Dele Omotunde
Across the Great Ocean there is a country where everybody is engaged in an annual ritual of thanksgiving and merry making today, the last Thursday of the month of November set aside for the purpose. It’s a big holiday when family members get together to dine and wine and discuss family matters and offer prayers and thanks to God for His benevolence over the past year.
I think it goes further than that. There is a kind of historical perspective to this big holiday. The land we are talking about is America. The founding fathers, we are made to understand, came from Britain in search of a place to settle and establish a new order of life where there is freedom of association, expression and religion. The landing area they named New England from where they later spread out to other parts of the continent of North America. They soon discovered that the new world of theirs is richly endowed with virtually all they needed to survive and thrive as a wealthy country. The land, like Nigeria’s, is full of milk and honey. They started their new life by farming and the first harvest was a bumper surprise. They had more than enough. Whatever they planted came out in tenfold return. This plus all the other natural resources God endowed them with that made the founding fathers of modern-day America for setting a day aside for thanksgiving and show of love and kindness to the less privileged.
If not for mosquitoes and tropical heat, because we are near the equator, the whiteman conquerors would have stayed put in the country plundering our commonwealth and treating us as second hand (class?) citizens in our own papa land. Share on XCan Nigeria borrow a leaf from this pre- Trump America? Do we have anything to CROW about?
Sure, we do. Apart from the proverbial land full of milk and honey that God has blessed us with we too have similar endowments in human and natural resources to thank God for and show love.
Like what and what?
Nigeria is blessed enough to warrant our thanking God every minute, not every year, and I mean it. Ogun gbo!
Which one is that?
I swear!
Hmmm… A l h a a a j i ! Why, now?
We must to thank God that we have billions and trillions of mosquitoes in our country.
O ti o! Mosquito ke? Why?
Why not? If not for mosquitoes and tropical heat, because we are near the equator, the whiteman conquerors would have stayed put in the country plundering our commonwealth and treating us as second hand (class?) citizens in our own papa land but mosquitoes dealt a deadly blow to any just intention to wanting to stay forever with us like they succeeded in doing in Rhodesia, Angola, Namibia and South Africa, places that have climates similar to the temperate climate they were used to.
If I get you right, are you saying we too would have suffered the blows of apartheid like in South Africa?
Yes o. We would not only have suffered (s’Offa?) we would have “so’Lorin “ too. We need to be thanking God for ever for that. And our dear native mosquitoes too who poisoned their (circulatory) system with malaria, yellow fever…
And typhoid.
No, typhoid had not come into being then. Sebi, you know say na the “jehun jehun’ doctors of nowadays that brought that kind crazy affliction to our hospitals later.
You don’t mean that?
We are as naturally and humanly endowed as the Americans. The rest of the world respects us for our contribution to world peace. Share on XJust leave that alone for now. As I was saying our ogbonge mosquitoes fought our fight for us, they dealt with them so badly that they had to leave us alone and tactically withdrew to the Southern Africa territories. Remember Joseph Conrad what he said about his experience in Congo?
What was that?
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