'Dumsor' compared with managing survival

I am still managing because I know you don’t fix anything in conditions that make things not fixable because of bad management. If you know how to manage, you are likely to be able to fix, sometimes even the unfixable.

If you don’t know how to manage, you will not be able to fix anything because good management is a condition for fixing.

Key among my managing mechanisms is my ‘bushness.’ Having spent a lot of time in the bush growing up, the bush seems to bring back the best of times because there was never a time in the bush that was worse than dums? times. My spirits shoot high when in wandering around my small compound I see a pineapple plant shooting up after planting or budding with a seed, or the fruit ripening.

The most recent bush triggered upliftment came from the custard apple tree. I have been watching it closely like a dum situation hoping it would bear fruit. Last year, after some eight years or so, I suddenly discovered one fruit. I thought I should let it ripen fully. Before I was aware it had dropped off. It needed probably a couple of days only to be ready. So when one morning about a fortnight ago I saw some 10 fruits on it, I was totally elated.

The plantain trees are something else. They fruit regularly and always replenish themselves with replacement suckers. I am told they give the best fufu texture. It is comforting watching them grow from sucker to fruit bearing in maturing bunch of fingers. I enjoy them a third or at most half-ripened. That is when unable to get some fufu with cow leg or ak?nf?m light soup.

Herbaceous Dandenong grows wild around. Their medicinal value adds to a satisfaction of having them to add to a meal (soup or stew) for health. Herb for help, I call them. They are supported by the akok?b?sa herb with its wonderful aroma which wafts around the compound announcing a meal is about ready.

More green in the compound is added to in this from nowhere sprouted shrub which germinated close to the spot of one of the felled overgrown mango trees. From nowhere, I saw it and with incredible speed it has grown into this bush, promising a shade under which I would be able to take cover shielded from the heat of the sun while enjoying the sea breeze.

Still not enough green against the massive concrete buildings and walls that make up the compound. I had never anticipated more concrete far less green compound. But I never expected dums?, it is with me and I have to manage. So, with my more concrete than I would like, I am trying to manage existence under a dums? regime I never anticipated.

He who pours scorn on managing is he who does not know that you manage towards fixing. That is why he says he can fix without managing. Those who know how to fix know that before fixing, the resources needed or required to fix have to be managed for a fixed result. The lack of managing skills is generating crude approaches to fixing a problem of energy scarcity.

These days, you hear it said on radio that we have all, my compatriots and I, promised to pay more for electricity. If it is true, it would mean we have been blackmailed into saying we are willing to pay more for electricity because a deceitful government has been able to deprive us of it to a point of surrender. It’s a matter of kume preko turned kume kodwoo t?.

Power minister appointee communicator/government spokesperson told his appointer the born dog man off by asking a journalist to go and ask him for an answer he (the journalist) had posed. The appointee communications minister could not account for the pronouncements of his appointer boss. So how does he now as appointer turn round and fix (he calls himself a fixer even when he has fixed nothing but what brings misery to the motherland) his energy appointee?

That man of power appointee is not fixable or more accurately cannot be fixed by he who yesterday behaved similarly. We haven’t forgotten this one. If in the ‘fixer’s’ mind he thinks we are forgetful with short memory, we haven’t forgotten and we will not forget, because bad relationship between appointer and appointee always leaves permanent memories.

Anyway, my compatriots, this is how I am coping with dums? and all its direct and indirect attendant hardships we are suffering under governance by incompetence. You may think or not about I and find sense in it or totally condemn it.