Rice and Rights

By

Obododimma Oha

In some countries, rice and rights are neighbours. But they are after each other, with each wanting to be the other, not just like the other. I know that they almost sound alike: "rice " /rais/ and "rights" /raits/ and could easily be mistaken and possibly help in creating confusion about what is actually meant. Even the /t/ sound in “rights” is just one weak phonemic boundary! Without that, they could become Siamese twins and create problems for observers.

Well, rice and rights know how to turn this apparent resemblance to an advantage. One can take the identity of the other and you start wondering whether it is about filling the empty stomach or about disobeying court orders and doing what you like the way you like it as a ruler. You can even have the stomach filled up and say “To Hell” with your name.

In those places where “rice” and “rights” are neighbours, if a citizen asks for “rights,” especially if his or her eyes are growing red through constant blowing of the fire, that citizen could be offered “rice.” Call it an error occasioned by the resemblance and close neighbourhood. Rights and rice. Are they not good neighbours?

Look; is that not a police officer following somebody who is carrying a bag of rice in a wheelbarrow to check the luggage and to arrest the foreign food at a bus station? Is that not the foreign food that has become a man’s new sprouting breasts? Call it feminism or transgender. It could be any. It is one of the mysteries of close neighbourhood where there are resemblances.

If one is a neighbour, one has to avoid resemblances that tempt into relationships like minimal pairs of linguistics! After all, when the neighbourhood gets funny, commercial motorcycle riders can make better money through ferrying the foreign food across porous neighbourhoods. And that is our gain, what we count as gain, another gain. Mind you, this  is not a poem. Just a stupid man’s reflection on the neighbourhood of resemblances. So, you can understand.

Why won’t a government take interest in phonemic resemblances and use them in compounding the confusion? Why won’t a government keep citizens on their toes, giving them rice when they ask for rights, replacing one cause for worry with another? Why won’t a government benefit from an ignorance, especially ignorance about resemblances and playing of the avatar?

Rice and rights. You cannot eat your rights and have them. So, eat rice and have more rice, especially foreign rice coming in through porous borders.

In this politics of rice, somebody gains and somebody loses. For some, it is just about food. They have been tortured long enough to care just about rice, about HARD food, that travels from a mouth to the stomach. So, they cannot ask you for rights. They only care for food. It is the will of a stupid God!

Rice and rights. Giving you rice and more rice and taking away rights in the shithole. Rice politics now. Don’t ask that I right my politics. Or I may rice my politics. And have been ricing my politics for long!

Ricing my politics on commercial motorcycles and wheel barrows across porous neighbourhoods. Ricing my politics so that a pretender can be called an  avatar. A rice avatar. An avatar of what fills or can fill an empty stomach of a beggar. Rice fills the stomach, not rights. Rice things and rice era.

Rice and rights. Rights now know when to pay an unscheduled visit to rice. For rice is busy. Rice is doing rice things, playing rice politics.