Why is a Chicken Crossing the Road ? (Part 1)

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            Riddles are proverbial questions aimed at provoking one into a precise line of thoughts. They are commonly found on the lips of sages, the elderly, teachers and fools. You are never really told what they mean – it is usually one of those ‘Go figure’ moments that ought to be followed by an ‘ahha’ moment. A riddle is a conveyor of an important message.     

            The setting is Lagos (Nigeria) on Old Ojo Road, just before Oyedeji Street – close to the Signal Barracks. It is a cloudless afternoon and the streets are just recovering from the bustling morning traffic i.e. the roads are not so busy. A fowl, far away from her designated poultry but well placed to be anyone’s dinner, can be seen strolling.

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The gallinaceous bird is strolling, basking in all her manumission and freewill. The world is hers and so is (the three metre wide) Old Ojo Road, the street on which she is striding so confidently. Fifty feet away from her bearing is an oncoming Volkswagen Passat, moving at 40km/h. Assume the fowl is at the middle of the road and the Passat doesn’t slow down, will the chicken make it to the other side of the road?

No, that is not the riddle here but there is another that invokes an existential train of thoughts. This riddle overlooks the possibility of a peril and acknowledges the need for an essence. It is a popular one – you have most likely heard it before: Why did the Chicken cross the road?

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No, that too is not the riddle here. The first riddle needs you to calculate the chicken’s chance of surviving. The second one suggests the chicken survived but wonders why she tried (the factual answer being: to get to the other side). Neither of these addresses the real issue here though.

            Give me a second to arouse your curiosity; or at least caution it. You know how in horror movies, a character is in a room downstairs and all of a sudden, he hears a frightening sound upstairs. More often than not, the character goes upstairs to see what’s up (and that flight of stairs end up being his last.) While he is going upstairs, what is the sane audience thinking?:

What could the sound be?

Will he survive?

Why did he decide to go up?

What sane person would actually go up?

✓

I am a

black man

human being and if there is anything my

blackness

humanity has taught me, it is to always make a one-eighty on any sight/sound/possibility of impending danger. It has also made it clear to me that if I see a crowd of people running in a direction, I shouldn’t ask any question; I must run along with them because they are obviously running away from danger, right? It seems like the sane thing to do, right? After all, I am not more than what I am - a mere and vulnerable human.

So then who cares if the chicken made it across the road or why she crossed the road? No one. What we really want to know is why, in the first place, is a chicken crossing the road? That is the riddle.

                                                                        ........ to be continued

- Tobi Nifesi