I have always wondered about the privileges that come with being the president. It is cool and most times, you make a lot of decisions. You can ask people to stay home without going to work or school when you are not feeling well.
Work and classes resume when you get better but when you are still having some headache, you can ask people not to cook or even eat. Nobody is even allowed to have some time with his wife or husband too. How can you do this when the president is not feeling well? You must pray for him to recover, or you will not be well with your family.
If you want to be happy, you must pay some money before you are allowed to be happy. You don’t have to be happy for long, it is just for some days or else you may be suspected of celebrating the president’s bad days.
You cannot enjoy when the president is going through difficult moments. He is everything and you have to go through it with him. Your life starts and ends with him. The president can make a country a better place where he can easily be treated when he is sick or destroy it to a point where he will have to leave if he is unwell.
If the president is a good bad man, he can make it mandatory for the University students who are about to graduate to first enroll at a military academy before they are given their transcripts. Failure to do this will result in you not getting graduated and withdrawal from the course before completion will just take you to your new residence, the prison where you will serve two years with 50 lashes and 50 push-ups every morning before you prepare local tea for the policemen.
This is just to make you strong for the day. You will have a lot to do that day including cooking and if you don’t prepare a nice meal, you will have to eat the food or you will receive 50 more strokes of the cane. The purpose of the military academy is just to train the students how to look for jobs after graduation. The job market is really not kind, and you need to have a soldier’s heart to survive. The training is harder than looking for a job. For men, it is even difficult. Everything is just a command. You start the day with 100 push-ups and the next thing you will be doing is to just run the whole day.
If that is done, you will be asked to carry 10 bags of cement before you are given food, normal beans. You can even count the beans in the soup if you really have some time to do so. The next thing is kickboxing. You have the ring where you will face your opponents. You are not allowed to beat your opponent to death, just make him spend the whole night nursing his wounds. For women, all they have to do is cook and wash clothes. They must also be physically and mentally prepared to face the realities of our day, the street is bad and not for the weak.
The students who have successfully completed the program are awarded certificates of survival. They must buy shoes to look for jobs but there is something that they must have the heart of a soldier. Life goes on and when it gets hard, your heart must harden too. The only thing you should not think about is your shoes, they are going to suffer because you will move a lot. You must have Alijoma’s song in your phone. “koltokdie” which literally means “My day will come”. Don’t also forget that there are high chances the day may not come. But keep playing the song when you are about to give up.
The struggle is real. It is every day. But wait, the president. We are still not done with him. Apart from being everything, the president has his own struggles, which include how he answers phone calls and the food he eats. Someone is employed to carry his phones and mostly answer calls before the phone is given to the president. When a man below the president gets a call from the president, it is not the phone man. It is the president; your hands tremble before you answer the phone.
The president doesn’t call for nothing; he calls you back to life so that you can see the world. You can see the world when you are standing on top of money, on millions of dollars. You will see everything, but money will not give you the chance to see the millions of people with nothing to eat. The president makes it possible for you, to see a world of enough while shielding your eyes from the world of lack.
He can bless you now and if he decides to take his blessing back, he may take it with your life too. Be careful how you use this money because you can lose it forever. For most people who have been blessed by the president, I mean his closest friends; they use their money to impoverish the weakest members of the society. Instead of building schools and hospitals for the struggling populace, they use this money to please the most beautiful girls around and make them more beautiful and these young girls will use the money to buy fancy cars or open boutiques, to sell clothes.
People don’t have money to buy food, let alone clothes. The young girls become millionaires before their 28th birthdays. Some call the president’s friends names, like “babe” Bla! How can a 28-year-old girl call a 70-year-old man a baby? Alaaa! This is what happens, when there is so much money, but you don’t know what to do with it, the old men start seeing little girls like their age-mates. I don’t think I can ever manage being a president. I will just resign. It is not something easy.
You make a lot more enemies than friends. The president doesn’t have friends; he has men who can’t survive without the president. They are friendly enemies. They are survivors. They must do everything to please the president. When the president says “Good morning” they will clap their hands and just laugh. They leave the president in wonder sometimes. But you know what? There is something they must do well and that is concealing their true identity, because when you are caught with ill intentions against the president, you can easily be sent for a leave. You know what I mean? It is not a normal work leave.
You will be eliminated. It is a blessing and equally a curse to be a president. You are not in charge of your life because your need for security takes away your freedom. For most presidents, chefs are employed to prepare the president’s meal. The chef must have a master’s degree in a top tier university to cook for the president. We also have another person in the line, the official food taster. (This is someone who ingests food prepared for the president to confirm it is safe to eat).
There is no college degree requirement to be a food taster but there is one thing that is needed from the person. You must be willing to die anytime. I mean you must be willing to leave behind your family if the president was poisoned because it is the reason why you were employed.
You must always have good-tasting abilities. If the food doesn’t taste nice, you must report this to the chef to do something different or you will be in big trouble if the president refuses to eat his supper. If the president’s meal was poisoned, it would be your last time to taste a meal. The president will get another food taster and life goes on. Now I don’t have much to say, peace.