The Pope is the world president

07/05/09
The Pope is the world president…
One of the thrills of public transportation is the opportunity to meet different people, jostle for seats with them, share a drink, tell your life story and borrow their phone charger… No? Well then I guess it’s just me or you’ve not been travelling on a ferry to Cameroon recently.

Anyway among all these thrills, you also get the added bonus of overhearing or being forced to listen to snippets of different conversations which can be highly amusing. As usual, me being the nice person that I am, I’m bringing some of those snippets to you. You can thank me later, a donation to Celebrate Africa will do.

‘The pope is the president of the world, he should get full security and his own private jet’ said the young man to his friends sitting outside on the upper deck of the ferry. ‘Yes’ his friend replied ‘but T.B Joshua is also very powerful and deserves a private jet too!’ ‘Who is T.B Joshua?’ interjected another one loudly, How can you compare him to the pope?’

Meanwhile on the other side of the deck, there’s another heated conversation. ‘Look the Nigerian government has failed us, can you imagine? No road, no lights, that’s why I live in Cameroon’

‘I have built 3 houses in Cameroon now’

After a while I couldn’t keep up with the loud conversations as they all became too much and the amebo* in me wanted to hear everything. My head felt like what must have been the tower of Babel

‘My brother offended me and I will never go to church again because of him’

‘The bible says that we MUST to believe in God’. ‘What do you mean we MUST believe in God? Do you know the meaning of must?’

‘Look, the pope is stronger than all the world leaders combined, the Catholics are very strong’

‘Who be police? I have been in this country for six years, they can’t try me’

‘I can afford to fly o, I just decided to take this ferry because I wanted to get there on time’ At this statement, I wondered how an 8-hour boat ride can be faster than a 2-hour flight.

‘How can you say that? Who be pope?’ Finally as a parting shot, ‘ let me tell you, pope is in Africa, right now, infact e come Cameroon e no gree come Nigeria because of too much trouble’. Well you’ve been told.

Thinking about all this later, I realised that I had learnt a valuable lesson. The pope is the president of the world and if only the rest of the world knew it, the world would be such a great place… or maybe not.