HUMOUR : “Madness in the House”

“In the Land of Gold” Once again, I take you to one of my travels out of Rwanda. Believe you me; I am not the person most of you think I am. Being a villager does not make me one of those most backward or obsolete characters that my name seems to be synonymously associated with. I am a villager yes, butthe village in me has suffered a great backlash of modernity. I have tried as hard as I could to change the common adage that goes as follows “you can take a villager out of the village, you may not take the village out of him”; it should read as follows, “Once you have got the village out of a villager, it is impossible to put the village backinto him”. Now along, I decided to travel to the land of Gold “Gauteng”, that is the name given to the areas underlying Johannesburg as well as the political capital of Pretoria. The last time, I visited the RSA (Republic of South Africa), talk was rife that, the Africans (not the Afrikaners), wanted the name of the country’s capital renamed from Pretoria to “Tswana”, arguing that, “Pretoria” was a white man’s name and that, they wanted the place Africanised. Some of you may get confused by the two terms “Africans vs Afrikaners” the Africans are the original inhabitants of this great land; these are like me (I don’t know about you). The Afrikaners are the descendants of the white manwho invaded South Africa (most probably from a Hollandaise race); these wanting to integrate themselves into this great continent of ours, they took it upon themselves to Afrikanise themselves and hence the term “Afrikaners”. As usual, I got an air ticket from my favourite Airline, Rwandair (fly our dreams to the Heart of Africa). The guys have a very small and sleek plane that moves as graceful as “the “flowers of Rwanda”. We set off from Kigali at around midday and headed south to the other Rwanda (Burundi). The problem with this “Air road” is that, it urgently requires the services of a company like STRABAG. The plane keeps rocking amidst the “air potholes”: Can’t someone in-charge do something about it? The “air road” is so rough that it makes you feel like your heart is moving into your mouth. Thank God, we eventually touched down in approximately twenty minutes from taking off from Kigali International Airport. Bujumbura was as hot as usual, since this was not my target, I did not disembark, and I stayed put! After what looked like half an hour, we began taxing to take off. Sooner than later, we were zooming as fast as a bullet and pop, the aircraft sounded and we were once again sailing in the skies above Buja. The journey from Bujumbura to Johannesburg took an amazing three hours which was a pretty fast pace. I have had several chances to travel aboard the so called“wide bodied” aircrafts, they take longer. Johannesburg looked as beautiful as ever. We disembarked from our aircraft and headed from the arrival terminal. The guys have an amazing structure; it is a feat of engineering ingenuity. You move what looks like a kilometre before you find yourself in what is known as the Arrival terminal. Here, a Kraal like maze awaits you. As we approached the migration counter, one of us handed in his passport and the immigration officer looked at him and demanded to know where he was coming from, the poor chap answered “Kigali”, “where is that, are youfrom Nigeria?”, the immigration fella asked! That is quite funny, with the little geographical knowledge; Kigali does not tally with Nigeria. When I uttered my passport, without looking at me, the guy asked, “Where are you from?”, “I’m from Africa” I confidently answered. The guy looked me over and then, not wanting to cause any form of fracas, he carefully examined the passport, stamped in the entry stamp and handedit back. Welcome to South Africa, he mumbled as he handed me back the passport. Ironically, he was a fellow black! Mfashumwana@fastmail.fm