It is amazing how this global economic recession has become a propagator of tales; tales ranging from misfortunes, financial wreckages, broken hearts, soberness, and more frequently an increased art of prudence. Everywhere you turn you hear stories of how people have been battered and tattered by the melt down around the world. You read new blogs, which the writers were forced to start since they lost their job, chronicling their lives with no pay and how they are attempting to make the best of it. Others share logs of woes that have befallen them, while seeking advice from a host of readers from the corners of the earth. Lives have been touched by the economic travails and many seem beyond redemption. But the stories that amaze me most are how much of a lie many people had been living when the system seemed to have been working fine. As much as the capitalist driven world laid its foundations on mere paper and had a sudden collapse at a little shove from a sector of one country, many people have had their illusionary cloaks stripped from them. Now nakedly they stare at an unforgiving world and wonder what happened.
New York. USA. Damien graduated from a respected Ivy League business school. He landed a job immediately as a financial analyst with a gold chip firm and started enjoying the benefits of doing this. Apart from a juicy salary for a young man of 29, he received wowing bonuses at the end of the financial year. After just six years of working, he drove a Mercedes Benz convertible, lived in a 3 bedroom apartment in Manhattan, bought another house in Stamford, Connecticut, and had a time share in Mexico. Every month he buys two pieces of designer suit worth about $1500 and made up for his appearance with accessories to match. After all most people in the world’s top financial district looked that way; he had to measure up. He attended a lot of lavish parties where champagne was bought from $450 per bottle, and he rolled with the happening boys on the street. Damien was living the life. He often procrastinated when it comes to savings and always assumed that he would put aside a significant part of his bonus every year. But he never did. The lifestyle needed to be maintained at a high cost.
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We see that after the much drama that took place in Egypt, Pharaoh eventually released the Israelites to begin their uncertain journey, which even Moses did not know the route. He kept on telling Pharaoh that God wanted His children to go and sacrifice to Him in the wilderness, a case that the Bible didn’t mention in Moses’ several conversations with God. Moses got a release order with a cloud of uncertainty as to the real direction he was to lead the multitude through. However, he didn’t have much to worry about, as the one who had performed extreme signs was capable of leading them out and taking them into their promised land. I can imagine the air of discomfort that hovered over Moses every time he went to his kinsmen and boasted that there is a promised land which was their final destination. Did someone ever ask him for a map of the route they were going to take? Did people ever wonder where he appeared from forty years after he disappeared from Egypt with no clues to his whereabouts? Let’s face it! It surely was not that easy for Moses to wake up and stand before this people who have known no other place than Egypt for over 400 hundred years. To convince them that they will have to leave their present zone, no matter how uncomfortable it was, to move to a location he called the Promised Land was a tough task. Moses Himself had never been to the place, neither anyone he was leading. So he not only had to lead the people, he had to lead himself.
I am a diehard fan of Peter Jackson, especially after watching the Lord of the Ring series rack up the Oscars with excellent display of modern film artistry. I went as far as purchasing the Editors Cut of the movie containing twelve DVDs with extended edition. Watching his remake of King Kong was also breathtaking, especially how he succeeded in recreating the lost island in order to give more life to the reality of finding prehistoric creatures there. Jackson is a master at imaginative delivery of stories, and he has succeeded in doing all this outside Hollywood. Lord of the Rings was entirely done outside of the Hollywood apparatus, proving that creativity knows no bound and the much money spent in paying so called stars only goes to increasing the cost of movie making. His new movie, ‘District 9’ was also produced without any big stars and shot entirely in South Africa. It is a recreation of a short movie by Neill Blomkamp called ‘Alive in Joburg’ Kudos to him!
Thoughts of a Calabarboy. 