If you don’t know… you don’t know!

Don’t you just find it strange when someone clearly doesn’t know how to operate a certain thing (maybe a gadget, machine or even lighter) but they still insist on doing it anyway? I know learning is precious but it ceases being learning when you fail to ask for instructions and instead go ahead and do things your way, naturally leading to a disastrous outcome.This fellow thought he had gadgets all figured out, till a muzungu showed up with something a lot more complex. Seriously this phone even looked like it was made by aliens. Since the only thing I’m good at operating is my phone (which still has stuff I am yet to figure out), I tend to leave the finer things for people who understand them.But not this dude. Because white folks seldom know how to be rude, he politely handed over the gadget when the guy asked him for it. However, as he tried to switch it on, the dude shouted, ‘Leave it. I know how to switch it on’. I watched in total amusement as the guy flipped the muzungu’s phone in every angle, trying to find the ‘on’ button. He proceeded to swipe his fingers across the screen hoping for a light of some sort to tell him it was on. Nothing! “My cousin had this phone. I used to play games on it all the time,” he lied. Dude, so you played games and what not but you can’t even switch the damn thing on? Strange.I begged him to give up. He didn’t understand those words. Meanwhile our muzungu friend tried to get him to hand the phone over…oh no…he wasn’t done. “Is your battery low?” he asked, almost making me chock on my food. “Nope,” was the muzungu’s answer.“Then why has it refused?” the moron continued. I couldn’t bear to go through another minute of watching him fumble with the phone so I snatched it out of his hands and handed it back to the owner. Before we could even blink, the phone was on. “Eh! You just touched it and it went on?” said my persistent friend.“Not exactly. There’s a small button on the side that I press lightly.”Because Africans never give up in such cases, he insisted the guy had played tricks on him and that he did something to keep the phone off. The muzungu actually agreed - I suspect out of fear that it would turn into a full blown argument. There’s no shame in asking – it’s like going up and down in an elevator because you want people to think you know what you are doing but in actual sense you have no idea what the buttons are for! That’s just dumb!