Junkyard Blues

Chapter Seven

31 C Chapter Seven here had been a lot of talks about his future, ever since he left the university over four years ago. What all the “your future” talks were characteristic of was that they were always engineered by Derrick. And they were all centered around the short-cut approach, the easiest andfastest -means possible approach (an approach that history had proven time and again to be not so short). Derrick had a precise idea what he wanted him to become; another government worker, another complainer waiting for the end of the month on tip toes. Derrick could only see that future for him in his straight arrowed vision. “You already have a degree, all you need now is to get a job, a government job,” Derrick would tell him time and time again, “Forget all the stupidity you’ve in your head.” Just because he could not bear to see things the way I see them. If he does that then he’s no longer the all knowing, all controlling Derrick. He had his own plan for the future, had had that plan for years now. It was a simple, straight forward and economical plan (if somebody really cared to look at the real figures that were involved in finding yourself with a government job these days, or getting into a professional school with the hopes of having a job waiting for you after). The only problem was that Derrick had never seen the simplicity and practicality of the plan. To Derrick it was the effects of having a head up in the clouds, of dreaming about castles in the air while there were normal looking houses solidly planted on land. But going in for a post graduate degree was not any castles in the air. It was something that was practical, something that was worth the efforts, Jude knew it and that was what he wanted for his future, just a chance to go back to school and get himself a postgraduate degree. There were no loopholes involved in that; he did not have to oil somebody’s mouth and fill his pockets with cash and he did not need a godfather to do that. Just plain financial support and sacrifice (which was lacking seriously from the picture considering that Derrick could not see the value of it, and the fact that Derrick’s hands were now completely full with raising his own family). And he was very certain getting a job afterward was not going to be a big T 32 problem. Higher education establishments were popping up everyday around the country and they needed lecturers, so he was quite certain getting a job afterward was going to be a piece of cake. He could not foresee how any sensible person with a postgraduate degree in his pockets at the moment could lack something significant to do. Well, the ease at getting a job aside, that was his dream, his true ambitions, to get a postgraduate degree. All he ever wanted to do was go as far as it was humanly possible in his studies (and he had the brains for it, that he was certain). And that was enough. It was that simple vision that Derrick lacked, that simple ambition that Derrick thought was equivalent to building castles in the clouds. To Derrick what he needed was a job, whatever job that he could get, even if there was never going to be any satisfaction involved. “You can’t start choosing what you want in this country,” Derrick would say, “Thousands of people would die to get the chance you’re having.” And what that chance involved was one attempt after another to land a government job or to get into a professional school (Derrick’s grand alternative to going back to school to get a straight forward postgraduate degree). It had started immediately after he had graduated from the University of Buea with a BSc in Chemistry. He had written one recruitment examination into the public service after another (which were actually too few), one entrance examination after another to get into a professional school. And all that to no avail. Not that he had failed all of them. Actually he had passed most of them, but the issue was always the oral session of the examinations, the oral session that was always taking place after the results were out. The orals that had no purpose but for the officials to have their mouths...