Once upon a time there was an IDP.
He had lived in a castle called State
House. But when his father died, the
family was displaced from there in
tragic circumstances. For years he
wandered in the wilderness, and
eventually collapsed into an IDP
camp called KANU. The senior IDP of
the camp, Uncle Daniel, took care of
him. When Uncle retired, he even
proposed that Little Freedom, for that
was the name of the IDP, take over as
Chief, not just of the Camp, but also
of the whole country. While waiting
for this to happen, Little Freedom
would kick off his own shoes and
step into Uncle Daniel’s very big
shoes, and stumble along merrily. All
his family and sycophants clapped
and said, “What a clever young man
he is, he is.” Little Freedom thought
that was a great lark. But when the
elections came, the people voted not
to resettle him in his old castle. He
was homeless again.
After five years, Little Freedom left
KANU camp and came to a camp
called Place for Numerous
Undesirables, (otherwise known as
PNU). There he found refuge. They
gave him a ministry. They also called
him Deputy Pastor of Ministries
(DPM) . But the years were passing
and he was no longer quite Little
Freedom. He was Aging Freedom
now, still an IDP, and not yet
resettled. He began to get restless. He
decided to find another camp which
might help him regain his castle.
He joined a camp called KKK. He felt
he had come home, even though he
said he did not know what those
initials stood for. But he found that
the newspapers kept saying that KKK
was a camp of hate, and illegal. Aging
Freedom took fright and moved to
another camp. It was known by the
strange name of G7 . Aging Freedom
also did not know what G7 meant,
though it sounded powerful. But
Aging Freedom soon found Camp G7
overcrowded. He ran away.
As he wandered, lonely as a cloud,
he passed a camp called Upset &
Disgruntleds’ Forum (UDF). They said
nice things about him and his money.
So he came to live with them. They
took him on picnics every weekend.
He shared food and watermelons
with them. He even took overseas
trips to the Netherlands with them.
But after a while he found that they
would not do what he told them to.
This had never happened to him
when he had lived in the castle.
Surprised by this, one day he quietly
walked out of the camp.
Then all the clever people he had
consorted with, came back and said
“Let’ s open a new camp and call it
PNU Alliance (Power Not Unity
Alliance). No one will know it is the
old PNU, because it has such a
different name.” But even Aging
Freedom could see through this. He
left.
He roamed the provinces but found
no welcome from any of the
registered IDP camps. Then, in one of
the central provinces he found 57
MPs telling the newspapers, “We are
meeting at golf clubs of note to set
up a new camp. We’re going to call it
Our Own Camp.” To him, they said,
“Or even Aging Freedom Camp,
because we are very loyal to you.”
But when they kept saying this
several weeks in a row and no
nameboard of the party had been
put up, much less the barbed wire
fencing around an office, Aging
Freedom decided he could not keep
giving them money for the same
items week after week, like those
corrupt successive budgets in the
finance ministry. While they were
composing another praise poem in
his honour and a fresh budget for
the sign and the barbed wire, he
walked out of the golf club and
decided to play hard ball instead.
As he fled from this dark scene who
should he bump into but Uncle
Daniel. “Come back to the oldest IDP
Camp of all, son,” said Uncle Daniel
sweetly. “While we wait for you to be
resettled by the government in your
old castle, (and then do what we tell
you to), this is the camp away from
camp for you. Remember whose
project you were in the first place.
You can be a project again after all.”
And Aging Freedom, remembering
that being a project involved very little
work, smiled into the news cameras,
and said, “Why not?” This, friends, is
the fate of all Intellectually Displaced
Persons, (IDPs) .