I suppose, I should borrow a leaf from my village and take cue; instead of having the monotonous name of Mfashumwana, I should find myself a new name and make a fresh start. If a whole village with hundred or even thousands of villagers can be renamed, then who am I, a mere villager not to have a name change? I suppose, there should be a referendum on my changing from the current name of Mfashumwana to a more progressive and developmental name. After all, don’t the ‘balokole’ believe that, a bad name brings calamities? Just a few days ago, I was an ‘important’ visitor to the Duty Free centre of the world, commonly known as Dubai. As I am no authority on Arabia issues, I will restrict myself to just the ordinary talks of a village and portray whatever I can in its most rudimentary form. First and foremost, I will begin by thanking the ‘drivers’ of Ethiopian Airlines ‘bus’ that managed to get us safely out of Africa to Arabia and back to Africa without any hitch. But these guys are very lucky not to be doing their thing in Rwanda, as they would end up paying countless fines for over speeding. The guy cruised at a speed in excess of six hundred kilometers per hour for most of the journey. We left Kigali on a rather hot Friday evening, aboard what they announced to be a ‘ Bowing Seven three Seven dash seven hundred’ (don’t ask me what those figures mean, all I know is that, they stand for a ‘tribe’ of that very ‘bus’, like we used to have the ‘kabandole’ buses in the sixties and seventies. It is not so often for people to fly, leave alone villagers to fly, therefore, whenever I fly, the whole world must know! How many of you that call themselves “ towners” have never seen the inside of an “ Air Bus”? I suppose over ninety percent! There you go, then a villager comes from Mfashumwana and beats you at your own game? What a shame! By all means, the first leg to Addis Ababa was not all that eventful, in an hour or two; we were landing at the Addis Ababa International Airport. The ‘driver’ hammered the godamned machine down as if it was a sack of Irish potatoes. I used to think that we had some form of bureaucracy, I quickly realized how liberal our Airport Security was, the guys in Addis make you empty all your pockets’ contents, even pieces of paper, it is mandatory to remove shoes and belts, I suppose, the best way to avoid them is moving bare footed! There was this young man we had travelled with who looked malnourished but had a bulging front end of his trousers, the Addis security guys were touch touching the poor fellow’s ‘things’ as if trying to find some weapons of mass destruction. Soon, we were all herded into the giant machine so packed together that, there was no free seat left un occupied. This was our final leg, it would take us over Yemen and the Holy Lands of Saudi Arabia; all this was happening in the hour or two before midnight, as if to emphasise the Arabian Nights! Since it was in the dead of the night, there was nothing to see outside and hence, nothing to write home about. The arrival in Dubai and what awaited us is another long story that cannot be summarised in this third rate column, may be I will tell that another day. Contact: Mfashumwana@fastmail.fm
