I am a cow

I am a cow! Wallahi Tallah! Can’t you see that I am a cow? Even if you don’t have brains, which I am sure you don’t have, don’t you have eyes? Look at my head, doesn’t it look like that of a cow? Look at my comportment, is it different from that of other cows you know?

It’s very difficult who Mr Cow was talking to or arguing with. And this reproduction of his ramblings will not attempt to create an audience for him. Cows generally don’t need originality or individuality. A cow is a cow and all of his life he behaves the way he sounds ‘Muumuu!’

I am a cow. Believe me. I have no house. I have no town. I have no village. I have not even a hut. I roam about in the wild or anywhere I can find food. I have never bothered to create a village or a town or an empire. My forbears never tried to create anything. They lived off other people’s sweats. My forbears did not create anything. They never had the brains or the incentive to do so. They lived by plundering other peoples establishments.

It is our tradition. It is our culture never to settle in a place. We are the Sokugos of Cyprian Ekwensi’s Iska. We are homeless wanderers. And we have been cursed from heaven never to build our own settlements. We shall forever remain scavengers and sponges of other people’s wealth. We are never ashamed to admit that we are not born to create an empire. We are not born to ever settle in a place and live a decent life. Just wandering and wandering; that’s our life.

I am a cow. I shall remain a cow for the rest of my life. I like the food. I mean food prepared by other people. I eat grass. I eat leaves. I eat yams and all sorts of the delicious tuber. But I never plant any of these foods. I am too lazy to do so. And I really don’t believe I should bother myself planting anything because my forbears never planted anything. They roamed about plundering and damaging other people’s plantations.

I do not believe in knowledge. What do I need knowledge for? It is not in my character to develop beyond eating and eating and eating. And for as long as I can find other peoples food to eat, why should I bother to invest in knowledge acquisition that will teach me how to improve my lot and create something for myself.

I hear some foolish animals complain that I am inferior to them because I am lazy and a spoiler. They say because I do not sit down in a place and live a settled life and plant my own food that I am inferior in status. How foolish they are. I put it to them, is it not cheaper to reap where you did not sow than to invest all you have and gain nothing? Is it not more commonsensical for you to allow your baboons to work for the monkeys to chop?
I am a cow, yes I am. And I am forever proud to be.

Let us look it this way. How many of the people complaining about my lifestyle can trek hundreds of kilometres wandering from one land to another in pursuit of free food? I am aware they say that they travel far in search of greener pastures. Foolish people, which pastures can be greener than the one I gourmandize free of charge? And when they come back and replicate what they learnt abroad am I, not the one that feeds free on their farms?

I am a cow and I dare say that I am equal to every human being on earth, or at least in my area of influence. In fact, I am superior to all the persons in my area of influence. I get whatever I want. I do whatever I like, and I go wherever I choose to go. Atop of all these, I am above the laws of their land. I am the king without borders.

I will never allow you into my secret. I will never tell you that I have unseen hands which accord me impunity. I am beyond reproach. Those that protect me never sleep nor slumber. Those that protect me are impregnable. Those that protect me are untouchable. They cannot be detected because they too are cows like me but they wear the mask of human beings.

Let me give the final warning: anybody who dares to challenge me will only crack his head because the cows, the bigger and fatter cows behind me are legions. And because they look like you and speak like you during the day, and speak my language during the night, you can never know them. They have surrounded you all, challenge me or them to your peril!!

This writer is searching for this boastful cow. As soon as he completed his ramblings he departed from sight and as he won’t do he must have wandered to another land, other people’s land to plunder and grab the land with the active connivance of his godfathers.

I enjoin all the readers of this piece to join in locating Mr Cow and impress on him and his cohorts that 21st Century has no place of his Stone Age lifestyle and philosophies. He should be told that there millions of Messers Cows all over the world who have advanced and moved on. His handlers should also be told that

Monkeys now have to work and prepare for their own livelihood. All the baboons have left the bush, Monkeys must learn to sweat for their livelihood and survival.
Enough is enough. Mr Cow must forever remain strictly in Cowland [does cow ever own any land??] and allow peace to thrive in other lands.

• Saheed, a distinguished media personality, sent this piece from the US