Letter to Senior Opupulepu (182) When the Bottom Rules in Favour of the Means

Dear Senior Opupulepu,

How are you do? I hope you are do fine. As for me and my shordies, we are all do fine, well, well.

Senior, you have surely heard the saying that says, “the bottom rules in favour of the means, sorry, the end justifies the means.”

Senior, when you born pikin and you are giving him or her a name on its outdooring day, you say prayers like, “may you grow to be strong, may you grow to be rich, may you grow to be wise-dom, may you grow to be…,” you must adjust yourself to encounter symptoms that will indicate that such prayers are about to manifest.

Senior, so if the pikin wants to be strong as you prayed he must grow to be, why do you have to scold and/or cane him when he starts fighting, beating mates and getting beaten up? Small, small fights surely can make pikin strong.

Senior, a child who wants to be rich, will start sell, selling pencils, gum, sharpeners and crayons he had acquired without certified receipts, in other words some small, small thief, thiefing, manifests itself here.

Senior, some matter has descended upon that third-storey skuul at Kill-Under or Kum-Asie, at the center of the land where people are born to brag. Yes, those people will brag if they are beating foes, they will brag if you are beating them. They brag when they have nothing to eat and are very hungry and will also brag when they are belly-full. When they enter classroom small, they will brag and brag to the nonsense degree. What is even shocking is that when they do not know book inside too, they will brag about it with such pomp and pageantry.

Senior, in that province, every body brags about their senior head-man who sits on a gold-plated seat. They brag that they are related to him and swear that they are his grandchildren. Even people who are six hundred moons older than the senior head-man will say, he is the father of their fathers.

Senior, it sounds like Yesu Christus Emmanuel’s mother who is in fact His daughter and this, the too known Katolico brethren composed an asore jama song which goes like this, “maiden yet a mother, daughter of the Son.” This too, is that their matter?

Senior, it happened that every father or mother will like to see their children grow gloriously. So, the most important thing is that they will send them to school, compulsory by force. You can see children being dragged on the ground and disposed of, into the hands of class teachers. While the crying and wailing children will be cursing their parents inside their head inside, adding that, they did not ask to be born, and in fact if they knew that this was how the world was going to be, they would not have stepped out of their mothers’ wombs, the angry and confused parents will openly say, “you will grow and come and thank me.”

Senior, well meaning parents will, sell all valuables they have, or look for some sure banker to win a windfall, the direct opposite of waterfall, so that they can get enough money to pay the children’s skuul fees. Some, in order to save money, they will fast by fire by force and when you ask them, they will say they are practicing for Lent or they are practicing for Ramadan.

Senior, in that third-storey skuul in this hamlet called Kill-Under or Kum-Asie, there are together and all together, some five hundred strong grown-up boys and girls who have struggled through from day nursing, through to premier league one-storey skuuling and making the final bend at second-storey skuuling before landing in the third-storey skuul block, completely out of breath.

Senior, they say, finish hard and so some parents who are now glad that their pikins who they had to drag on the ground to skuul and dispose of them into teachers’ hands have now made it to the top and soon and very soon, they will also become some body in society.

Senior, such deep thinking parents went around selling their last; some went to collect loans and some even sold themselves into slavery all to get enough money to make their children finish hard and finish well. After gathering the monies, they gave them to their grown-up children to go and pay skuul lampoo.

Senior, some children who were now well-stocked with money, decided not to see the tax collector’s office let alone to pay their lampo. Some started envying Hajia Fati and used the money to put some chop-bar business on the skuul compass. Others set up tire doctor clinics as in vulcanizer outlets; while others set up car fitness centers, what people who never enjoy Free SHS some will call fitting shops.

Senior, others bought equipment, like hand mowers to start cut, cutpeople’s hair. While the girl old-child, will go for iron combs and hot water machines to suffocate lice to death in ladies’ hair before designing it for fashion parade.

Senior, some even started tro-tro business and in fact even though the Kill-Under third-storey skuul was constructed to teach fitters how to fit, sooner than later, Kejetia business centre was annexed in the school.

Senior, the chalk and blackboard practitioners in the skuul have grown wild, because every pay-day goes dry with nothing falling down like manna. They went to a shrine near Antoa and were told that the reason why their pay-days pass without manna dropping was because some bad boys and girls in the skuul have decided not to go near the skuul’s tax collector’s office.

Senior, as it now, as I am writing, a list of four hundred fifty-two boys and girls have been compiled and the owners of the names on the list have been asked to do compulsory exodus from the bondage of third-storey skuul to the Promise Land of their homes where their disappointed parents have promised to show them, the moon inside they plant corn and the month inside they harvest pepper.

Senior, in my opinion, the parents are to blame. During their children’s outdooring they prayed that they should grow to be rich and wealthy, and if they have started on that path to make it in life and have borrowed their own skuul fees to start business, their parents say what? It is the bottom that rules in favour of the means.

Senior, I am Dan, sorry I am Done.

It’s Me!

 

 

 

 

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