One of the things I do when I itch for some smile, smile being something rare these days, I tune intone of those channels where some guy who looks a member some metal band performs ‘miracles’ so astounding you wonder if the ‘cane’ which parted the Red Sea was his! True you can’t help being impressed. Thiers is Oscar-level performance. Now I’m not saying they are taking their congregations up the green path. No way! What do I know anyway? I mean what do I know how the scripts are scribbled or if Thiers is the conventional three-act performance? I mean it takes wits of the highest order to gather all the hundreds of people and do ‘miracles’ that would’ve put Heaven at loggerhead with Mother Earth! Copyright! Yes, that’s the word that might prove our undoing if we don’t produce the legal papers. “So and so has been accorded the permission to perform miracles as long as he doesn’t get funny ideas of claiming a front seat up here.”
I have to tell you I fail to connect the dots. How come we find ourselves deep into all these troubles when all those ‘holy men’ are performing all these ‘miracles?’ As they say, step up to the plate and prove what you really are made of!
But then there are those who paint all kinds of scary future for us. So scary they push the ‘Alien vs. Predators’ Hollywood franchises to the lower leagues. Why do they go to such lengths? No ‘but,’ no “unless you act as such and such” to save ourselves from Armageddon which supposedly comes earlier for us than the rest of the world! The ‘Sword of Damocles’ comes crushing down upon us before we even get the chance to contest ‘the verdict’
“Hey, did you watch such and such you tube channel yesterday?”
“No; never even heard of such a channel.”
“You should; you wouldn’t know what you are missing until you see it.”
“I will do exactly that! But can you tell me what all that excitement of yours is all about?”
“Yesterday they were talking about where this country would be ten years down the road.”
“And they said it will turn into the proverbial African Singapore?”
“No; what they said isn’t at all nice. You know, it threw me into a depression that I never experienced!” (Hey, what’s this guy thinking! trying to pull me in too!) Look, over the past several months I’ve heard so many predictions which sound season one to ten of all the horror films combined. Well they say good news seldom sells!)
Well, what can you do about ‘holy men’ who see anything but the holier side of life! Policemen, prosecutors, juries, judges and jailers! Few mortals even dreamed so much power at one fell swoop! Ha! But, they’re not alone. They are not the lone rangers who empty their guns on someone and ride into the sunset costing the sheriffs their jobs. They have ‘non-biological brethren’ in the numberless ‘experts on Ethiopia’ who are so deep into ‘their craft of being self-proclaimed experts’ maybe they should think of their own Olympiads. I can assure you it would be an Olympiad where no single record stands.
They are so gifted they break all the records in ways no two-legged human being would break them until Judgment Day. We always seem to be wading out of the floods of doomsday predictions (or are they prophecies!) you’d find in their ‘learned conclusions.’ That doesn’t seem to be winning us many friends in the newsrooms where the ‘experts’ seem to pop up at the snap of the fingers. And they give all the credit the Houdini fellow. So unfair!
People notice; Hey to you ‘experts’ and newsroom weirdoes who have too many biased, arrogant and yes, racist bones in you I’ve a piece of not-so-nice news for you. If you think you’re fooling everyone, if you think you can gamble with all nonsense and whistle your way to the next watering hole, you better do something about those malfunctioning screws upstairs; they’re making a metal carcass (what!) and even the hungry vultures would be saying, “No, thank you.”
A few days back some thirty or so of us quietly waited to be called for our Covid vaccine second jab at our local health centre when an elderly lady broke the ice. “Thank God what they said hasn’t happened!” She needn’t say any more; we got the message. And soon almost everyone was voicing their opinions except ‘yours truly!’ Of course there were some disturbing opinions. A couple of guys suggested ‘they’ were deliberately scaring us! For what purpose? A question that never came up.
But hearing at such discussions you know the problem of predictions learned or otherwise is a serious problem. Oddly enough during the early months of pandemic the predictions were that, even in the best of scenarios, millions would be no more. The pandemic of fear and ultimate terror swept across the population and all adhered to the preventive methods down to the letter. The predictions loaded with the tone of a done deal it was a question of how soon it’d happen and not if it’d ever happen. You know, at times it seemed every other fellow donning a white gown was telling us of the unlucky millions on whom the no-appeal verdict is signed and sealed.
I mean, I’m not to commit the ‘blasphemy’ of discrediting whatever they’re saying. No sir, if I ever have to fight I’d to make sure it would end with a first round knockout with me still on my feet with that coast-to-coast smile not on my back with the world spinning all around me! Maybe those guys have seen it all before it happens and in full color, too. But why is all the scaremongering? May my soul be saved by the well-meaning for putting some ‘experts on Ethiopia’ and some of those miracle-deliverers in the same league! After all, as like any guy in the street I am entitled to my share of making ‘mistakes!’
The Ethiopian Herald August 22/2021