For those of you who didn’t grow up in a slum or who didn’t go to a boarding school, you may not know what a Tambolo is
A tambolo is the tiny ant we call a soldier ant. It’s black, and some come with a variant that has a redhead.
They move in a single profile and in their thousands build tiny highways in d sand and bushes
They are always in a hurry usually to a dropped fruit which they surround in an orgy of feasting or whatever it is that they do
The striking thing about a Tambolo is its bite. The bite is annoyingly painful.
It can’t kill you even if the whole battalion bites your testicles.
It cannot harm you, cannot poison you. It can literally not do anything to you other than a momentary sting leaving you with hours of irritation and annoying discomfort.
The Tambolo is way below you in the hierarchy of life, it remains inconsequential as it doesn’t really add any value to your life
You can’t eat it, you can’t keep it as a pet, you can’t use it for work, you can’t really do anything with it but take the nearest broom to swath it and scatter its line amid tiny picks as it struggles to fight back
This is my life with one cross-eyed weasel; I have gone to jam in one WhatsApp group o.
Is he my friend? I wdnt say that? Met him once when his then-MD pointed him out by way of introduction after sealing a sponsorship deal
I didn’t know why the MD pointed him out since he didn’t have any input in the decision or was involved in any part of the project even though the nomenclature said otherwise
Since then, I see him here and there waddling across life in his weatherbeaten shoes, worn-out clothes and a clump of afro hair looking like a wandering pilgrim
This WhatsApp app group that I would soon leave have attracted the very best in the space
When I was invited, I went through the membership list and saw A list of people which made me quickly join
But it has been a journey through hell as a tiny minority take it upon themselves to be arrogantly obnoxious with the weasel tambolo playing the flute
Oh, you are arrogant, or you are an egomaniac, or you are just a marketer; you do not know theatre; you can’t say this. You can’t say that.
They chorus at my every post. Nothing I say or do makes sense to the 5people and the fights will go on for days ending in abuse and the cross-use of hateful words
The worse are the very distinguished who keep silent while the attempted glazing is going on.
The next are the ones who will come at me privately – ohh don’t mind them, you are correct, they are just being mean
And I wonder, if you can’t say this in public, why are you telling me privately
Of the most annoying is the cross-eyed Tambolo
His colleagues have some work and some pedigree to show but he is but a pilgrim
Jumping from one low-paying job to the other with long layoffs inbetween telling on his dowdy appearance
His voice is the tiniest in the horde of Melchizedek but the most annoying
The way he climbs on a perch of arrogance to take a swipe at me is unbelievably painful
They say ignore him, you are obviously bigger than him, and you are bringing yourself down to his level by engaging him but like a used condom, I just watch him very closely so he doesn’t burst and infect me with an incurable disease
His words sting, his assertions pain me and make my heart boil cos from his empty pedigree I really do not understand where or why he has given himself the audacity to speak
What’s App has democratized engagements, has levelled engagement and interactions and has thrown up multiple positives but one of the minor negatives is the opportunity it has given Vermins like this to remain abusive and cantankerous while playing to a gallery whose silence fuels his epochal stupidity
This person’s assertions like the sting of a Tambolo can’t touch me even in its mildest form, but pains me to high heavens because I really don’t see his pyramid of work that gives him the moral justification to climb on a pulpit to judge
What are his contributions? Where is his portfolio? Where are his writings…
This is not to say you need this to qualify to be a critic but if you critic with an arsenic tongue, you taunt, you water down hard work, you belittle stringent effort, you assume superiority, you abuse and you attempt to tear down all because you have been lurking within the periphery of an industry for aeons and as such you assume authority, then you must have something no matter how little to show for it.
I spent 4 hours in hellish traffic to go grant a five-minute interview on channels TV and posted the link on the group only for this vermin to tear it down with one line from his cheap phone
Not understanding of the issues raised it was a business discussion, he throws us back to 1999 when the issue wasnt the predominance or otherwise of Funding in theatre as against now when we are having just Bolanle’s Dear Kaffy showing during the easter period in a market with an estimated 2 m thespians looking for jobs.
If he and his neanderthals, cannot see the pre-eminence of funding in growing tbe space, then there is no more to say.
Last night, Bianca Odimegwu-Ojukwu went through an 18 page script, going through it word for word, line by line, with the hard-working director getting the amendments instantly, rewriting the script and getting the main actors awake to start regrouping immediately…
Then one Tambolo would now sit on his termitarium and throw up bile against such labour?
Where is this fool, when we take two flights in a day to Abuja to source funding
Where is this fool when we wrestle Chief Tokunbo Awolowo on the script of Awo and have to drive back to Lagos at midnight risking all that could go wrong on a Nigerian highway
Where is this fool when the curtain drops after Zik leaving me with a N32m debt
Does this fool even know that the highest ticket sales I have ever done is KSA – N6m after sbending over N60m
Does he even know that most times gate taking is a measly N50k after the hall is jampacked
Does he see the 230 actors who come out to audition for a place in a 20-slot project delineating the fact that there are no jobs for the thespian?
Please someone should hold down this Tambolo cos he is driving me to go after his source of livelihood
If he sees what the struggling actor who has only one job in a year and now has to do some other jobs to survive sees, just maybe he would respect what some of us are trying to do in the industry no matter how we do it
This Tambolo just doesn’t get it and his vituperations keep annoying me but not as annoying as the silence of a much more distinguished majority
I dey go buy Baygon
Thanks
Duke of Shomolu
