We shall settle your funeral expenses

We know what has been happening; we have the most reputable intelligence service on the eastern extremity of the Indian Ocean, three hours beyond the Greenwich Mean Time, north of the Limpopo and south of the Sahara.
Our Intelligence service tells us of an amorphous bunch of individuals going around skinning people. Tonight they plan to surround your houses and take away your husbands and your sons.
If they happen to take away your heads, or your other body organs, be assured that we shall settle your funeral expenses.

We have annihilated them before, and we can do it again. Only this time our hands are tied, given that our boys and girls in various colours are busy elsewhere: guarding our mansions and providing protection for our concubines. Do not be discouraged, though, for you have many idle strong young men who should be vigilant enough against the hooligans. We will look the other way if you, justifiably, take up machetes, axes and sickles in revolt against the uninvited aggressors. In case any blood is shed, we shall settle your funeral expenses.

Our Intelligence services know everything that has been happening on the ground. They have known, all along; of the taxes you have to pay to the extortion cartels; 50 cents per maize cob harvested; 50 shillings for every new calf born; 50 pounds for your daughter who has just graduated from college; and 50 lashes for your recalcitrance to their abrasive requests.
For the sake of peace and quiet, please settle what they claim, otherwise we shall settle your funeral costs.


They have come like the wind, in the stillness of the night. They have lured you out of your house with uncompromising vocabulary, their voices accompanied by the unsynchronised clatter of their crude arsenal swishing through the cold night air, slashing against flesh and bone, splashing the fluids gushing from open wounds and squashing life out of the men you love.
We will not let you down; we shall settle your funeral expenses.

Rumba 2009