No Country for Young Men

Joseph hit the sidewalk and proceeded straight on for a few meters before suddenly turning left and scurrying across the busy highway at a zebra crossing.

The sweltering sun had everything that moved cursing. It was a quarter to ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning. Plastic bags flew as they pleased and some got entangled on aerial electricity wires and others on the vandalized telephone wires that now served the purpose of cloth lines in various city homes.

Rushing to the city railway station’s booking office to pick his luggage, he thanked himself for having conceded to the idea of early booking. Had he not gone that way, no doubt he could have been terribly inconvenienced as were the men and women at the station, and from whose mouths emanated a barrage of insults for the ticket clerks who the snaking queue notwithstanding, occasionally took their sweet time off their desks to chat with a passing by village mate or tribesman and have an unnecessary snack bite.

At some point in the overcrowded train where grown up men and women secretly fouled the air, a heated argument ensued between two young men and had it not been for other passengers to intervene, they surely would have come to blows. The year was 1991 and the radicals for change on the country’s political chessboard had began though reluctantly, to show their teeth and willingness to bite. The apple of discord between the two men emanated from the impending general elections.

Apparently, both worked for rival politicians as footsoldiers and had gone for each other’s jugular immediately they sighted each other. Not the type to walk into a gunfight with a penknife,  Joseph sat savouring every mouthful of a bottle of soda he had brought along for the long journey to yet another job interview out of town. Marvels of Mother Nature rushed by as the wagons rolled awkwardly over the rusty ninety year old railway into a dark tunnel. He remembered his last interview and how sour it had gone after the interviewer—a dark stocky man and rotund like a yam grown on sewage—blatantly asked him what does a man do with a fellow man’s bottom! He got the message and left in a huff.

He remembered how one of his friends had been chased away from an army recruitment exercise even though he was the most qualified of all the youths who turned up to try their luck. The recruiting officers had cited a crooked tooth as the reason for shattering a young man’s dreams. But in reality, the unfortunate young man was just too poor to buy himself a government job he was more than qualified to execute.

Recently in the media, there had been an incident where a young man presented himself before a police station and requested to be jailed because he was educated yet dirt poor and could barely afford a meal. If anything, he was state’s liability and in jail, he was sure of a meal, however lousy. 

But just where did we go wrong? Many vouched for education for poverty eradication but was it really working? Was it true that education had failed the country and by extension the continent of Africa? Inasmuch as everyone wanted to deny it and feign ignorance, it was right there, in front of all eyes to see that the streets were prowling with exasperated and desperate graduates, willing to do anything to be useful to themselves and look successful to a society that glorifies wealth—ill gotten or genuine.

Crime was at an unacceptable level in the country. Going out in the morning and coming back in the evening in one piece to your family was not guaranteed. What with all the knife-wielding young thugs in the streets who couldn’t hesitate to cut open your throat as they relieve you of your hard-earned valuables? With most young people obsessed with ‘celebrities’—sometimes people of questionable character—who were only eager to show off their expensive fleet of cars but less interested in talking about how they make their money, it was not very hard to see what was ailing the society.

Things were just bad. Police guns had fodder glut and a priest was quoted saying that soon, there shall be no country for young men. There was complete lack of synergy between the ruling political class and the majority youthful citizenry because of a generational gap that made it impossible for it to identify with the real issues of their time. And the worst part of it all was that you couldn’t vote the octogenarians out of power—they had, over the years of dispensing ignorance to the masses, gained an inexplicable thick skin of money to bribe their way through to the top.

What was the use in belting out blasphemous praise songs for politicians all the way to the secret ballot, if all you will ever get in return is a bribe that can barely fetch two bottles of a decent malt drink at the local pub? A vocal politician had recently escaped lynching by the skin of his teeth when he told a rally of youths that they cannot forever wait on the government to rescue them from poverty—it might be too engrossed in building a record-breaking skyscraper to notice them sink and perish. A month later, police were called into a palatial home in the capital, where they found the politician slouched in an Italian leather couch with a bullet hole in his head and a note written in stencil in his hand. His large television set was still transmitting life-like images from a VCR and the fan on the ceiling was still on a furious rotation. On the mahogany coffee table next to him, was a cold bottle of barely drank exotic beer and a cigar was still burning on a diamond-encrusted ash tray. Apparently, as usual, nobody saw anything.

Together with some other neighborhood youths, Joseph had once written a business plan and approached their member of parliament at a social function for a small loan to start them off, only to be roughed up by his handlers. The MP immediately got into his monster car which of course had to have dark tinted windows lest some disgruntled, unemployed hungry youth assassinates him and sped off, leaving a cloud of dust behind. Someone had later on remarked bitterly that these politicians only look good in the media—you dare meet them face to face and you will surely know the stuff they are made of. 

His late mother had once told him that there are hundreds of doors and windows of opportunities around him—it was only a matter of him wanting to see them. Could she have been wrong? Where were these opportunities when nobody seemed interested in giving him a chance to find them? A couple of his friends had left the country, hoping to find a better life in the Diaspora. Some got lucky; others died in their struggle, and were flown back home in coffins to their shattered families. Those who tried local entrepreneurship soon got disillusioned when the local governments brought bulldozers to crush their small kiosks and lending financial institutions openly displayed a lack of interest in embracing them.

As the train wriggled and raced, Joseph wondered why there were so many scars blinding his and other youth’s time. The government, in total disregard of his unemployment status, was now on his neck, demanding that he repays his university loan which was attracting an outrageous penalty besides the interest for every month it went unpaid. His pastor had urged him to keep his faith in God; that one day things will look up. Sinking deeper into debt with every other sunrise, he now wished the pastor could have told him where to find this God.

But not everybody was complaining. He knew of several young people who lived well and yet, they were not known to be employed anywhere. But most of these people were extremely mean, and would rather die than share where to find this cash cow. He recalled an instance where a former classmate had bragged about his making ten thousand shillings daily, writing on the internet. But that discussion ended there as the well off guy became dodgy on divulging any further details and bid him a sudden goodbye, when Joseph became frank about his sorry situation and requested to be introduced to these online writing jobs he had heard so much about before.

Clearly, to a larger extent, the youths had proved their own worst enemy. Why be mean with good ideas that could also benefit another poor youth? What good does it make to brag to people living hard; people who at the edge of the precipice and doldrums of despondency might turn on you and make you yet another statistic of a violent crime?

Looking at his numerous certificates, Joseph felt tears sting his eyes—hidden tears of economic disability that equally drenched many others in the streets, resulting in quarrelsome souls of hunger, broken families and deserted homes. He remembered the last time he had visited his mother’s grave and saw his fading surname on the large weather-beaten crucifix. Many years back, he had been a child, but his eyes had not been. And now with the imminent possibility of failure, it pained him to come to grips with the fact that his mother could have died for absolutely nothing.

Disembarking from the train with his small luggage tightly held in his arms, Joseph felt optimistic again. Regardless of how tough and gruesome the fight was to get, he was determined to remain of good cheer and be a man. He knew that everybody had a destiny and a connector that leads to it. The magic moment that makes all the difference only comes from how well positioned and alert one is to meet and instantly recognize this connector. Actually, you never know who is watching. . . . Pain and suffering is only for a while, but as long as he prayed and tried, he shall overcome, or so he thought.