“The pompous Fellas”

As I always say, “you may take the villager out of the village, but you may not get the village out of him”. This adage holds more water than it should, meaning that, it is more than the truth. When I started this column (nearly seven years ago), I got literary bashed by many that thought I was writing about them! There is this friend of mine (a literary expired civil servant), who not only had the nerve to call me but hull a barrage of insults at me, he insulted me about the “milk apparatus” that suckled me and “ebigenderako(accompaniments)” (I think you understand what I mean); reason being that, I was exposing him in the National newspaper! I was quick to reassure him that, my stories were all about me (their author) but he would buy none of that! He was telling me that, “sha, how could you dare talk about the poverty I grew up in!”, little did he know that, many of us carry the same tag (from rugs to riches)! So many people used to relate to my column because it personally touched their own past. As we grew up, we were more than eager to learn the “Queen’s Language”, leave alone speaking and practicing it well enough to make its owner smile! I don’t know whether the same applied to the speakers of the “Chirac Language” (forgive me because I don’t know its rightful owner). We had guys that talked and you would never make head or tail out of their tirades of words; they spoke as if their mouths were suffering from a running sickness! The purpose of any communication is to convey a message in as precise a manner as possible, so that, the communicator and the “communicatee” are at par! Many times, such a scenario is far from being achieved. I remember at one moment in time, we used to work with a guy that was so bombastic in his manner such that, every time he made a statement, nobody could understand it; a joke went around that, he too did not understand his own words! I always wonder as to why some people never want to be down to earth! The other day, I went to see a specialist doctor because my seeing apparatus was playing me some tricks and I had not finalised my column, the best alternative was to go “see” an Ophthalmologist (by the way, I’m not trying to be bombastic, that is how an eye doc is called). I was referred to one of the leading Eye Clinics in Kigali. The waiting was bad because I was running behind schedule but what really touched me was the fact that, I waited for nearly two hours and when I eventually got the chance to “see” the medic, I was able to communicate to him but he totally failed to communicate to me. Much as I explained my predicament in Kinyarwanda, the Doctor kept retorting back in French; I tried informing the good Doc that, I did not speak that language but my pleas landed on deaf ears! At the end of the day, he even gave me prescriptions all in French! I suppose, these are the guys that have no village in them at all!mfashumwana@fastmail.fm