Dead almost on arrival!

PS: THE EVENT HAPPENED IN JUNE OR SO BUT THE THOUGHTS AROUND IT IS STILL FRESH.

Did you hear the story of two men who stowed away in the tire hold of a plane from South Africa all the way to the United Kingdom? Somehow these two men got into the hold without being noticed by the security agents, and even the guys who do last minute checks on the airplane did not pick them up (wonder how big that hold is).

Anyway, they held on for nearly 8,000miles (abt 13,000kms) which is like going to Lagos and back about 10times. I don’t know what they were thinking… that they will just come out of the hole once the plane landed and they will be welcomed with open arms by the UK Border Protection services. So what happened them? Well, one of the guys made it, i.e landed safely with the plane at Heathrow Airport, London. The other guy? He landed too. No! He almost landed but about 1 mile from the airport, somehow he fell off the hold and off the plane and landed, dead on arrival. Shame you would say.. 8000 miles and you have to fall off a few minutes before you can walk away, even if into a detention camp. This is what they call absolute bad luck. 

You can say he fulfilled his dream of getting into the UK, but he wouldn’t know what it feels like to walk the soil of London… his dead body won’t know it too… He was carried into a soon to arrive ambulance. Almost wasn’t good enough in that occasion.

Then the other shocking news about Africa and our brothers who are searching for greener pastures (whatever happened to our vast arable land here). Tuesday 23^rd June, some French folks who work for a ferry company in Calais went on strike. They blocked both the train line and the roads, and burnt tires. They made sure that the trains and trucks who use the channel tunnel could not run. Their grouse? They were afraid that the ferry company was going to shed staff and some of them will lose their jobs. Okay, I am not very worried about these Frenchmen. Close to that point in Calais, there is an open patch of land, and there, about 3,000 Africans were living in shanties (no electricity, no running water, and no toilet facilities). No, they were not doing an exhibition, and they were not acting a pre-colonial movie. They were waiting for their chance to cross over to England.

I cannot tell why the French Police or Immigration authorities left them alone all these while, and have not arrested them. I guess they were hoping that these Africans can ‘carry their trouble’ across the channel at where they will no longer be the problem of the French, but the English. So while the striking Frenchmen where business, there were hundreds of trucks who could not leave Calais for Dover in the UK. This provided a perfect opportunities for our guys to try to hop on these trucks. Of course, it became an open show of embarrassment for the French at that point, and so they had no option than to send the police after them. You will be embarrassed to see our brothers being chased down like rabbits in an open field.

These two scenes are is only a microcosm of the bigger problems. Boats landing (if they are lucky not to be turned over) at the shores of Italy and Spain laddened with thousands of black men who have paid more money for the perilous trip (Which most of them never make) than it would have taken for them to set up a thriving small scale business back in their home country.

Then you have loads of people that are still trying to use ‘another person’s head’ in this time and age. ‘Another person’s head’ is an euphemism for when people are trying to get to a country by using another person’s passport. The thing is that we make so much and spend so much money in these ventures that we would have been okay if we plough that money into some productive venture. I even heard this gist about one guy that was being scammed in the name of getting him a visa; that the scammer actually told the guy to go and resign, since his visa was going to be ready. Guess what? The guy actually resigned. In the end, no passport, no visa, no job. The balance of the money he had, he went with it to the police to try and get the guy arrested, in this Nigeria? Well, after spending all, no money, no guy, no passport, no visa. He is probably now counting the ceiling of his room, assuming he still has a room.

Remember that song in the eighties….me I love my country…. Let’s stay here and make Naija better. God bless you