By Dr. Umaru Bah, CEO
DataWise (SL) Ltd.
Aminata is exhausted.
Like the one-hundred-plus
other visitors at New England ville. That’s understandable. It is now a few
minutes past 5:30 p.m. Has been an unusual and eventfully long day. Unusual for
Aminata’s co-visitors, who are here for a special occasion. You could tell from
their livery of black suits and black ties covering white shirts. Mostly borrowed, a few recently
purchased, all judging by the ill-fits and, had she dared to go close enough to
any of them, by the lingering smell of oxygen-deprived muskiness. The kind you
smell from clothing locked tight at the bottom of a suitcase, which sees
literally the light of day only on special occasions. The very special
kind that happens only once every 18
months. Like this one.
A dead-pan livery of black suits, black blouses
and skirts, white shirts. All adorned with hushed conversations occasionally
interspersed with the buzz of bumble bees. Reads like dawn of a funereal wake.
Sounds like it. Funereal it is not. Or perhaps it is, Aminata would have found
out or verified had she cared to ask one of them. At least one of them would have
suffered the dignity of her invisible presence and informed her that they are
there to interview for the British Commonwealth scholarship. No laughing
matter.
Hence the ice-cold silence on a sticky-hot
tropical November reluctantly welcoming Harmattan.
