“Wiser discoverers later found
out that the CLT taste tests weren’t accurate in the sense that there are two
different reactions to sips. People have one reaction after taking a sip, and
another reaction after taking a whole bottle of a drink, and so they needed to
find which of the two reactions most interested the people, and it was
discovered that the latter was best for them”, Jethro said, taking a gulp from
his beer bottle.
“So in other ways, sipping is
more fake than drinking a whole lot of a drink?” I asked, placing plates on the
table.
“It’s just like marriage
decisions Boy. It’s not that when you meet a very beautiful lady, you instantly
get attracted to her, have hotly passionate sex with her in a short while
later, then it means she is the right person for marriage just because she gave
you the best romantic love making you have never had before in your life”.
Zachariah bleated with so much amusement.
“Central Location Testing, ka?”
Zachariah remarked amid sobs of laughter.
“For you to be sure of her, you
need to have a longer period of time with her. You allow her to be visiting
your place; you see her how she looks like during awkward times; how she
behaves when you are broke, how she reacts to your stupid actions, and so on
and so forth. But our friends nowadays, the moment they get the love making in
a space of a day after meeting, the following week they arrange for a wedding,
in month one they wed, month two they separate, month three they divorce, just
because they used the CLT method of choosing”, Jethro lectured. His theory was
so much sensible, but I still wondered why he brought such kind of a peculiar
topic when we were all with no girlfriends.
“Have you found a chick to lead
to the altar Jet?” I asked curiously.
“What has happened in court a
while ago is a pure result of CLT”, Jethro revealed his line of thought. I
stopped what I was doing and I could see Zachariah placing his beer on the
table sitting upright looking at Jethro with bewildered eye-shots. His
disclosure was so interesting that we needed to get the kernel of it all.
“That’s the only single reason I
like being near you”, Zachariah affirmed.
“Why is that so Zach?” Jethro
asked.
“You like towing the line of
lawyers without boring someone listening to you”, Zachariah complimented but
Jethro waved it off with his left hand.
“Residents chose, not on the
basis of the whole personality of the person. They took a sip on the
street-side and thought the flavour of the person was the best. But when they
went home after buying the whole package and drunk under a relaxed atmosphere,
they realised they had been duped”, Jethro reasoned.
“How did they get hoodwinked Jet?
They had a choice to make, and they chose” Zachariah argued.
“One great mind, Lao Tzu once
said that, ‘to know that you do not know is the best. To think you know when
you do not is a disease. Recognizing this disease as a disease is to be free of
it.’ There were two choices to be made, but out of ignorance of how things
work, residents looked at something which they thought was closer to them than
the other. Mufasazi is villager”, Jethro went ahead with his analysis.
“Just like you”, Zachariah
interrupted, and Jethro laughed out asking Zachariah not to patronise him.
“Surely you are Jet. The kid
whose brains were stolen by a wizard and given to a chicken remember?” I added
laughing in the process too.
“Mufasazi as I said is a
villager, okay” Jethro continued ignoring my remark. “No matter how intelligent
and bright he may be, those born from typical shanty townships would not align
themselves with him, because regardless of his bright and sweet taste of his
flavour, shanty brought-up residents would still regard him as a villager who
knows nothing because for them a village is an ancient bushy ruin, out-dated
place full of wizards and poverty with unimaginable suffering, and whoever
comes from there is a good-for-nothing person like a leper. His taste is sour.
His story of rags to riches appears fake and cocky so they would not buy his
message”, Jethro explained. I didn’t fully agree with him, but I didn’t argue
either, for I wanted to hear the other side as well.
“Kachenjela is a shanty township
born and bred resident. His appeal to the squads of his background is almost
like rocket science. No matter how boring or equivocal he may appear to be,
those from typical shanty townships would still align with him because
regardless of his wayside or novitiate abilities, shanty brought-up residents
would still regard him as an upright man, who knows a lot because for them a
shanty township is more advanced and civilised a place than a village, and
whoever comes from there is worthy some salt, so to them the taste of his
flavour feels more sweet when they sip it”, Jethro explicated. Zachariah looked
drunk. He seemed to have had some loose threads of thought hanging that needed
tightening up.
“But what about those from the
village; how do they look at Kachenjela?” Zachariah asked.
“Villagers have a natural
instinct of fairness for one distinct reason. They recognise their situation
and accept it, then make a decision to come out of it”, Jethro started.
“Like what your Lao Tzu once said
that, ‘to know that you do not know is the best and that to think you know when
you do not is a disease, while recognizing this disease as a disease is to be free
of it?” I asked, trying to connect his arguments.
“Thank you Boy; I didn’t know
that you are reading my mind?” Jethro said.
“Villagers recognise their
disease and immediately work towards healing it. That’s why they leave the
village and walk round the length, width and breadth of the land looking for
ways to improve their lives. When they come to the city, they get to high cost,
middle cost, and low cost and even shanty areas, either working or staying with
their relatives in those places. This makes them so much exposed that they get
to know different kinds of life styles so are people. This makes them more
tolerant of others regardless of their birth places, as long as these people
give them hope of a better future. Shanty township dwellers get easily
complacent with their situation. They bear the sight of a high cost area. If
anything they blame rich people for their poverty. And that make them lazy,
vindictive and vengeful and of limited creativity; their world revolves round
the boundaries of their shanties” Jethro thesised. It was an amazing theory,
but I still regarded it as highly debatable.
“Are you telling us that this
whole Choice thing was a game of birth place; about who came from where?” I
noted so curiously.
“You are so pious you guys. Your
knowledge of the book of life as you call it is so wide. I have always wondered
why Yesu was nailed to a tree. Was it to sacrifice for you that you may live? I
don’t know; but what I feel is that, Yesu was killed by the Romans because his
message appeared so fake and unrealistic to the kind of life they were used to.
And to hear a stranger tell them of life after death, of wealth and jubilation;
of salvation and eternal life was like insulting and fooling them. Their life
was that of misery, suffering, sweating, anger and mourning, hence their
bitterness towards a message that was out of their mental range”, Jethro kind
of preached. I was somehow getting convinced but needed to be surer so that I
did not misunderstand him.
“Are you telling us that Mufasazi’s
message sounded fake to the people?” I asked.
“Everyone continued calling his
message neo-imperialist. That simply meant that his message was too good to be
true because the residents had been led in the past by people who had all along
given them miserable lives which became part of their living. And such kind of
life grew roots in their brains; it became an established pattern by which they
believed beyond any reasonable doubt to be the best they could have. And to
hear someone tell them something sweeter than the lives they had been used to,
sounded so cocky and foolish, hence the hate” Jethro put it so clearly.
“But later the residents took
their drink home and realised actually Mufasazi was the right drink, but it was
too late to change the course of their choice”, Zachariah added.
“Yes and those who were sipped at
first and chosen as the best, got so pissed off because their lies had been
exposed and the only way was to make sure before everyone else knew, he was to
be put off the radar”.
“How can that be possible Jet.
Remember you said these residents are ignorant, but who would they realise
later?” I confusedly asked.
“Every dog has his day. Natural
instinct is not taught and cannot be manipulated Boy. One clever man Louise
Cheskin called it ‘sensation transference’. As you look like, so will common
people judge you. Malcom states of this, that things that people hate, they
don’t necessarily hate them in the natural sense of the word, but that what
they mean is that, these things are new and unusual that they are not used to
them. But that the problem is that, buried among the things that they hate is a
class of products or things that are in that category only because they are
weird. They make them nervous. They are sufficiently different that it takes
them some time to understand that they actually like them” Jethro was above
par; far away from my level of articulating things. He made me feel so ignorant
and un-knowledgeable.
“So in other ways the word ugly
may not be ugly as such”, I suggested.
“Wow…that’s exactly what Malcom
suggests too. He says, ‘maybe the word ‘ugly’ was just a proxy for ‘different’.
Yet people did not realise that, hence their finding themselves liking the
person they did not choose in the first place and regret the chance they
wasted”.
It was breath taking. I served
the food. Rice with meat balls and we ate in intellectual silence. Jethro’s
talks always made us appear children. He challenged us so much that, sometimes
I would hate the time I wasted being at school taught to memorise things by
heart instead of liberating the educational curriculum to make us critical
thinkers. He was an admirable person; very thrift with his sense of humour but
highly quick-witted and selfless. After our quick meal, we set drive back to
the court.
