These are confusing days we live in. We live at times when the once threat of global culture has finally become a reality. This oneness of 'civilization' has come at a great cost for some of the worlds citizens. In life today, there is a quiet agreed upon level by which we humans beings are judged whether civilized or barbaric. This level, unfortunately, is set by those who see themselves as 'the civilized.' There is not much credit given to the fact that these civilized lots were barbaric about a century ago. Were they more barbaric than Africans are barbarians today? I guess that does not matter as much now. Seems their pride is that they beat us to the barbarism.
Since about two centuries ago, Africans have been dished a smorgasbord of cultures to juggle. The results bore complicated unique almost making do way of life. Or is it? The western cultures eagerly point fingers at Africans and their governments in the case of 'do as I say' because 'do as I do' is what Africans do so well.
The biggest issue Africa seems to wrestle with is corruption. Corruption is corruption is corruption - no matter how one chooses to slice it. But make no mistake. The west is a good leader in corruption. It is just done on different levels in different situations. In America, orderly corruption is a way of life just as much as bargaining, barter, negotiations and trade. It is the ORDER that is utilized in dealing with corruption in the west, which passes by Africans' understanding ever so slightly. It is this ORDER that westerners use in calling blackmail negotiation (note it is not whitemail). They shamelessly use it in their open courts and call it plea bargaining.
Though this order comes with a big price tag of depression and other forms of psychic migraines, it is this order that has provided the west with a seemingly much higher level of life. It is this order that provides for good neighborhoods and good health. It is this order that creates a big mighty bully of an army and it is this order that make us envy them, especially if we have not been victims of this very order.
I cannot help but wonder how life in Africa would have turned out had it been left to chance and unperturbed by the western colonization. For starters, how is it possible to have had a civilization such as that of Egypt, Sudan and Abyssinia dating back decades of thousands of years yet have a whole other population of people, in the same continent, who never leaned to communicate with the written word? Was that chance? Had Africans south of the Sahara found heaven in low form of order after their basic needs had already been met? Whatever the case, we seem doomed to go this route towards the white mans heaven. Might it be hell for us Africans or is it too late to wonder?
Africans are in too deep towards this search for mzungu's end of the rainbow. So, f you ask a Kenyan the time on their watch and they lie about it, bare no harm towards them. They are a product of Mois governance. When a policeman asks for a bribe, its partly cause his salary cannot afford to pay for his sons food, leave alone school. How can a government clerk who cannot meet his family's basic needs, be expected to handle millions of schillings while being paid peanuts for a salary? How is he to fight temptations to take a bribe from another poorly paid person thus making a deal, a trade, barter, a bargain or even a simple negotiation? Talk about putting new wine in an old bag or whatever. . . .
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