The lyrics of the legendary Fela’s song rings loud in my ears as I speak to one subscriber after the other.
I get to work one morning, singing to myself, high from some touch of God. The conditions have been changed, the hours are longer. My target is higher, but my pay remains the same. I want to protest, I want to scream unfairness but I am afraid or as they say in my country’s language, I don’t have the liver. So I keep quiet and get on with the day’s job.
There is a guy working beside me, after every call, he swears, he curses, “I’m getting out of here, I can’t take this crap anymore. I have been here for too long.” I smile to myself remembering him, he said the same thing a year ago. Like me, he too does not have the liver.
I spent over an hour in traffic this morning, same old cause, bad roads, that road had actually been fixed a few months ago, today its gone back to the same condition, no body is going to say or do anything, the contractors have men in high places who would defend them, so much money was passed around, every one had a hand it . The people who didn’t, the few people who still have integrity, have no liver to protest.
Now I understand why my country is like this, why there is so much corruption, why we can't have 24 hrs electricity, why there is no security(my brother in law was the other day harassed by social miscreants-what a nice name- he got away and ran to the nearest police station, they asked him to go fetch the miscreants for them to deal with. yes that’s what the police told him),and why there are so many air accidents.
At work, we hurdle together, all of us complaining about how terrible the system has become, how the company was a better place three years ago. Ninety percent of us here hate it here but we are still here smiling believing that one day we will wake up and everything will be fine. At home we sit in front of our TV sets and complain about our government, but complain is all we do and nothing changes.
When I was 22,I quit a job because my boss told me I didn’t have a choice but to do what he asked and so I showed him that I did, That was many years ago, I was young, I believed in myself, I was a non-conformist, I had my principles and I lived strictly by them. You don’t like crap, you don’t take crap. If my boss asks me to cut out one of my hands today, I probably would, after all I would still be able to work for him with one hand. I miss being 22.
I probably should quit but how many options do I have, who would pay my bills? I can leave the country, and go scrub floors, no thank you, I would rather be a slave in my own country. Funny when I was 22. I had fewer options than I do now, so why can’t I just leave? why do I stay on to take the licking here and keep on taking it. Like many others ,I simply have no liver.
