Tales of the Hills

Fellow sons and daughters of the hills, the pessimists and naysayers, Lorot Son of the Hills has a beef with our world. It is a grudge which mountains can’t lift. Nay, bulldozers can’t dig them out.

Let us raise queries. Let’s interrogate them and find meaning and contradictions in this twisted world.
You go to school, pass exams and are promised good life. You are the smartest brain the village can offer. In other words, your brain has passed the test of the hills. And when you finish school, you walk into the world with the confidence of a seasoned wrestler.

Then you are shocked. You are given a rude awakening. The folklore of the hills that you have been fed with get turned upside down. It is a scary kaleidoscope.

You passed with A’s and flying colours. Outside there, your A’s are a fraud, a cover-up, a deceit. Your theories, platitudes, philosophies and tales of foreign hills and dead men stop counting. The dumb rule the world. The slowest fools rule you. The dimwits call the shots. They make money, they make it big and as for you, a know-it-all, you theorize and get buried in papers and live like a pauper. The only difference between you and that beggar collecting coins on flyovers and corridors of the city is this: He is dressed in wounds, soliciting real coins. You are still a beggar nonetheless thinking of soliciting big money but trapped in self-deceit and pseudo-wealth.

That is why you are still broke. A graduate in perpetual want of money, can’t see money can’t hear money can’t speak money. Your chap who finished in Class 7 is doing well in his business and manages a potbelly and a harem.

That is why your own professor keeps talking by the wayside chanting some mathematical formula and escaping the Landlord.

That is why your heart craves for fun and everything that this world can offer but due to fiscal constraints your pockets have caught flu. So your heart wishes this lakini namna hauna, Muungwana. Your pockets have been ‘Onyanchalised’.

That is why you are unreal. In the unreality of your unrealism is a thin veneer of inflated ego and convoluted information that have sealed you off from reality. I know I am annoying you, the elite, but I have no apologies. The Echoes of the Hills are no respecter of persons. And when the Hills have spoken, who are we, the lesser mortals, to unspeak them?