It happened a few of years back. This committee to work on a certain project was being formed and quite a number of people wanted to join. The conventional wisdom was that it would serve as stepping stone to higher and more lucrative opportunity. The very fact that someone was member of that particular committee would have given the status of a Premier League player whose market value has gone through the roof. (If it was up to me I would have given that status to Liverpool’s Alison Becker for his performance against the Parisians on Wednesday! He was on hell of a goalkeeper!)
Finally the committee was set up and the members sit for their first meeting. There were two people in the committee who don’t see eye to eye and neither of them knew the other one was in the committee. The moment the eyes of one of them rested on the other he suddenly rises violently pushing back the chair and creating all sorts of clatter. The shock was universal as everyone was caught unawares. They say everyone having lost the command of their vocal chords just stared at the guy. “I don’t want to serve in this committee!” he growls and makes his way to the doors. No one tried to stop him and no one uttered a single word. The silence was complete until the other guy comes to their rescue.
“It’s because of me.” The words did not sound that they were uttered with the complete awareness of the guy they seem to have just tore their way out! (Maybe we might use some sort of disclaimer. “The three sentences which appeared above were actually results of accidental leakage and have nothing to do with the principles and motto of this person!” Of course the times we are in practically no one would take your words for what they are supposed to mean! But that’s the way of the world and you’ve to live with it!”)
“What the hell does it mean!” this was the unsaid collective emotion. Then someone asks, “I don’t understand it. What do you mean it’s because of you?” Mind you, they haven’t yet selected who would lead the committee and filled the other positions that are evident in all committees. (If my words sound as if I have some lost love for committees you couldn’t be no more wrong! I don’t remember the last committee I was member of or even if I’ve ever been one! I don’t also remember any story I heard about any committee which deserves the standing ovations many times over!)
Then the guy goes explaining the very basic and harmless details of the whole thing leaving the most intimate and revealing under wraps. They would not have been at all nice! Now while no one tried to dig any deeper the question what being in the same committee has to do with any of those things was left hanging by the thinnest of threads. That wasn’t the end of the story. Soon story credible rumors the rounds that at the end of the project committee members would collect substantial financial rewards. Here is where what authors would call another plot point happens.
One particular day the committees were holding one of their meetings when a secretary comes in and informs the chairman there was someone to see them. He tells her to tell whoever it was to come at another time since they were in a meeting. She said she already told him and he refused to leave. The chairman was about to get up to personally confront the intruder when the door as violently pushed and this man comes surging in. It was that committee member who burst out weeks earlier. The chairman sinks back into his seat and everyone stares at the guy.
But this was not then and during the several weeks after that despicable incident the attitude towards this person have gone through such transformations that almost every member hated him. And it showed on their faces. The chair asks him what he wanted. He says that he wanted to be included in the committee once again. What happened here was in a way the biggest blow to the guy, some blow which had he had any working cells in his brain would have safely put him in his corner. Everyone laughed as if they were watching the most hilarious standup comedy. The chair in no uncertain words tells him that the way he forced his way into the office was illegal and not ever to try to do it again. And he tells him to leave. The guy insists he wouldn’t leave until he was reinstated as committee member. The chair picks up the phone dials some number and says a few words which was inaudible almost to everyone and sits back smiling. No sooner has he done that two agitated door attendants wielding scary canes come in. The chair points to the fellow and they didn’t need any more signs. They grab his collars on both sides and practically drag him out while he protested in the loudest voice he could manage. He was later sent to a branch outside Addis, All this happened because of his hatred towards the other person which had nothing to do with being members in the same committee.
By the way I think the worst thing that could happen to any well-meaning person is to be part of a team of any number of people to mend fences between two individuals or groups whose hatred for each other is so severe it would have melted all the ice on the tip of the Everest. Not liking each other is one thing; hatred is a whole lot of a different and not-so-tempting narrative. I used to know a lady who was supposedly well-educated and one you could call ‘civilized’ boycotting a prayer place which the man she hates attends!
Thinking there are answers to everything may mean fewer headaches, as long as you don’t insist on knowing all the answers. But, no. That doesn’t work. The fact is that there are no answers even to the simplest and the most trivial of things. And why people hate each other for the most trivial of things and go as far as not going to the place the other one frequents or avoid the same restaurant are not simply awkward but even, pardon for the term, Stupid! ‘Boycotting’ the trivial wouldn’t’ mend any fence, and it is in no way the display of any wisdom!
BY EPHREM ENDALE
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 16 MARCH 2025
