If you happened to live in Africa, you might always wonder why the world does not want to leave us alone. We are among the most sociable of all human beings due to the fact that we never colonised anyone, we never shipped people of other races across seas to work for us, we never tried to kill Indians, Aborigines, Tasmanians, no one. As a matter of fact, other people did all those things to us, and you guessed right, we do not complain. I will not, however, talk about that kind of slavery. I will talk about multinational companies (includes associations, organisations, etc.). I was making myself a cup of chocolate the other day and thank God Africans do not read because I would never have bought anything owned by a multinational again. (Please get yourself a copy of “The Poor Reading Culture in Uganda” by Kimani wa Mumbi). What did I see except a reason to drop chocolate taking habits? In the instructions on how to prepare, I read something like: For a perfect chocolate cup, please pour four ‘heaped’ teaspoons into your cup and stir . . .. The word that made me question Cadbury is ‘heaped’. I live in Africa for Chrissakes and when I buy a 500 g container of Drinking Chocolate I want it to stay for as long as it can. Matter of fact, if it could stay until three days before expiration there would be nothing better than that.
I have taken chocolate as a beverage for some time now and it is only the other day that I read those ‘instructions’. And all those days I used to take my chocolate I never used to ‘heap’ let alone use four teaspoons, and it used to taste fabulous all the same. One teaspoonful is enough and the chocolate is usually perfect. The complaint against these companies is that they try to steal from the African the only thing that makes him exist, his dollar. (Please read: The Dollar Phenomenon – Below or Above the Dollar?)
After accidentally reading those ‘instructions’, I have gained a curious habit of seeing what else I should have been heaping all along and never noticed. I was using that detergent called Omo and God help them. These fellows were saying that for best results I had to heap my hand with their Omo in a basin with five litres of water. If I really have to heap my hand with Omo, you better look carefully because I will have a busy day. I will be doing a lot of laundry that day. The instructions do not even cater for those with big hands because suchlike people might do three-day’s laundry if they really have to heap their palms. Now, I do not know what makes these people think that the African is just so ready to follow their instructions, and why they keep writing them even when they know that we do not read, but I know one thing: that if the African discovers that you are trying to make him broke, he will hate you and never buy your product again; he is already broke. My only special request to these companies is that knowing that we do not read, let them just stop writing instructions in these products of theirs. That will make the African content and we shall forever give you our custom.