SIR Toyin:
The humor is great, as our people (or kith and kin) back on the African continent need a lot of humor everywhere to survive the prevailing economic crunch and political indecisions they face each blessed day. The cover of the upcoming book by our brilliant Brother Obadare (Ebenezer) is a real act for comic relief, as it clearly shows a former Nigerian leader holding a noose, instead of a gas pump, where gas is inscribed! Na waa oo!
Interestingly, I was in Ghana for 7 days in mid-December 2015, where a lot of humor helped me to appreciate some obvious economic challenges facing the middle and lower classes of the Ghanaian society. With some basic stuff available for one's comfort (if one can afford it), including some first class (or 4-star) foreign-owned and locally-owned hotels, the erratic public electricity supply situation -- dubbed "DUMSOR" -- was in full swing, even at McCarthy Hill, an affluent suburb in the capital (Accra), where my young American-born son and I had to "sweat it out" all night: with the electricity supply, for the cooling system, cut off for hours until the following morning.
In the midst of some tough economic challenges, there was a humorous mathematical joke floating around in Ghana: that an elderly man passed by the window of his neighbor and heard the youngster in the neighbor's house being coached in mathematics by a paid private tutor. He was asked by the tutor the answer for "1+1". He said it was "4". When the elderly man (who belonged to the local political opposition) heard the wrong answer, he still assumed it was either correct under Ghana's economic situation. Therefore, he started telling friends that there has been so much increase on everything under President John Mahama's government that even "1+1" is now "4" (no longer "2")! As my venerable former Nigerian landlord (Baba Ijebu) would have said: "Na every blame and wahala go to the government of the day!"
As VC Aluko would say: There you have it!
A.B. Assensoh (recently back from Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah's Adehyeman Ghana).
Sent: Thursday, January 7, 2016 6:37 PM
To: dialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Humor and Politics
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