THE GOOD OLD DAYS

THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Once again I'm forced to remember the richness of my past, a reality that, unfortunately is lost upon this generation. As a child I was drawn to the vast libraries of my uncles, filled with authors like Ian Fleming, Dilibe Onyeama and Sidney Sheldon.

 Nights without power were spent listening to mum's tales or dad's 'School of life' anecdotes. We grew up watching Sesame Street and Kidivision 101. We read Othello for fun and kicked footballs for lunch. We played checkers, chess, ludo, "whot", ayo and table soccer. The streets were our 100m tracks and the neighbourhood parking lot was our Wembley stadium. We went camping, killed snakes, raised pigeons, caught electric fish and marched on national holidays. We were Scouts, Brigadiers, Guides, school parents and super cyclists!
We knew our history, and were familiar with Mansa Musa, Shaka, Jaja and Kosoko. The blood of a thousand empires flowed through our veins.
We bought birthday cards....and if we couldn't afford them, we made them ourselves.
We cooked and cleaned, while Fela informed us that Water had no enemies and Majek was fleeing rainstorms

Tragically, the flood of information has watered down our ability to communicate, reducing the context of our conversations to abbreviations, emoticons and a jumble of letters. Nowadays we type 'HBD' for an annual event because typing the whole thing takes too much work.
Our grammer is atrocious, the musical hits of our time plumb new depths of mediocrity as each song is merely a celebration of ill gotten wealth or sensual prowess.
We are ignorant of our history and commit the greater sin of not wanting to learn. Our social lives are restricted to the sizes of our information devices, loved ones and friends reduced to mere contacts on a screen, greeted with the perfunctory 'lol' or the annoying 'kk'.
We seem to have traded the richness of life for the opportunity to hustle, and like Judas, given away what we were for what we are ashamed to be.
written by Jeremy Chaba
https://www.facebook.com/jeremy.chaba?fref=ts