Does it also happen to you? That you ask a question and people cast weird looks at you, expecting that you should know the answer already? Have you ever been a ‘victim’? If you have ever engaged me in a conversation on any subject, you would know that it is a part of me – asking questions. I ask even the mundane ones and the expression on my face would be like that of a 3-year old lad demanding a candy. So yes, it happens to me all the time.

Let me share with you one of the many episodes which happened some few days ago.

I sat rather lazily in the sofa in the living room after eating, absent in thoughts. My mind wandered among many subjects, settling on nothing particular. My eyes were affixed on the TV set but I was not watching [typing this today reminded me of an English Language lecture I had on the difference between ‘seeing’ and ‘watching’ back in Accra Academy – interesting lecture]. I was jolted back reality by the shouts of my nephew. His mom was serving water to his younger brother and he was shouting rather impatiently that he also wanted water. After persistent screams, the sachet was handed over to him to quench his thirst.

The first thing he did when he received the sachet of water was to clean the part where his brother had drunk from with his t-shirt. I smirked as it reminded me of the many ‘after you…after you’ calls we made in primary school when one bought a sachet of water – ‘insu’ as it was known then. His mum, when she saw what the eldest had done, jokingly asked in the local parlance whether he was insinuating his younger brother had a ‘stinking mouth’. The response of my 4-year old young man nearly made me choke on the sachet of water I was also drinking at the time. “Yooku’s mouth is yucky – mine is not”. After recovering from that near-choke, I asked Ekow (the eldest) to repeat what he had just said. He did and I consequently asked the mum what ‘yucky’ meant.

Together with my brother who had also come to the living room to watch a movie, they cast a bemused stare at me and almost in unison, expressed shock with ‘HUH’? I repeated the question and this time, their response was one of laughter. The laughter continued when they realized I was wearing a confused look too. Their mum wondered how on earth I could claim not to have come across such a word, suggesting it was a rather common and easy word that even a 4-year old chap knows, obviously. It was explained to me, and I added it to my limited number of ‘primary’ vocabulary. If you are just visited google it to find out what it means, please know that you owe my nephew a word of prayer as a thanksgiving offering.  

I am very fortunate to have worked with superiors who are accommodative of my incessant and sometimes annoyingly nauseating questions. My current employer even spends about 15 minutes after a staff meeting insisting employees ask questions. The first time I witnessed it, I said inaudibly what billionaire Art Williams said in his famous ‘Just Do It’ speech delivered in 1987 in his thick Georgian accent – “me and this man gon’ get along really good”.

Let me repeat verbatim what I said in post I shared on 31^st July, 2016. “Dear reader, ask people questions. Ask yourself questions. Question the status quo. Simply ask questions! Let people think you a fool for asking. Let them laugh really hard until their lungs get sore. But think about it, how else will we know if we didn’t ask questions? How else would those radical transformations we seek manifest if we failed to ask questions? Must we simply accept what is being handed down to us without asking questions to understand, so we will also be able to explain to another? Even the very things we believe by default like our religious faith and culture need questioning to help us better appreciate their existence.” Does this also qualify for a plagiarized paragraph? [Pun intended].

So in this New Year we begun not too long ago, let us purpose in our hearts to ask as many questions as we need to. Let us purpose in hearts to be informed. Let us purpose in our hearts to know. And we will!

Enjoy the fruitfulness this new week promises.

 

More Vim…Let’s Go…

 

The writer is a chartered accountant and a freelance writer, and can be contacted at pkbwilliams@yahoo.co.uk. Click here for other articles he’s authored.