When I was a baby, I ate “oggy” and now I am not a baby why should I eat anything in the family of oggy? This thing will annoy me as long as I continue to digest what is in the family of oggy.
Now I have stepped in the second decade of debates and mistakes, mischievousness and reabused habits. And how can I breach the feeling in me over the lack of promiscuity thereof; about an adage that has always been clanking in me.
I grew up hearing people say many adages without a better translation. But my mind has always been fixed on one as it was one I hear at many trials. It used to be, and it still is the smoothest words on the tongues of many a people. For the oppressed and the depressed, this is a song to their ears, like a mantra. They say and they hear: He who laughs last laughs the best. I have seen people who have been laughing since I was wearing shorts to date. And for all you know, they may continue laughing. So he who ‘cries last, shall laugh last when there is nothing to laugh at first’. As long as the first laugh matters and it is a genuine one, then there is nothing wrong for a last laughter to whimper since the first laughter. So laughing first is of great advantage than laughing last.
The adage, in my little view was meant to serve as an inspiration and motivation to guide us to the highest degree of courage along the way. The adage might be to lubricate you with the enthusiasm and zeal to persist on your desired goal. It might just be an amoebaean toward your friendly path.
However, I busy myself with trailing for more than ten hours just to earn less than a dollar. And I see some who work for only 8 hours earning my decade’s savings. So you want me to believe that ‘laughing last’ is the best? Don’t you think life is such a condition in that miserable trend? In this regard, I can’t deduce any bit from ‘laughing last’……? I gambled on few chances to contact many friends to introduce me to a better deal where I can make more than a dollar daily, but to no avail.
So many hopes were engraved and upended because I am denied a chance of ‘laughing last’. My stagnant trading has never tested a pill of walking, talk less of running. Hitherto, now I am here thinking of how possible it is for me to ‘laugh last’ when the first laughers are still laughing ceaselessly. I use to cry for lift when going to school and I still struggle for it when going to Banjul. Here, I am still laughing the last-laugh? When I was younger than today, I hear my ‘kotos’ say, ‘dafa kul’ and up till date when I am at their height I still hear them saying “dafa kul”. Those that were laughing since my ”barefootedness” days are still laughing as I am telling you. Those who don’t laugh during their time, to pay school fees are still not laughing to find a job. And you still say “he who laughs last laughs the best?”
The connotation embedded in many adages has no contrasted meaning predicated to the denotation of the saying. I don’t subscribe to all that the masses say, for they are implanted in their chest to narrow their good minds’ eyes. However, I am barbaric when it comes to adages. One adage seems to represent many meaning [so ambiguous] as if it should be the decider of our projection.
Since my “dindin yaa waato” I was drinking porridge and up to date, I am drinking it. No changes. My “Yerenkeh mono” which I never play with, always naked with nothing to shine on top of its surface, till now when I can only afford “tiyya dekkeh” to polish its surface for glaring swallow. That is the only improvement. So ‘laughing last’ with “tiyya dekkeh” is laughing the best??
Many adages do not help in any way by rusting our thoughts to collaborate with them in all facets of our dealings. Yet to me, some adages are some kind of trash that deserve little concentration.
At the time of penning this article, I am listening to Lalo Kebba in the background stringing the song, Koumbu Sora “souto koumata sutuykoung….” Perfectly slayed on the rhythm inspiring me to dribble the pen finely with a relaxed mind. But I still have not ‘laughed last’ thus my ‘first laugh’ is the one accompanying me to the tail of this piece.
Some vexation exhume in the ghetto a day before I join these words with the natural craft of a gentle wordsmith whose mind is a reservoir of a cosmopolitan lingua franca. I was benched in the mid of friends and chatters reminiscing the peace in this piece propels me to. One of the coolest in the crew desperately holding firm the ‘barada’ supplying the brewed ‘wine’ straight to the twin tumbler on stand the plate. He complains of how his good grades in school cannot get him to a higher learning institute. He is one of many in the streets with great potentials, but no opportunity because he did not ‘laugh first’ and did not even have a sip of laughing.’ He once earned a salary as a watchman which he quit because he was afraid of retrogression on his plight to an accolade in academics. Now tell me when is he going to ‘laugh last?’ [and please don’t tell me ‘time’]. The furring of poverty and retardation in powerless people in the ghetto is something else and people should stop beautifying it with adages and agree that the poor have no smiles to make in this age. And I am not sure they have anything to giggle about either.
Before I agree with such adages, our souls should at least smile with the rising sun, to breathe on us the chilly breeze of ‘laughing first’ especially in this ‘sumaya waato.’ So we will say bye to ‘laughing last’ and she will die. And it will be about ”laughing till eternity.”
Please good people, let us stop saying: ‘He who laughs last, laughs the best” and subscribe to ”He who laughs first laughs till eternity.” Was Sheriff Bojang not laughing at Observer? And now who is the boss, owner, laughing at The Standard newspaper?
Abdou Karim ‘Akwad’ Darboe. AAIT
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