The things you see every day leave you with multiple impressions. Sometimes you think, “Well, we seem to be growing even more civilized these days. Since more and more of us are acting responsibly to try to maintain the smooth flow of things it sure is a welcome sign. People are keeping rules and regulations.
Anyone who thinks what happens in the other corners of the world wouldn’t affect us back here would be in for some bog shocks. It’d affect us in many ways than not. Take what’s currently happening on America. With hundreds of thousands of our compatriots over there the pressures, the uncertainties, the worries and the dilemmas they live with day to day would have ripple effects across the Atlantic all the way to the source of The Nile. After all perhaps millions back here directly or indirectly live of remittances coming from America and the parts father world. Our compatriots are working two and three jobs for nothing. Even in the event of their own fridges thinning out and the bills come pouring in they have to think about relatives back home who might find themselves in more dire conditions. But of course we can only pray they come out of all the waves surging in that country in one piece. Message for us to call home those who might have entered the US illegally sends the jitters as there could be quite a number of them!
‘Legal;’ ‘Illegal;” those are the terms of the day, are they not! Though this world has for a while been working in the strangest of ways, we wouldn’t be naïve enough to think the ‘meaning’ of these two terms varies for place to place. Of course there are many instances where something that is ‘legal’ in some place could be ‘illegal’ in another. But that isn’t about different meanings! You’ve the papers, you’re legal; you don’t have the papers, you’re illegal. No room for compromise over there. Now, it’s easy to disparage those who prefer to go to America or anywhere else illegally for acting so irresponsibly so as to put their own lives in great danger.
But the fact is the price for anything illegal could be real hefty in every way. At first it might appear that everything is quite and you might have gone away with it. Hip. Hip. Hooray! I beat them at their own game!” Maybe for that moment, you might have. But when justice comes calling it could shake one to the core! Take the dude who jumps the red light because he thinks no one has seen him speeding away. There are many of them these days. In the older days the blame could largely fall on the young and restless. That ‘species’ never tires of challenging the status quo, does it? Come morning and the red light- jumping dude is rolling across one or another part of the town when a traffic cop stops him. He’d think it was a mistaken call until truth wins the day. “Yesterday evening you jumped a red light!” “What! How the hell could they know about it?’ There was absolutely no one close enough to read his license in that place where the streetlights were dim.
Somewhere down the line for one reason or another thing must have gone wrong prompting us to break rules and regulations with immunity which we have given to ourselves!
‘Please fasten your seatbelts!’ This is one of the common messages you see plastered on minibus dashboards. The irony is that the idea the seatbelt caught with us only recently with is. ‘What the hell do you mean fasten our belts? Why should we tie ourselves with belts; we’re no prisoners!’ Most didn’t like the very idea at first. Let alone the passengers, even most drivers tried to make their way around it while they should have known better! But once the traffic police got serious it seems we have finally fallen in line. What astounds me is as to who we think we’re hurting by shunning the seatbelt or jumping the red lights!
Still there are many who think they have fooled the world by throwing across their body fake seatbelts; seatbelts which have stopped being useful and just hung like a piece of rope. This is especially the case with minibus taxis and it seems they go away with it!
There is this story I heard a couple of months back about a guy who tried to muscle his way into smoking in a no-smoking café. At first the waitresses and the bar manager tried to reason with him, but to no avail. They say even a couple of customers were about to physically challenge him but they were pulled back by cooler hands. Then the unexpected happened. A young customer probably in her early twenties goes to the fellow’s table, picks up his brief case which was on an adjoining chair swiftly goes to the door and literally throws it out! They say the rush of the guy was so frantic he almost ended face down a couple of times. They also say the cool of the girl who showed no emotions and did not utter a word was in a whole story in itself. I mean if there is a ‘No Smoking’ it means what it says and no more or no less! Even the dumbest of us could understand that!
There seems to be some disturbing trends where some of us break rules and think we are immune and no one could have spleen enough to call us to task with something like, “You have broken the law, and you’ve to answer for it!” Adhering to rules that are meant to keep life smoothly has nothing to do with who, where, why or whatever. Irrespective of the hundred and one differences rules and regulations are for everyone and don’t discriminate. You play by the rules, and “Bravo!” for you; you deserve it. You prefer to go in the opposite directions and then you’ve to be ready to face the music.
So, fasten your seatbelts!
BY EPHREM ENDALE
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 13 APRIL 2025
