The Boatman
A scholar asked a boatman to row him across the river
The journey being long the scholar begun to blather
“Mr. Boatman,” he called out, “Let’s have a conversation.”
Self-serving and pompous he asked in eager anticipation
“Eh, Mr. Boatman, ever read poetry or erudite epics
Or sat down to study grammar and learn phonetics”
“No, I never did any of that”, the boatman answered
“I have no use for such and thus have never bothered”
The scholar said, “What a waste of life, that’s too bad”
“It’s useful to know the rules how exceedingly sad”
Just then the rickety boat crashed into a rock
The boatman turned to the scholar who was in shock
“Pardon my humble mind that to you must seem dim,
But, wise man, tell me, ever learned to swim?”
“No,” said the scholar, “I have immersed myself in thinking.”
“What a waste of life” said the boatman, “Alas, the boat is sinking.”
A story from the Middle East poeticised by yours truly.
4 comments
[...] Content Keyword RSS wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt [...]
I did a post recently about the stuff happening at home and the boat story probably says what I wanted to say better. Thanks for putting it up.
—-
And thanks for your kind points about the poem, mamashady.
I think this can act as a metaphor for our entire education system not only in Kenya and Africa but throughout the world. We teach and learn logarithms, fractions and about latent heat but there are no classes on how to have ideal relationships, or in Africa courses on how to survive when you can’t earn money. Education should be a reflection of society’s necessities. What we have at the moment is a society where education is a neccesity no matter how vacuos it is.
…
I laughed out loud the first time I read the story about the boatman, Mwangi, as I could relate it to a couple of people of people I knew quite well. I am glad to see the poem resonates with you too. Thanks, as usual, for stopping by.
[...] (huh, I guess I did have something to say today, I thought this post would be way shorter), reading this poem from Mshairi got me to thinking about the education system and so this is what I had to say after reading the [...]
Leave a Comment