Dizzying thoughts about the Third World

We are Third World people. Third as in three – class three. So there is a First, Second and then – there is a Third. There is no Fourth World, Fifth World, or Sixth World. We are among the vast collection in the bottom classification of the world. Or, they might have re-classified the worlds without telling us that Ghana’s status has long dropped from Third World way down to …….. Hmmm!

Here is how it all happened. When it was decided that we are in a ‘global village’, it was also quickly figured out that not all the villagers are of the same status. Some live in shacks without the dignity of toilets, some live in half-way houses, while some live in mansions. So quickly, classification was thought of as a clean necessity for demarcation.

So therefore at some point in time, purely out of self-interest and simple mathematical convenience buttered lavishly by greed, some spoilt white folks sat their ‘somewhere’ and chop-chopped the world into parts. And we made it way down on the totem pole of global village classification that marks progress (also known as under-development).

Third World people are mostly dark complexioned (as in black, dark brown, yellow). Looking at the world through the prism of economic geography reveals some fascinating trends. Most Third World folks have origins and/or live in the hot climate southern region of the globe. Well, even if they move away from the South to live in the North among First World people, they never dodge the third class status.

Africans who live in Europe and America carry the Third World badge. Likewise, the descendants of Africans who have never known Africa because their ancestors were grabbed, enslaved and yanked from our shores long ago and therefore are citizens of countries like Britain, Canada, America and Norway, are all considered Third World people.

But here is the freakish thing about the demarcations. The original inhabitants of lands conquered by First World people are also considered Third World. Take for instance, the native people of America, displaced and denied on their own land. Some live on poverty-stricken reservations. On every third Thursday of November, while America celebrates Thanksgiving Day (thanking God for the land), Native Americans mourn, almost invisibly, over their deep losses.

Third World people love colour, fun, music and dancing while others prefer the bland. You want some serious waste wriggling of carnival proportions? Don’t go to First World people. Go down to worlds below. There, amidst deprivation, you’ll witness side-splitting activities. Who says poverty is only misery? We Third World people live low but large, making merry as if in defiance of poverty.

Oh, Third World people know how to mourn. Chest-beating, tear-raining, crowd-gathering funerals are common because after all, it’s an opportunity for letting a good time roll. The waste-wriggling merry-making tendencies may explain the population explosion of the Third World in sharp contrast to the depleting populations in rich privileged countries. Someday, First World people would become endangered species and Third World people will take over the world, and have the last laugh.

But here is what makes these externally-determined classifications really troubling. As if it’s not enough to be categorized as last, we, on our own sorrowfully freakish terms, senselessly bear witness everyday to our Third World classification. We go out of our way, with such audacity, to give credence to the externally-imposed third, fourth or fifth class status.

Take Accra. Take Kumasi. Disorder galore! Filth galore! Lawlessness galore! Anyone can leave a broken down vehicle by any roadside and walk away and no one (repeat: no one) can say ‘tee’ about it. The vehicle is broken down and the supporting law is equally broken down. Any other vehicle could drive into it and see off unsuspecting people into the cold arms of their maker. Later, we have funerals with extravagant ‘gbonyo’ parties and accuse aging female relatives of witchcraft. On any approaching birthday, it strikes me that I’m swaggering my way toward the witchcraft club.

The way things are carried on in international relationships, you’ll think that First World streets are paved with gold, and for good effect, decorated with diamonds. But there are poor people there too, some incredibly stuck in stinky poverty with one-third-teeth lost, one-third-teeth rotten, and the remaining one-third-teeth in suspiciously shaky condition. In the USA, this category of desperately poor people is derogatorily referred to as ‘White-Trash.’

Despite this reality, Third World people go out of our way to entrench the sharp perceptions of inferiority to First World people. We take cups in ‘logoligi’ out-stretched hands to beg for drip-drip from affluent development honey. They give us financial help to either assuage historical guilt or to further cement their superiority. And with most of these Trojan-Horse offerings come ‘conditionalities’.

A feature of our toxic relationship is that some ‘White-Trash’ are sent over as mercenaries (Consultants) to ‘help’ solve our myriad problems. Usually, most of them know nothing about our problems. They are, as John Perkins has appropriately called, Economic Hit-Men (EHM) who scheme to re-colonize us to create a new world empire. The EHMs come for the money (lots of it). Usually, such people are nothing and will never amount to anything in their countries of origin.

We are like candles in the wind – sun-torched, rain-soaked and wind-blown. We’re in a deep hole and that truth should bring us to tears and awake in us, the will – no, the defiance to change directions. We are loosing (lost) whatever shred of grace remains after years of actual and perceived inferiority.

So, what to do? The most audacious will be to claim our space and cut off the apron strings from First World people. Third World people should go ‘cold-turkey’, meaning, abruptly cut off the begging relationship which has proved unhelpful. We should go way down to ground-zero of our nation-building and force ourselves to figure things out by ‘any means necessary’. Whenever they offer help, as they would, let’s say with deep pride, “No, thank you”.

And then, of course, we should clean up our acts – bring an end to all grades of foolishness in leadership and followership – national and individual, which we have excelled at for so long. The foolishness includes corruption/thievery, dependency, lawlessness, indiscipline and all others by which we send stench to the highest heavens. So far, whatever we’ve been doing have not worked and will not work. We’ve been layering several multi-sized layers of development over under-development with each forming a hard crust of impermeable and nonsensical layer that at times, is not even recognizable.

We probably should look up to good old libido and have more inter-world marriages to diffuse the classifications. Blacks should marry whites, yellow or whatever. A friend from Benin married a Chinese American from Hawaii. If you’re not ready to think outside the box, you’ll say that there’s something unnatural about their children that might confuse the Old Man Upstairs. The benefit is that we’ll diffuse the races. Then, after a while, no one can comfortably look down on another without looking down on him/her own self, the essential DNA.

Well, a bi-racial guy, Obama, is President of America, so probably, the world is already on the path to further scatter world and class demarcations. It’s all in the mix-mix.