UB Wall: The Pummelling and the Profits
Thulaganyo Jankie | Monday March 9, 2020 12:52
Just one part of the wall though – the one next to the circle. This is at the same level of fame as the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China.
Well, you might not have seen it on the hallowed lists of famous Walls. It is because the compilers slept on the job just when they were about to type UB Wall. Or because the network was lost as this list was compiled, I suspect, in a Third World country where electricity is incidental.
Whereas the Berlin Wall and Great Wall of China are more about protecting the contents, the UB wall is the antithesis of that because it is more famous for failing to protect the contents.
From the time the university was called UBLS (University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland), when the dance was ‘twist’ to modern-day twerkers, whenever month-end rolls in, the ill-fated wall receives a pummelling from unkind and uncompromising motorists who seem to have an agenda against the institution itself.
Alteezas, Honda Fits, Toyota Run Xs have petered right at the wall and if there is an insurance company that does not cover at least 23 claims annually courtesy of the wall then it is in not in business. In fact, this wall is a serious money-spinner and an industry has sprung up here. Panel beaters, builders, brickmakers, insurance companies, lawyers, tow trucks and hospitals are all beneficiaries.
I was reminded of a scene I witnessed some time ago when two motorists somehow inexplicably ended at the wall at the same time.
What was once a formidable brick wall was now a little row of mangled bricks which looked like an attempt to carry out a building practical at a vocational school with a questionably-qualified instructor.
Out stepped a cigarette-totting man.
His temper percolating like a hot cup of coffee, he hurled a fistful of abuse at the offending driver whose explanation drowned in a welter of swearing from the wronged man.
Sweating like a sinner in a church, the guilty driver cowed into a shell and sped away with what was left of his jalopy.
The maintenance department at the stricken university must be busier than a one-armed clown making balloon animals at a kids’ party.
What with having to do a job over and over and over and over again.
One imagines that there must be a special budget for putting back the wall together every month. One imagines there must be a whole committee specially constituted to attend to the wall whenever it is under distress.
This is the type of wall where the famous Humpty Dumpty (who once fell at the slightest gust of air, I suspect, and gave the King’s men and horses a whole project which signally failed like the Palapye Glass Project) cannot dare sit on.
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