By Ivan Mahimbi – Wanazuoni Wetu
Scene: A dusty street corner, somewhere in the heart of Africa.
The sun is tired. The air holds the heat of unspoken anger. People pass by, watching quietly as an unusual debate begins...
Scholar (booming with pride):
Look at me from head to toe! These shoes—made in Thailand. This suit? Straight from Italy! The underwear hugging my scholarly body—American. If you steal my body, you steal the world.
My head? It carries degrees like trophies—bachelor, master's, and PhDs that make even thesis pages shiver.
Memeee! Memeee! I am a scholar of this land, a lion in the jungle of minds.
Go ahead, Google my name and let the screen of your computer kneel at my CV!
(Enter Drunkard, staggering, eyes red with rage and confusion.)
Drunkard (pointing and wobbling):
I've seen you! I’ve seen your pride grow fat. I hold you in contempt and release you with pity. Fool!
Puuuuh! (He falls.)
Scholar:
What do you want, you poor excuse of a man? You’ve drunk your future and now lie beneath my feet.
Drunkard (laughs bitterly):
Why not be poor? You teachers, you scholars—you're the ones who gave us this poverty. Check my pocket. Not even sugar money lives there.
Scholar (mocking):
And yet here you are, near a giant like me, barking like a street dog. Go waste your voice on a scarecrow.
Drunkard (voice cracks):
I sold maize, milked cows, planted dreams—twenty years of sweat to pay school fees. And now?
My son graduates and becomes a thief. A thief! From a family that never knew crime.
Scholar (smirks):
Your child was born foolish. Why blame me for genetics?
Drunkard:
Is that so? Then why did you fail to cure his ignorance?
Scholar:
I showed up every day. Check the records. The fault lies in your blood, not my blackboard.
Drunkard (furious):
Even preachers go to church, yet evil still walks. You enter class, vomit knowledge “Pwaaaaah!”, leave the mess, and exit proudly.
(He staggers like a child learning to walk, falls to his knees, and cries.)
Drunkard (weeping):
Why do you teach things that help no one? Lessons you swallowed from foreign books, digested, and dumped into toilets. Useless, borrowed knowledge.
You’re lazy. Thieves of truth. You copy and paste from the internet like robots, no reflection, no relevance. Wait till the community wakes up! You’ll eat grass!
Scholar (angry):
Look at me, top to bottom! I wear brilliance like armor. You sing tragic songs while I shine. When will you understand what school really means?
Drunkard (defiant):
Ah, now I get it. Education is for you, not us. You won’t get another coin from me to build your precious university toilets. You excrete, you pay.
Scholar (offended):
Take your monkey money to your village schools. We use Western-style sitting toilets, mind you.
Drunkard (laughs hysterically):
Whether sitting or lying down, you still have to push! We’re all the same at the end.
Scholar:
Why am I wasting brain cells on you?
Drunkard (teasing):
You scared of me now? Say something, baby scholar!
Scholar:
Do you even know Bertrand Russell? Nietzsche? Socrates? Confucius? These are giants! I stand with them!
Drunkard:
And what did they do for me? I have my own philosopher—this bottle!
You write exams harder than stone, yet teach no skills. Only "According to this... According to that..."—do you ever say what you believe?
Scholar (defensive):
I’ve seen thousands of students.
Drunkard:
Including my thief son?
Scholar:
No! Your neighbor's son works at the presidential office. He was my student.
Drunkard:
Because his father is a ruling party boss! So your success is my failure?
Scholar:
So your son is a thief because you are a drunkard?
Drunkard:
Then how did my second son—humble and clean—become a soldier in a school with no sitting toilets?
Scholar:
Because the army uses strength, not brains.
Drunkard:
So... my thief son is also “intelligent” in stealing? Thanks to you, teacher?
Scholar (furious, slaps him):
Enough! I will not argue with you anymore!
(He slaps again. The drunkard stumbles but keeps laughing through tears.)
Drunkard (muttering):
You aren’t a scholar. You hate questions. You wear perfume to seduce students. Your body is rotting inside.
You quote dead men. But Lao Tzu said—If you're depressed, you're living in the past. If you're anxious, you're living in the future. If you're at peace, you're living in the present.
And you, scholar, are trapped in the pa-pa-pa-past.
(As the drunkard speaks louder, the scholar walks away fast, ashamed, hiding from the crowd gathering.)
Final Thoughts
Some say the drunkard was a madman.
Others say he was a prophet in disguise.
But everyone agrees: That day, the street became a classroom... and truth, however bitter, was finally spoken.
👉 What do YOU think, dear reader?
Was the scholar right? Or did the drunkard expose the rot in our education system?
Drop your comment below. Let’s talk.
Post a Comment