Once upon a time there was an IDP. He had lived in a castle called State House. But when his father died, the family was displaced from there in tragic circumstances. For years he wandered in the wilderness, and eventually collapsed into an IDP camp called KANU. The senior IDP of the camp, Uncle Daniel, took care of him. When Uncle retired, he even proposed that Little Freedom, for that was the name of the IDP, take over as Chief, not just of the Camp, but also of the whole country. While waiting for this to happen, Little Freedom would kick off his own shoes and step into Uncle Daniel’s very big shoes, and stumble along merrily. All his family and sycophants clapped and said, “What a clever young man he is, he is.” Little Freedom thought that was a great lark. But when the elections came, the people voted not to resettle him in his old castle. He was homeless again.
After five years, Little Freedom left KANU camp and came to a camp called Place for Numerous Undesirables, (otherwise known as PNU). There he found refuge. They gave him a ministry. They also called him Deputy Pastor of Ministries (DPM). But the years were passing and he was no longer quite Little Freedom. He was Aging Freedom now, still an IDP, and not yet resettled. He began to get restless. He decided to find another camp which might help him regain his castle.
He joined a camp called KKK. He felt he had come home, even though he said he did not know what those initials stood for. But he found that the newspapers kept saying that KKK was a camp of hate, and illegal. Aging Freedom took fright and moved to another camp. It was known by the strange name of G7. Aging Freedom also did not know what G7 meant, though it sounded powerful. But Aging Freedom soon found Camp G7 overcrowded. He ran away.
As he wandered, lonely as a cloud, he passed a camp called Upset & Disgruntleds’ Forum (UDF). They said nice things about him and his money. So he came to live with them. They took him on picnics every weekend. He shared food and watermelons with them. He even took overseas trips to the Netherlands with them. But after a while he found that they would not do what he told them to. This had never happened to him when he had lived in the castle. Surprised by this, one day he quietly walked out of the camp.
Then all the clever people he had consorted with, came back and said “Let’s open a new camp and call it PNU Alliance (Power Not Unity Alliance). No one will know it is the old PNU, because it has such a different name.” But even Aging Freedom could see through this. He left.
He roamed the provinces but found no welcome from any of the registered IDP camps. Then, in one of the central provinces he found 57 MPs telling the newspapers, “We are meeting at golf clubs of note to set up a new camp. We’re going to call it Our Own Camp.” To him, they said, “Or even Aging Freedom Camp, because we are very loyal to you.” But when they kept saying this several weeks in a row and no nameboard of the party had been put up, much less the barbed wire fencing around an office, Aging Freedom decided he could not keep giving them money for the same items week after week, like those corrupt successive budgets in the finance ministry. While they were composing another praise poem in his honour and a fresh budget for the sign and the barbed wire, he walked out of the golf club and decided to play hard ball instead.
As he fled from this dark scene who should he bump into but Uncle Daniel. “Come back to the oldest IDP Camp of all, son,” said Uncle Daniel sweetly. “While we wait for you to be resettled by the government in your old castle, (and then do what we tell you to), this is the camp away from camp for you. Remember whose project you were in the first place. You can be a project again after all.” And Aging Freedom, remembering that being a project involved very little work, smiled into the news cameras, and said, “Why not?” This, friends, is the fate of all Intellectually Displaced Persons, (IDPs).
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