Ephrem Endale: Contributer
Why do people try to pressure you to join them in some group or another when you don’t have the slightest interest of doing so? I hope this doesn’t sound like trying to make sense of the senseless I mean some people tell you the pressure from some groups are so concerted you’re left confused as to what to do.
Believe me there will be those who’d play the same old and tired tunes of decades back. They don’t try to convince you throw your hat with their group. They try to scare you! That’s what some of those macho dudes do. Scare the daylight out of you and send the shivers down your spine! They paint things as if doomsday was a few blocks down the road and you better join them before the last train leaves the station. If you innocently think they always fail in their tactics I’m sorry to tell you that’s not how it works. Many are hoodwinked into joining and the real story never comes out probably until they start getting weak at the knees or the group which was supposed to be so mighty is exposed for its playacting over the ears. Why, they are no more than a group of guys who probably were too bored in life and wanted a little slice of the action. Well they got lot of it!
As to the innocent souls who forced to unwillingly join groups they don’t like, it’s only years later they come out with what really happened, if they ever really do that.
“What could have I done? They scared me that if I don’t join not to blame them for what might happen! I did it to keep the safety of my family!”
“What did you benefit?”
“Nothing! Absolutely nothing, except sleepless nights terrified of what rival groups might do to me and to my family.”
“How come they let you leave them that easily?”
“They aren’t as mighty they brag to be! It was only after a long time I came to discover they were a group of sly souls who planned to benefit through the group. They were bandits! That’s what they were.”
Anyone doesn’t have to be called to rob banks to be called a bandit. Anyone who thinks like one is no better than the real ones. And (I feel cramps in my throat saying this!) there are some who despite flashy credentials on paper could have their names included in this lot! Yes, it is sad that some have slid to such depths!
Yes, ours is a world where things seldom stay as they were even for the shortest of times. The written rules have been changed into unwritten and moistly bizarre ways of doing things or going about life. One might want to talk about how things work out on the playing field? Well, that is a little tricky. Is there indeed any real playing field? I mean fields where all sorts of low-grade, stupidities are dumped are just that, waste lands and not playing fields.
These are no place for those who have brighter ideas, more convincing power and who can easily make it to the top of the hill in any fair race. But then in their absence those who bully their way through have a free ride. After all, fair race, or fair anything is hard to find these days in these world of a million contradictions. No wonder we might even find what we knew earlier turned into something we’ve never come across.
Take this place you find strange all of a sudden; I’m not talking about a place where you’ve never been before. I’m talking about a place where you have been a regular customer (You know, always there as if you were part of the furniture!) Suddenly it feels the strangest place you’ve ever been to. No, there hasn’t been any upgrading or such work. In fact the edges of some tables are showing signs of wear and tear. But the crowd is so different. Don’t get me wrong. By different I don’t mean they are people you have never seen. Most of them are regulars. But their behavior, the things you hear them saying, how seem to be carrying themselves…yes, there are visible changes and rather than pleasing you they give you all sorts of pricks all over your body. Even that cute waitress who almost subjected you to earthily infidelity and heavenly curse has changed. You just can’t forget the tsunami she raised in your home.
“Look honey nothing happened, they’re only rumors. Honey…”
“Can you keep quiet for a minute? I don’t care whether they are rumors or not. I can read the whole story in your eyes. I’m finished; so is our marriage.”
“What?”
Even the waitress who created such scenario in your house is…a stranger! Did she smile when she took your orders like she used to? No! Not only that hers was the most disrespectful treatment but the hostility in her eyes put your thoughts in spin which lingered for the belter half of the week.
Maybe being a revolutionary you might have answers for every happening. You know, one way or another there would be others on whom you can dump all the curse.
While we are at it, once a few of us travelled to a then communist country, one experience was it was so freezing cold when we landed we threatened to return tour country. As soon as we reached our resting place, to twenty kilometers form the city we were not good for politics, is it? Especially during those days of Cold War they were not going to let that happen.
And this place I was telling you about had a certain revolutionary whose name and busts you bumped into everywhere you went. Oh they idolized him and you wondered if he led them out of some pharos’s den or something. At one time we were visiting this big factory. We expected to see his three or four story high statue of him at the entrance. Nothing was there? What! (This factory is probably controlled by anti-revolutionaries and anarchists! Ha;) Would you believe it? We noticed the absence of one local hero’s statue in a country where we stayed only a few weeks. By the way we never heard of the fellow before we landed there.
So, after an hour or so we were leaving the factory through the exit which was located a really long walk from the entrance. And what happens? There he was! I can tell you that I’ve never seen as that big even in the movies! You almost strained the muscles in your neck to look at his face. I wander if the gigantic statue still stands and if all those busts are in their places now that that country has thrown out communism. As I told you when we threatened to return tour country (You can say that was the weirdest bluff as probably we’ve no way of carrying out our threat; and if we even managed by some miracle to walk, swim or fly the thousands of kilometers there would have been no flower bouquets welcoming us…but only military trucks. So they buy us overcoats. They weren’t enough. And one of our ‘minders’ discreetly tells us to have vodka, several did; and you know what! That was the perfect solution. You’d have been pardoned to ask why they don’t put that drink in the pharmacies! I mean in pharmacies are where you went looking for healing drugs! It ‘cures.’
But the biggest thing we learned there and the other place where we stayed for a couple of weeks there was always some group on which all the ills and sufferings of the world could be dumped on. That makes things simpler, doesn’t it?
Getting back to our topic, pressures don’t make successful teams or groups. Only convincing does.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 28 AUGUST 2022