Inspired (in part) by Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist.
Definitions:
Suck it: Yeah, yeah … and by the way, yo’ mama …
Banyakyalo: Anyone imprisoned by the deception that milking a cow is magical.
If you are a city-born African reading this, you’ve probably heard it before.
“Shame! You’ve never known the beauty of tilling a field and growing your own food? Shame!”
Or
“Ah, how I long for the days when we shot birds with catapults and over an open fire roasted its succulent flesh.”
Or
“How wide the fields were! How wonderful the nights slept under the stars. How aromatic the smell of fresh cow dung. How beautifully terrifying it was to search your way through the dark to the pit latrine out back. How magical the hours spent telling stories by the fire. How glorious …”
Yeah?
I’ve never done those things. So suck it banyakyalo.
I’m glad I was born and bred in the city with its pollution, culture-that-is-no-culture, burglaries, noise, dust, slums, mansions, high walls, no walls, pesticide-filled apples from South Africa, pizza deliveries, 24-hour supermarkets, imported milk from Thailand, garbage, road rage, telephones, books, air-headed celebrities, tapped water, banal TV programs …
And so are you.
