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    When Estate Guards Salutations Gets You Angry

    Once, I accompanied a friend to pick up a lady he was wooing. He drove a Jaguar that announced its imperious presence wherever he parked. After we hung out that evening and returned the lady to her home, something happened at the gate of her Estate.

    Three of the guards on duty went on a hailing spree; throwing all manner of obsequious hand gestures that would typically dilate the mind of my friend to unbuckle his wallet.

    I watched everything from the backseat, and smiled to myself. My friend was a generous person, but things like that irritated him a great deal.

    He cruised away from them as though they were not there. The lady looked at him with a mix of curiosity and disappointment.

    “Look at the type of salute they were giving you, both when you came in the afternoon and now, why didn’t you drop anything for them, haba?”

    “Does the Estate pay them?” My friend asked.

    “Yes, but you can still find them something,” she retorted.

    My friend made it clear that the security men weren’t entitled to a dime of his money for obvious reasons. First, if he had walked into the Estate without a car, he would not be getting the same treatment.

    Frankly also, those effusive ‘hailing’ from the security operatives was a courtesy of convenience. An action predicated to blackmail someone into parting with his money just for the fleeting satisfaction of his ego being momentarily massaged.

    When we left, my friend felt troubled by that incidence. He felt the lady’s sense of self was tied to the validation of others. Thus, she also needed him to tip the security operatives at the gate so she can keep an image of herself as a person dating a rich man.

    I tried to underplay the drama, insisting that it was no more a clash of worldviews and that the lady mustn’t be judged outside the society which we were all raised.

    My friend insisted though, that this alone showed a fundamental difference in their worldview and he does not trust that such gap in thinking can be easily bridged.

    He felt she might be the type to prod him to seek a loan tomorrow to throw a lavish party for the fleeting validation of being called ‘nwunye oga’, ‘big man wife’.

    The problem with any society where people are defined or define themselves by material possession(s) is that it becomes so easy for people to ruin themselves trying to fit into an illusion.

    If my friend tips every body that greets him obsequiously, he’d soon find himself needing to earn more money, possibly from unpalatable means, just to keep up the appearance. So many are trapped in this bubble, trying to fit an expectation they neither deserve nor created for themselves.

    When your ability to dole out money to the security guy at the estate gate determines how he salutes you, how courteous he relates to you, then such a society is in trouble.

    The putative consequences are that the security personnel at the estate gate is likely to let a gunman intrude the property and possibly commit a heinous crime because he could offer tips.

    On the other hand, an estate dweller who doesn’t own a car or drives a jalopy will not enjoy the same degree of courtesy from the same operatives.

    In the future, folks of weaker morals will delve into crime to attain the respect and courtesy extended to the rich. Thus, the security operative who prioritises tips over professional conduct will endanger the lives of those he’s tasked to protect.

    In time, the estate becomes an unliveable place. This is also why countries fail.

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