The Village That Lost Its Cool!

[This is faction -a story with a mixture of fiction and facts.]


Many, many years ago, there was once a village in a sub-Saharan country. It was a peaceful village where everyone knew each other and they all lived modestly. No one thought of outclassing the other as if life was a competition, though some still occasionally grew envious whenever their neighbor had a better harvest, or their children scored lower at school compared to their neighbors. It was a close knit community where everyone was their brother’s keeper.

The village was surrounded by hills and had a couple of lovely waterfalls. The entrance to the village and general landscape was beautiful and serene, it reminded visitors of the garden of Eden, with evergreen trees scattered everywhere. The popular Adanre River was the major source of water for the village and it was known in the entire region as a mystical source of wealth and virility. It took its source from one of the mountains and drained into the River Niger.

In this village, land was cheap and freely available and most of the villagers were farmers. The village was also known abroad for its skillful and booming ‘Adire’ tie and dye industry, and it contributed to the wealth of the village. There were also a sizable number of artisans who made their living repairing the community bicycles, transistor radios, furniture and so on. However, a few villagers made extra money when tourists came around to visit the centuries-old rocks, hills and waterfalls as old as Methuselah.

They had a market and every ten days people from neighboring communities would come to trade with their farmers and Adire sellers on the market day. They used a trade-by-barter system but also had cowries for money. They were very industrious and welcoming. Most of the items the traders sold had only a little margin of profit on them but they were a contented bunch.

The village was as innocent as its people and they lived too modestly for their prosperous status.  They were a clean, agile and healthy people both mentally and physically, and rarely had outbreaks of disease or infections. You could hardly find a mentally challenged person as they were a community of peaceful and easy going families who did not abuse hard drugs, or their neighbors.

Then one faithful year, some of the tourists brought with them bottles of European distilled spirit and encouraged the village head to buy and sell to his subjects in order to be extremely rich. They told him they will take him to their land and build him houses there. They also brought some dark-colored sugar drinks in glass bottles and said they were refreshing drinks that will quench their thirst and make them a healthier, stronger people. Some others also introduced cocaine to some youths and told them that they will feel high and cool if they took it.

Moreover, the visitors presented themselves as all-knowing and came with big books which swayed the villagers who were convinced that this ‘Oyinbo’ people knew more and meant well. The visitors also told them that there was gold, crude and other precious minerals underneath their land that will make them rich overnight, if they were only allowed to help them in excavating it. They were told that all they needed to do was exchange their modest lifestyle for the more civilized one the visitors lived and brought, and also drop their culture and language in favor of the civilized one. They will now work less, but be richer than ever!

The villagers now wanted to outdo one another in who adopted the new Oyinbo ways better- “Who wore it best?”, “Who drove the most expensive vehicle?”, “Who was no longer (looking like) a villager?” They wanted to look really cool and acceptable to the civilized visitors. Very soon, they started selling their lands, giving their children away as servants to learn the new ways, and many others started to cheat their customers in order to make enough money to buy the products that the tourists advertised to them. They wanted gadgets that could walk and talk at the same time, they wanted clothes that shone brighter and lasted longer than their age-old Adire, and they ditched their ‘Adanre river water’ for sterilized ‘Pure water’, and even drank the colored sugar water more frequently.

Thereby, the village lost its cool. Some of their youths ran mad due to hard drugs, while others started carrying knifes and other weapon about in order to be cool and gangster like their models in the tube. Some men killed for money rituals, while the few servants that cared to return with western education were worshiped and made community leaders for the fact. Farmers no longer wanted to till the Earth, but wanted blue and white collar jobs as miners digging the ground for mineral resources that will make them rich overnight. The Oyinbo tourist also sold them a new religion that will make them more acceptable globally, no longer the pagans they once were, thereby making their village become a ‘God-given city’.

Eventually, the land became polluted physically and the people corrupted mentally. They became what they wanted- Civilized villagers. But they remained villagers trying to please the white man. 

(And unfortunately, are yet to be accepted by the visitors as being civilized even though they continue to behave like them and strive to be better than the Oyinbo man at his ways).

Moral: Beware of the peddler who tells you to buy his ‘Get-rich-quick’ wares because it has the power to make the buyer rich overnight...yet he is not rich himself. Always remember one thing- if one of you will be rich from the advertised wares, it won’t be you!

The key to great wealth is contentment!

I saw this on some blog, “There is a saying in the...world that “you can mine for gold or you can sell pickaxes.” This is of course an allusion to the California Gold Rush where some of the most successful business people such as Levi Strauss and Samuel Brannan didn’t mine for gold themselves but instead sold supplies to miners – wheelbarrows, tents, jeans, pickaxes, etc. Mining for gold was the more glamorous path but actually turned out, in aggregate, to be a worse return on capital and labor than selling supplies.”