Stories of human villainy never end these days, do they? All of a sudden people you thought would have been real angels had wings been attached to them end up with tails and fangs. I mean it! They tell you that was a global problem. The loss of morality, so it’s said, is so much so that all the explanations that defined the good from the bad, the ripe form the rotten, the blessed from the cursed are mangled up. These days you can easily be put on the chopping plate by the very person you believed liker anything and the sad part is such actions no more create denunciations. You hear so much of such news that the reactions aren’t as you would have expected them to be.
“Did you hear what she did to her best friend?”
“Yes I did.”
“What do you think?”
“Such stories have become the rules of the day and there is nothing surprising about it.”
“I think you’re right about that.”
Recently someone told me an interesting and also shocking story. This guy asks one of his best friends who is an innocent fellow to deliver a small package to someone and the fellow accepted. He was given the package and a sealed letter to be given to the recipient. The same day he delivers the package and the letter. Before looking at what was in the package the recipient looks at the letter. And it was only then he pulled out what was in the package. Thirty grand birr neatly wrapped. Our innocent messenger was taken a little aback because money was the last thing he expected. Then the recipient goes into a frenzy! “What is this!” What is what? The innocent messenger was blown off his feet.
“What’s the matter?”
The recipient growls “he sent me fifty thousand birr and you give me only thirty thousand! Where the hell is the twenty thousand?”
“How could I know? I dint open the package and see what is in it?”
“Then who could have taken it! The package was in your hands all the way and no other person touched it!”
The sender and the recipient are demanding the messenger pay the ‘missing’ twenty thousand. He almost did it when his friends intervened and vowed, “No way! Tell them you’ll go to the police and tell them what happened? That did it. They dropped their twenty-thousand-birr demand. But had it been a genuine claim why should they just ignore so much money. In case you aren’t number conscious twenty thousand birr is a hell lot of money. According to what I’ve been told the sender and the recipient were in the …together. Isn’t that the most evil thing to do!
I don’t know if they still do it. But our sisters who move to Middle Eastern countries are requested cooperation in delivering packages to people who’re already in those places. And many of our sisters have witnessed their lives being destroyed before even they properly started.
If you happen to be the unsuspecting person who never thinks the probability of hidden motives when asked for their cooperation in delivering packages then you could be in serious danger. Being nice and cooperative these days has its red lines. As we’re in an age where you could tell who’s who your chances of being fooled are higher. Someone was trying to convince me that your most bitter enemies are those very close to you. The generalization wouldn’t give you comfort; but then you personally witness and also hear from others so many stories of best friends going for each other’s throats. Married couples who were supposed to be real life Romeo and Juliet working to bring their mates to their knees etc.
I Tir was this friend of mine who for years have clashed with the brass of the company he worked in. Not because he has any deficiencies in carrying out the tasks ascribed him but because of issues that crop now and then, issues that mostly affect the entire staff. In fact he was one of the best workers and all attempts to kick him out into the streets by the brass failed because of the fact that they could pull no strings on him when it comes to work performance.
Now he had this habit of speaking out whenever he thinks wrongs have been done. Especially during staff meetings he was sort of unelected voice of the staff. He doesn’t hesitate to say what he believes in. That on the surface might be a measure of strong personality of people who stand for what they believed in. But since many behavioral strong points have already become some fairy tales and even myths his kid of persons don’t go far. The story here is that. Whenever an issue of concern ….the staff members talk in his presence. Look, they are not talking to him, but to each other. And our guy takes in all that is being said without much comment on the spot. But when meetings are held he’s the one who ties to carry the Mosses Rod. Those discussions among staff members in his presence were deliberately held to anger his so much so that he will act. And he did act! It was much later that he learned that the staff members were deliberately pushing him to bump heads with the brass. “How could I miss this? How could I be fooled for all those years without suspecting that it was all deliberate?”
The fact is people are no more what they seem to be. Comments like “By the looks of him he seems to be an innocent fellow,” are things of the past. Under normal circumstances such comment would have been as creations of the most pessimistic minds. “What’s wrong with this guy? Nothing satisfies him. He’s always looking for conspiracies and ill intentions behind the curtains even when there are no curtains to look behind!”
So, being cautious and having the eyes which could look much deeper than the surface skin is not only smart but a sort of self-defense before disaster strikes.
BY EPHREM ENDALE
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD SUNDAY EDITION 21 JANUARY 2024