Joined: 03 Jun 2005 Posts: 7524 Location: Cape Town
Posted: Tue Jul 05, 2005 12:37 pm Post subject: Only in Africa, some funny true stories
The following are actual news excerpts from the African press in South Africa, Swaziland, Kenya and Zimbabwe.
1. The Cape Times (Cape Town, RSA):
"I have promised to keep his identity confidential," said Jack Maxim, a spokesperson for the Sandton Sun Hotel, Johannesburg, "but I can confirm that he is no longer in our employment. We asked him to clean the lifts and he spent four days on the job. When I asked him why, he replied: 'Well, there are forty of them, two on each floor, and sometimes some of them aren't there.'
"Eventually, we realized that he thought each floor had a different lift, and he'd cleaned the same two lifts twenty times each. We had to let him go. It seemed best all round. I understand he is now working for GE Lighting."
2. The Star (Johannesburg):
"The situation is absolutely under control," Transport Minister Ephraem Magagula told the Swaziland parliament in Mbabane. "Our nation's merchant navy is perfectly safe. We just don't know where it is, that's all."
Replying to an MP's question, Minister Magagula admitted that the landlocked country had completely lost track of its only ship, the Swazimar. "We believe it is in a sea somewhere. At one time, we sent a team of men to look for it, but there was a problem with drink and they failed to find it, and so, technically, yes, we've lost it a bit. But I categorically reject all suggestions of incompetence on the part of this government. The Swazimar is a big ship painted in the sort of nice bright colours you can see at night. Mark my words, it will turn up. The right honourable gentleman opposite is a very naughty man, and he will laugh on the other side of his face when my ship comes in."
3. The Standard (Kenya):
"What is all the fuss about?" Weseka Sambu asked a hastily convened news conference at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. "A technical hitch like this could have happened anywhere in the world. You people are not patriots. You just want to cause trouble."
Mr Sambu, a spokesman for Kenya Airways, was speaking after the cancellation of a through flight from Kisumu, via Jomo Kenyatta, to Berlin: "The forty-two passengers had boarded the plane ready for take-off when the pilot noticed one of the tyres was flat," he said. "Kenya Airways did not possess a spare tyre, and unfortunately the airport nitrogen canister was empty. A passenger suggested taking the tyre to a petrol station for inflation, but unluckily the jack had gone missing so we couldn't get the wheel off. Our engineers tried heroically to reinflate the tyre with a bicycle pump, but had no luck, and the pilot even blew into the valve with his mouth, but he passed out. "When I announced that the flight had to be abandoned, one of the passengers, Mr Mutu, suddenly struck me about the face with a life-jacket whistle and said we were a national disgrace. I told him he was being ridiculous, and that there was to be another flight in a fortnight. And, in the meantime, he would be able to enjoy the scenery around Kisumu, albeit at his own expense."
4. From a Zimbabwean newspaper:
While transporting mental patients from Harare to Bulawayo, the bus driver stopped at a roadside shebeen (beerhall) for a few beers. When he got back to his vehicle, he found it empty, with the 20 patients nowhere to be seen.
Realizing the trouble he would be in if the truth were uncovered, he halted his bus at the next bus stop and offered lifts to those in the queue. Letting 20 people board, he then shut the doors and drove straight to the Bulawayo mental hospital, where he hastily handed over his 'charges', warning the nurses that they were particularly excitable.
Staff removed the furious passengers; it was three days later that suspicions were aroused by the consistency of the stories from the 20. Nothing more has been heard of the real patients and they have apparently blended comfortably back into Zimbabwean society.
Joined: 03 Jun 2005 Posts: 7524 Location: Cape Town
Posted: Fri Jul 08, 2005 7:58 am Post subject:
No one is taking the piss, I am from SA and this is just an article I recieved, it just funny how backwards we can still be here. I just thought it would cheer u all up, have to a laugh ?
Okay, I believe you and the stories are all true. It's not just in Africa that such things happen, although your tales really struck a chord here and had us howling with laughter. It's difficult to pick the funniest but the report about the asylum bus takes some beating.
Posted: Fri Oct 07, 2005 9:57 pm Post subject: ...
Hilarious, I definitely believe the stories. A friend of mine grew up on a farm called "Pembichase" in Zimbabwe. He also had their families land taken, no-one harmed luckily.
Im not a huge histroy buff, and I don't really know all the facts about whats happening in Zimbabwe and SA. But from the little I do know. This seems to be what happened:
The Europeans realize kidnapping and enslaving Africans is wrong and decide to inhabit Africa to spread the word of democracy and create the undelying infrasturcture to make Africa a more civilized nation. A quest to end all poverty and hunger.
The Africans have no choice but to submit because their spears and arrows keep missing the little opening holes in the the tanks. And although their sheilds and armour are made from the strongest wood in the jungle. They don't seem to be strong enough to deflect the western "bang" arrows.
Now that the Africans are growing up and are adapting to a very advanced western world, they are feeling rather impuned seeings all they seem to be doing is what the Europeans are what telling them to do whilst the Europeans stand around, laugh, and chuckle "hia" "hia" and smoke cigars in their European only bars.
So now theyre growing up and learning the language of the "bang" arrow creators, although many having learned from only a few generation of eduacted African family, the first member learning the language weeks after killing his last buffalo bear handed, so to pass down the education to those still learning today. But of course they don't learn to be as educated as the average European because their teachers and parents are not harvard graduates. So they continue to see things the simple way.
... It seems to me this was a complete disaster from the start, you can't really blame the Africans for being pissed off and frustrated. Maybe they should have been left alone to progress naturally, rise or fall??
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