Words To Elate Series

Unable to tell where you are going? You could be heading into a gold mine and strike it rich or you could be walking on the ruins of an ancient lost city , you become a discoverer. Likewise you could be also walking straight into the mouth of a lion's den, and easily get devoured by the fierce beast, never to be heard of or from again. Whatever it is that motivates people to travel into the unknown territories, to sail across uncharted waters or dive deep into a dark cave, that I do not know neither does anyone else, for the public believes they are bored fellows who are tired of living and have gone out to throw away their lives in the wilderness, only those who take the risks understand what they are doing and what exactly they want from it, whether they are going to succeed or not, only time will tell.

I walked into an auditorium to find a group of artist perform, "la danse des sauvages," or simply the dance of the savages, with a dozen few people watching them from the benches, I asked for what purpose were they doing it for, was it a performance of sorts? When a director replied instantly claiming that he wanted to show the world how savage we are, any form of entertainment that promotes violence, encourages civil disobedience and harden people's hearts is savage, however peacefully it may be presented, what matters most is the outcome.

I never had any poor image of myself since childhood till when others made me think so lowly of myself, it begins as a simple comment, a playful tease which turns into a contemplation and later becomes a belief, then slowly becomes a reality. A feeling of uneasiness begins to crouch into the mind, some of such thoughts do rise deep from oneself, however, most are ideas of external origin, beliefs put into them by others who despise them, it therefore depends on one's own ability to wade off these invading notions. Whether they stand their ground and defend their confidence or simply give up and succumb to them is in a person's inner choice & interest.

Big Valchi suddenly has something in mind that he thinks he should get down onto paper, he scrambles for a scratchpad, unfortunately he finds none, what's available on sight is only a tattered old piece of scroll turned brown from aging, he finds a pen, he scribbles a few words with it, when it quickly runs out of ink, he hurriedly tries to put his table in order as he thinks out these words, "there's an interesting story I have just remembered, somebody get me my quill as quickly as possible before I forget," he painfully had to pluck off a piece of feather from his left wing, he then turns sideways, he looks right and left, "WHERE IS MY INKPOT?" he exclaims.

When the judiciary fails to deliver justice and turns a blind eye to the trouble in the streets, it's the time for the ordinary folks to convince them to do something, "we see people wasting away, we are losing lives, social structures have lost their steering and direction, even a police station is not a safe place to hide anymore," says a young activist lawyer to the supreme court judge, "all this is happening right under your nose while you sit right there on your high throne-like chair doing nothing as if you were a supreme being, wouldn’t you at least say something your highness? you won't then let me speak, there is something you need to hear."

The world is full of fakes, fake music, fake maps, fake clocks, fake passion, fake everything. You have to figure out for yourself which is legit and which is not. However there are those things that start out as poor samples of an existing one, then later go on to improve, to surpass the brilliance of the already existing ones. To great advantage of the public, the good news is that all humans have an inborn ability to detect falsehood, to distinguish truth from lies, and quality form error, when you see someone or something that’s fake, you will just know it from the start, even a small baby knows who is of their family and who is not, when you put them into the hands of somebody else then they wail out loudly because they know they are in the wrong hands, pick your grocery basket and let us begin to separate apples from oranges.

"I have seen people swarm around you like bees on a honeycomb", says martin to his old friend Jimmy, "what is it that you give them, which makes them like you so much? There certainly must be something interesting they are getting from you, can I get a piece of that too? Please tell me something funny, it could be anything, a story, a joke, a riddle, a phrase, just anything," pleads martin with now reluctant Jimmy, "all right then", replies the latter, just remember that I am no Comedian, hold your ears wide open, and be ready to laugh at anything I do or say, deal or no deal?" "yeah you have that one, it’s a deal of course replies Martin, "Now let's head to Feverrland." **NB** THIS IS NOT A BOOK OF JOKES!

A deer, and a moose are eating forage from underneath ice on a snow-capped mountains, with this simple form of food, it grows larger, stronger and fattens really fast, the bears and wolves then come in trying to prey on the deer's young, or if possible the deer itself. Why does it have to wait for the dear to finish up the grass before it swallows them whole? Why can't it just chew the fodder directly? When lion king misses or fails to catch his meal he simply eats grass like a buffalo, he then grows stronger and gets to live longer.

A young couple turns their backyard into a dumpsite, they dig a hole in their compound upon which they dump both organic and inorganic waste, "we are many kilometers away from the city so we don’t have to pay for expensive truck lifting," they say unto one another, they come here on a weekly basis to perform their routine dumping, then proceeded to set the litter on fire, with time, the dumpsite grew larger, bigger than the size of their house, the rains that fell heavily on it made the garbage dump and became a breeding ground for all kinds of worms, stench from the decay of organic matter was also very strong, the winds blew it in from the back, staying in the house was unbearable, then came a time and season when the blue and green flies went to visit the family's dining room, they found them enjoying a worm meal of pork and oats and demanded their share of the food, they made sure they had fully dipped their three pairs of legs into the soup and rolled their bodies onto the crumbs, soon the family becomes ill from unknown disease, one child's situation was so critical that he had to be hospitalized. When a pediatrician visited their home to assess the situation, at the very first sight of the house compound, he knew what was amiss, he then turned to the owners and said this to them, "you have got to sweep thy planet."

How exactly should you feel like when you find yourself ill in an hospital or home bed, sometimes you are left alone or get overwhelmed by the large number of visitors that flow in and out of the room, should you battle it out all by yourself or should you try to forget that you are ill, the way others try to put it, of course you can't forget your current pain, a few old friends come in and try to comfort you, some do it well while others add salt to the injury, then an experienced physician walks in, he sees the uneasiness in your face and finds your hands stretching out to a glass cup which is far out of reach, he places the cup in your hands with a pair of tablets and gently folds your hands back to place, and in a low tone, says, "be patient please,"

A lumberjack sits outside his log cabin, full of grief and resentment, he weeps bitterly, he laments the loss of his recently wed beauty queen who walked out a few days ago and left him in the woods, the vivid memory of that day fills his heart with bitterness, he knows not what to say nor what to do, in his solitude he tries to figure out whom to blame, "could It be those nasty friends of hers that talked her out, or could she have been snatched off by his rivals?" He contemplates for a very long time, and comes up with thousands of meaningless explanations and ways to bring her back. At last, he reminds himself that no matter what he does, Birdie is not coming back home, she is gone forever... A guy and a lady were enjoying their first date when the lady suddenly clenched her fists saying, ''I am a strong and independent woman, don’t trash talk me please,'' this act came out of the blue and caught the guy completely by surprise. He almost choked himself with food as he responded, ''yes, I know you are a strong and independent woman, you don’t have to remind me that, and besides, why are you clenching your fists? Are you eager for a fight? Some aspects of feminism have really messed up with the heads of some women and it appears that it is really affecting their love life. It's becoming a lot more difficult for young men to find a loved one these days. Nearly all the young women of marriageable age are showing outright aggressive behavior even on their first date. It's so difficult to mend a relationship where both partners are aggressively pursuing their own selfish interests all the time. There are lots of people out there who claim to be experts in love and relationships. Some folks who pay them a visit often give them suggestions saying, ''please don’t lecture me on how to best relate with my spouse, bring her back if you can, just talk to her and make her return to me. I did not violate her in any way, that I swear, please go and bring her home to me, for I am growing desperate. I have heard so much advice from the so-called love doctors and their recommendations aren't doing me any good. All I want is to see my sweetheart back at home with me, it’s the only thing that will truly calm down my mind and warm my heart.'' says the ditched man. A lot of ladies nowadays go into relationships as if they are going into a fierce fight. Thanks to the emancipation progress of women, they always come armed to the tooth, with every fashionable weapon they can reach, they use everything at their disposal to get onto the guys' nerves and put them to the test. Romantic love and relationships, however, were supposed to be something enjoyed by both partners, not a boxing ring where the other partner wants nothing less than a knockout blow.

When someone shows off their wealth by adorning their bodies with jewels, driving flashy cars and going on expensive vacations, it sends one message, this fellow is not really rich, he may be owning only a few homes, and therefore tries to show off to his other neighbors that he is equally rich just as they are by weighing down his body with shiny jewels, if he was really rich, he won't be showing off this way, really rich fellows never put their wealth to the display, in fact they try to hide it from others, secondly he could be a custodian, a steward in possession of someone's else wealth, he tries to make the most of it before the true owner returns, or thirdly he is buying time with his recently acquired wealth, he struck it rich so quickly and profited so immensely that the experience overwhelms him, he simply doesn’t know where to start or what to do, that’s why he stretches his hands into his money bag pulls out a bundle of notes and throws it into the air flying in all directions. This is his way of celebrating success.

Messengers are known to have been attacked for delivering bad news to their bosses and everyday reporters get attacked in their line of duty when gathering newsworthy pieces of information on behalf of the general public. Journalism is the only profession in the whole world where the primary job of the employees is to dig up dirt on others. Well nobody likes being publicly exposed however nice a person they are by nature, when something unfavorable about them gets aired they are naturally inclined to retaliate, which could mean causing harm to the people that dug up dirt on them in the first place. The downside of journalism is that a lot of news the reporters gather is always negative. When you turn on your TV to listen to the evening news, you are bombarded by an endless stream of bad news, so much misery and negativity is what fills the lives of these reporters. Some of those folks' lives completely changed once they became news anchors. And for this same reason, most news anchors begin their careers as very happy and cheerful fellows but unfortunately retire very dull and gloomy. The negative and heart-wrenching stories they have been airing for decades really get onto them and start to affect their way of thinking. It affects the way they see the people around them and the world in general. The first people to notice these changes are the family members of those journalists. They come to realize that something inside their loved ones started to change from the moment they became journalists, be it either field correspondents, news anchors, or investigative journalists. We are surrounded by a world filled with news of all kinds, the modern-day technologies bombard you with so much news in which you find it hard to distinguish facts from fiction. The word ''Fake News'' is not a Trump's invention. In fact many years before his coming into office, there was a growing mistrust by viewers towards the mainstream media, because some of the stories they aired turned out to be outright lies. His words only ignited the rage and dissatisfaction that had been boiling in the public's hearts for many years. He touched an inflamed nerve and that was enough to bring forth what we now call ''Fake News Global Phenomenon''. Lying even for once is enough to damage the reputation of your media house. Even if you delivered a thousand accurate news and told just a single lie, that is all viewers need to turn away from you. Now with the emergence of social media, the uncertainty is made even worse, anyone can post anything on social media and call it news. It's a more volatile and dangerous world out there right now, the world in which the current generation is growing up is totally different from what the millennials and those previous generations grew up in. it’s a wild world out on the internet there, everyone, therefore, has to be careful with what they read or listen to. Because no one can really be trusted with news. Bolton is paranoid about the media, he tries to make sense of what it really is, how it functions, its purpose, aims and goals in society, and how it has influenced him over the past decades, although he is very scared of finding himself in the media spotlight someday, at the same time he discovers a hidden edge, an important value the world owes the media.

Darwin gathers his large ape family to tell them a tale, the ascent of man is retold once more in the eyes of the apes, he teaches them many tricks which they can use to outwit man and remove him from his current place of dominion, "they can't do anything without their witchcraft," he tells them, he even gives them secret plans to cause mayhem in the peoples households."

There is some form of barter trade that goes on behind our backs on a daily basis without us knowing it and still effective as it were many centuries ago. All modern day transactions and commerce systems have some features of barter trade deeply engraved into them, only those who know what they are doing get the best share of the market, while those who hope to be lucky and strike it rich fast end up picking bread crumbs, leftovers from other peoples ventures, would you give away a bag of cereals for a spoonful of salt? Son of merchandise look carefully and learn from it. however awkward and old fashioned it may have seemed to us, our ancestors primitive trade might have been advanced and complex as our modern day commerce.

All languages are beautiful for those that speak them and those that don’t understand, it's just like listening to another pair of gibberish parrots, there is no single person who can speak all the languages. That if it was possible would drive any human mad if they make it halfway, or even a quarter, the diversity of languages is what makes our world more exciting and more beautiful, it gives each person a sense of identity and a group to belong to, it gives each individual a unique view of life, when a village chief is asked by an explorer, "which language do you speak sire?" In reply he says, "I speak the language of the trees," "uh! What language is that?" if the explorer were to ask again, a translator then intervenes to explain to the explorer what the chief actually meant when he said he spoke the language of the trees, he's referring to the tribal languages in the jungle, those in the tropical rain-forest, he understands most of them.

Once someone gets started with their plan or duty, they often move on smoothly at first, a time often comes midway when they begin to see the full scale of the responsibility that lays ahead, and feel the full weight of their duties then begin to think otherwise, they slow down and start contemplating second thoughts about continuing their journey, should they proceed or simply quit and move onto something else? This however doesn’t have to be the case, its high time we toss aside the old ways of doing things and open a new leaf. Churn in more passion and effort to drive our project to completion.

When machines go on strike who can survive? Who will stand in their way when they join forces to get rid of us? We have become so much depended on machinery and technology that we can barely do anything without them. Picture a world without machinery and we have nothing, we are plunged back into the stone age, to a time when we are unable to do anything complex, we were helpless as an infant and always at mercy to the forces of nature . Shouldn't we rethink our building strategies altogether?

Silly kids definitely ask silly questions, "HELLO KING JAMES," is the name of the Sunday school Jimmy and I went to, as you know it children with their never ending curiosity can be very annoying sometimes especially with their nerdy questions. After all you can't blame nor punish them for their ignorance, for being unreasonable and finding difficulties understanding simple matters. Thanks to reverend Walter for his great patience with us, he tried his best to answer our inquiries in the most satisfactory way possible which many other Sunday school teachers failed to do, we asked many questions, learned many stories from the old and new testament, sang many songs, played may games, but there is a list of questions asked by my age mates which I will never forget, they shall stick to my mind, to the very last days of my life because they were either so silly, so hilarious, so thoughtful, even adults asked themselves these questions at some point in their lives I believe.

My son was once called a bright boy, our neighbors told me he is destined for greatness, now he has turned into an evil genius doing things I never imagined he could possibly do, his scientific experiments terrify me, last week I went to the countryside to visit my mother only to come back and find he had dissected all the six new-born puppies, when I asked why he performed such a cruel experiment on my little dogs he claimed that they had an anatomy class where they had been taught all the inner workings of a small being, the supervisor later went ahead and urged them to redo the experiments on their own, they can use whatever small animals they could find around the house such as rats, "are these rats?" I asked angrily, "you have just killed my puppies, you don’t know what you have done." When I tried to punish him for his misdeeds, he threatened to leak radiation into my house.

When running an organization, things go wrong all the time. A lot of managers complain so much about the work they do because every working day of their lives is always a fight for survival. They feel like going to the office every day to try and rescue a sinking ship. Just like seafaring captains, our leaders go through the same kind of struggles every day. Managing a ship, especially a huge tanker or cargo vessel is such an incredible task, first of all, the captain has to make sure all cargo is carefully loaded onto their ship, secondly, they have to meticulously manoeuvre their ships out of the harbor so that it can safely sail into the open waters without sustaining a single scratch on its hull, thirdly they have to constantly watch out for storms when they are deep into treacherous oceans, getting caught up in a storm is a captain's worst nightmare. Mega waves that are high and powerful enough can very easily tear up the ship's hull into two pieces. Losing the ship due to damage by bad weather is a constant worry that every seagoing captain has to deal with on a daily basis. There are also threats of fires onboard. The captain has to keep his limited crew running up and down all the time so that they can spot and extinguish any fires that may show up on the ship. Fire hazard destroys precious cargo and can sometimes cause the sinking of the ship if it gets badly damaged. Not forgetting the threats of pirates, the high seas are full of heavily armed and extremely dangerous pirates that are eager to hold the ship, its captain, and crew for ransom. The economic hardships of the twenty-first century have forced certain communities to resort to piracy as a means of sustaining their lives. Going out to the sea every day is so perilous for a captain and his crew, he has to be super watchful and work with extreme professional efficiency, for the decisions he makes have long-term impacts on his crew and the people whom he carries the precious cargo for. He has to respond to emergencies on board at lightning speeds and with technical expertise, his mind is tormented by the thought of being ready to avert any arising disaster at any hour of the day, every time he leaves the port, he holds his breath and crosses his fingers, hoping and praying that he will reach the other end of the world safely, it's only after he safely docks his ship on the destination port and sets foot on land that he finally lets off a sigh of relief. His job gives him such a demanding and extremely difficult life, yet he manages to overcome it all. many folks today in management roles are living the life of a seafaring leader, it's like every day of their career they are worrying so much and working their asses off just like the captain of a sinking ship. They are plunged into a world where their primary goal is to deal with other people's problems. Dealing with stubborn subordinates, motivating them to do a better job, and dealing with outside forces that are beyond their realm of control, things such as fierce competition and rowdy government institutions. Outside pressure is like a deadly disease that wears out all managers and causes them to age too quickly, it leads them to an early and bitter retirement. They are expected to perform nevertheless, however great the pressure may be and however enormous and sensitive the responsibility may be, you still have to wake up every day and go to that dreaded office you have come to hate so much. Every leader has to somehow act like ''The Captain of a Sinking Ship.''

With world war three looming on the horizon, everyone Is holding their breath and praying hard so that the current tensions on the eastern block do not spill out of control into world war three. The antagonists on both sides are not willing to give an inch of territory, none of them wants to be the first one to blink. This tense atmosphere brings back the memories of the famous Winston Churchill's speech in Fulton, Missouri, which went like...''an iron curtain has descended across the continent...'' well if Churchill was alive now, he would still say that the iron curtain is still in its old place. The iron curtain Churchill spoke about decades ago is still right there on the spot and is going nowhere. The days of the Cuban missile crisis are still lingering on when both superpowers each equally armed with a stockpile of lethal weapons were ready to bring an apocalyptic end to the planet earth. Every living day of our lives we hear about wars and rumors of wars. There is not a single year that even passes without hearing about conflict or fierce fighting happening somewhere in the world. How have we come to hate each other so much to the point where peace is a rare anomaly that often interrupts the regular lifestyle of warfare? why do we keep promising peaceful co-existence with our next-door neighbors while we secretly pile our homes with lethal weapons of unimaginable destructive capabilities? These days peace has become so elusive like a wildcat that you only get to catch a glimpse of once in a lifetime. Right now any kind of direct warfare between the superpowers will surely reduce the globe into nothing but ashes. There will be no survivors in the fight let alone victors. There can be no winners in a nuclear warfare kind of confrontation, all the superpowers know this very well but they still continue squabbling like little infants fighting over a piece of ice cream. Someone needs to talk some sense into the rulers of the world and teach them that fighting does no one any good. it's in the hands of the United Nations to fulfill its mandate which includes maintaining world peace and security. its predecessor, ''The League of Nations'' unfortunately crumbled under mysterious circumstances, so as long as the UN still stands, global citizens have hope in the organization that it will kick into action and do everything it can in its capacity to ensure that things do not deteriorate any further. Politics isn't such a dirty game after all, if it really was, would it make the players dirty too? A game is separate from the players that undertake it, isn't there also greed and corruption in finance, banking, media business, sports and other nonpolitical organizations? The young politician tries to convince the masses that they should perceive him and his other county representatives differently, for they are not the monsters they mistake them to be, "if they were to open their eyes and see the bigger picture, I mean global politics and international affairs, they won't be criticizing us this way," he says, "can someone please appreciate our efforts?" He tries very hard to change the public's perceptions of him and his fellow politicians.

Technology has gotten into the hands of the people we least expected, our kids and they appear to be more proficient and advanced than we are, they love all things that are techie, soon their capabilities in this high tech world will surpass that of our own while we sleep. Recently I was shocked to find an eight year old girl who owned a blog which she edited almost twice a week without the help of anyone, even her own parents didn’t help her do it. It gets updated four times faster than my own website which can sometime take a month or more to add new content, with the new opportunities come new dangers, It now appears that child protection will soon become a meaningless phrase because the children are out there doing things for themselves, "how can we help them when we don’t even know what they are doing?" says a parent, sometimes they end up teaching us new things, when we try to investigate their activities online.

Slavery is a sad part of history that a lot of people would rather not want to talk about, they wish it was swept under the rug as the stories are so distressing & so heart wrenching that it would be better if no one ever spoke about this dark past at all. Debates on such topics have created so much division in the society, social tensions are back on the rise. Descendants of those slaves want these issues to be discussed in public squares, they want this history to be fully taught in school curriculums so as not to repeat itself, many still harbor the grievances and pain they inherited from their once subjugated ancestors, they want the society to come clean and atone for the sins of the forefathers. Descendants of slave owners on the other hand would like to keep things on the hush hush, they believe such discussions may create unnecessary friction in the society, they think there is no reason they should be treated with hatred when they weren't alive at the time, the people who perpetrated those crimes are long gone, why should the innocent be punished for crimes that they never even witnessed themselves? Arguments over this issue keep going back and forth and no-one ever seems to be winning the case against the other. There is also mention of existence of modern day slavery, right at this very moment, there are estimated tens of millions of people living their lives through some form of modern day slavery, according to International Labor Organization. This number is shocking to many scholars because we thought that we were done away with this negative aspect of human nature a very long time ago. Yes, it is uncomfortable news to many but that is the truth, slavery is still here with us and it looks like its going nowhere.