Topchop Enterprises Revisited

By Baba Galleh Jallow

Life had never been easy at Topchop Enterprises. The tradition, for those of our common townsfolk who worked there, was always to make do with available crumbs while the big shots at the top of the pyramid enjoyed their creamy fat. So it was no understatement to declare that one big turn served another.

Topchop Enterprises had had a turbulent past and a critical history. In the young days of the famous organization, when the proverbial milk still whitened its teeth, expectations were that in a couple of generations, all associated with Topchop Enterprises would be happy. Expectations were that Topchop, naturally meant to cater to the needs of all and sundry, would be the golden cow that produced the endless milk. Sadly enough, such lofty expectations proved a far cry from the unpleasant reality that was to characterize the rocky evolution of Topchop Enterprises. Rather than flow or even trickle down to wet the dry tongues of the common folks below, the abundant milk of the proverbial golden cow was instead harnessed and funneled upwards to fill and grease the fat cheeks of the top guns above.

As time moved forward, life at Topchop Enterprises moved backwards. The coffers grew lean and hungry, the accounts sunk deeper into the red, the books and files gathered dust on the musty shelves, and the staff, suffering from an extended period of lethargy, poverty and intellectual drought, spent their long hot days yawning and dozing on and off while the top guns, the privileged windbags perched at the top of the creamy pyramid, grew increasingly fat and lazy, and lost all capacity for positive thought and action. They all suffered form the 'jahaso' syndrome and grew increasingly myopic and confused. Some of them developed the squint eye syndrome, while some were diagnosed with the twitchy nose syndrome, which caused them to persistently sniff and twitch their noses in an attempt to smell some imagined rats out to get their secret pies. When rumors of an imminent takeover started circulating at Topchop Enterprises, the windbags were inconsolable in their hyper paranoia. They flew to and fro in great haste in frantic search of some powerful medicine to ward off the impending evil.

Among the many holders of the hungry positions below, these rumors had the exact opposite effect. They all grew increasingly and in some cases uncontrollable excited. Surely, if a new management took over business at Topchop Enterprises, the long awaited crumbs would start dropping to the hungry folks below. The creamy milk from the golden cow, long funneled upwards to further pump the already fat cheeks of the greedy money-bags, would finally start trickling if not flowing downwards to quench the thirst of the living-dead below. They all hoped and prayed for the imminent new dispensation that would eventually bring them some proverbial manna from heaven.

The long-awaited takeover did finally take place. A group of young entrepreneurs with lots of muscle took over Topchop Enterprises, sacked the entire top management, and launched an ambitious program of particular reorientation and consumption. They invited ideas from the entire staff and set up several review committees to investigate and report on what went wrong at Topchop Enterprises. It was, they declared to the excited hungry staff, the dawn of a brand new era; an era of countable transportacy and probing; an era of particular enlistment and the eradication of all forms of so-called honesty and truthfulness at Topchop Enterprises.

Such was the hopeful euphoria raised by the lucrative takeover of Topchop Enterprises by the dynamic Dr. Bigmouth Littlebrain. A self-made businessman, Dr. Bigmouth Littlebrain was a proud graduate of the prestigious University of No School. Before No School, he had attended the equally famous University of Herbally from where he clinched a Bachelor of Oats in Peanut Butter and a Master of Swords in Barking Techniques. He was widely reputed to be endowed with little sense and a dynastic skull that were certain to turn Topchop Enterprises into a new cow in the farm, a 'promise in the sky' among all the businesses in our little town.

For the unhappy workers of Topchop Enterprises, Dr. Bigmouth proved very bad news. Things actually grew from worse to worst at Topchop Enterprises. Dr. Bigmouth himself, ever the enterprising busy nest, soon made giant strides in self- improvement and aggrandizement. He soon owned several lucrative businesses and billions upon billions of dollars in foreign accounts. He imported camels from abroad and suddenly became a cultured connoisseur of rare giraffes and extinct ostriches which he imported from the East in large numbers to grace his personal farms. Formerly a thin, lean and hungry character, Dr. Bigmouth soon grew fat and obese, with rotund cheeks and froggy-eyes almost covered with excess fat from the abundant milk of the golden cow, which continued to be funneled upwards at an even greater rate. So fat did he grow that his face looked like a black mirror. Most unfortunately perhaps, Dr. Bigmouth soon developed a penchant for foul words, carefully chosen and habitually spat at his perceived business rivals and critics. It was said that his newfound abusive tendencies were fed by the fact that his little brain was being increasingly squeezed by the fat oozing from his head organs. It was just a matter of time before he lost whatever brain matter he had left in his dynastic skull.

And so for the common hungry folks below, with the exception of a growing number of shameless flunkies and brown noses, life at Topchop Enterprises grew harder and drier, much like the famed Kanilahi desert. They wondered when another management would take Topchop Enterprises from the greedy Dr. Bigmouth. They were convinced that no new management could possibly be worse that Dr. Bigmouth’s. His was simply ground zero.