Sometimes, I wish I could form my own English words; words that would not be highlighted by the WORD software programme. Sadly, I can’t; because the essence of having disciplines is to decide to assign specific meanings to words so that everyone within that discipline, and even community or society, would understand it with a common meaning.
Still it hurts I can’t write ‘prophetricks’ with the meaning of ‘conning people (better ‘conpeople’) competing to claim victory for accurately prophesying evil which materialises.’
When I searched for it as a word so I can be sure of its meaning, only a proper noun ‘Prophetics Gallery’ came up. If compatriots and others elsewhere continue to entertain ‘vulture prophets,’ I feel like it might not be long before my wish for a ‘prophetricks’ word would be realised.
The verb ‘prophesy,’ which is what those who foretell future happenings do, is one of those verbs, which spelt in the same way, is also a noun. Thus, in reverse, it is a noun that is also a verb.
I don’t blame them; that is, the prophets of doom who practise prophetricks. They have been bursting tympanic membranes of babies who get carried to their theatrics by ignorant parents who have no idea about the damage noise does to the young ones.
You will doubt me if you have never noticed babies cry by jet noise cabin pressure during take-offs and landings.
Or, if you had been present when a mother angrily took her few months old baby to a Melbourne cinema theatre to avoid the husband.
She regretted her action because the baby could not withstand the booming speaker noise and cried till the mother took him away from the place.
They shut noisy churches down in Lagos. Rwanda recently closed 700 of them. Even in Saudi Arabia, I have heard there is a movement to regulate muezzin noise.
The Central Region is supposed to have moved against ‘information centre’ noise nuisance. I also have a press cutting of a move by Ga South Municipal Assembly to control church noise.
If this is all about noise control in the vast motherland, the risk of deafness from noisemaking will forever persist to the hearing detriment of babies, who cannot get that protection. Simply, in the motherland, there is no sign those we have entrusted with the power and authority to contain these noisemakers, would ever care to make a move.
Ministers of Local Government, who have to charge their MMDCEs to implement the noise control bylaws have come and gone.
None tried to do that. She who is there now will also likely not touch it till she leaves the position.
If these doom tellers are allowed to flout the law that regulates noise with impunity, who is ever going to do anything about their prophetricks against which there is no law? Maybe learned compatriots of that profession would know some piece of legislation by which the distasteful act of claiming to have successfully foretold the demise of someone may be punishably dealt with by the courts.
That bizarre competition of who first and rightly soothsaid the death of whom is despicable.
The motherland does not need those vulgar antics. Let those who really care redirect their spiritual powers to empowering our young to be industrious and innovative to curb unemployment. Let them direct their prayer warriors to pray in quiet for knowledge, knowhow and thirst for excellence. For in those lie the fruits of labour that stop suffering and improve living conditions. Let them preach hard work to those who come to them for relief. Let them assure them (that is if they the prophets know and care) that the greatest teaching of every religion is love thy neighbour as thyself. If each and every compatriot, each and every woman, man and child would be taught to live and actually live by that ideal teaching, there will be no need to earn a living by ‘saying that (a specified thing) will happen into the future.’
All scriptures, Bible, Koran, Sanskrit, Mahabaratha and the others agree woman and man and child shall not live by bread alone.
All also prescribe hard work as how to please the worshipped. Anything else apart from these teachings would be selfish ways of earning a living often out of the suffering of the poorest and most vulnerable in society. When I whatsapped the message of the pictorial opulence of a pastor to a devout Christian colleague, the response was: ‘God knows it all. He judges the heart and its intents. Leave them to him.’
If I were the chief of all justice, I would mobilise my adjudicating team to establish special noise courts in every nook and corner of the motherland to save the hearing of innocent babies.
By Kwasi Ansu-Kyeremeh