The word “fridge” has its roots not on its assumed extended version “refrigerator” but on the proprietary name “Frigidaire”, a company producing refrigerators in the 1920s.
The word “refrigerator” may be traced to two Latin forms: re (again) and frigerare (make cool), a derivative of frigus (cool or cold). A fridge is therefore the object that cools again and again…. The word frigid meaning very cold (in temperature) and unable to be sexually aroused has the same etymology as refrigerator.
And so it was when the news of the man and the fridge broke ÔÇô the man with eyes fixed to the heavens, from whence cometh his help ÔÇô that for a few moments I considered it all a lie.
Babegadikgang ka maaka! Ba ka bopela motho kgomo ya mmopa namane ya yone ra ba ra e kotela. How could the man purchase a P46000 fridge? But then the man didn’t deny the purchase of the fridge. He was just not in the know. The man didn’t know. He didn’t know the price of the fridge. He didn’t know the supplier of the fridge. He didn’t know the procedure that follows such purchases. He didn’t know what was newsworthy about the purchase of a fridge.
The bottom line is this: the man just didn’t know. What a frigid situation it is not to know. But again we must remember that the man did not really purchase the fridge. It was purchased for him. Someone thought the man needed a big fridge ÔÇô a fridge fit for an elephant. It is a big fridge for a big man who has faced a lot of heat recently.
A few months ago the man visited another man in Nigeria, a ile go ikopela dithapelo and again journalists made an issue out of it. What’s wrong with the man turning to the divine for help and for a blessing? Then there were “rubbish, false and without justification” allegations surrounding the man and the RTF Botswana company.
The claims were that there were clear instances of conflict of interest between the man and a company owned by his wife and brother. Tota fa motho a leka go itirela matshelo batho ba bo ba mo tsosetsa modumo jaana, a mme ke gone? Batswana ka lefufa! Then there were stories that mogatsa motlogolo wa the man was to investigate whether the man had done any impropriety in the allocation of tenders. You see the man is a good man and he has nothing to hide, he can even ask batlogolo to investigate him.
But someone somewhere thought the man needed a big fridge ÔÇô a big fridge fit for an elephant ÔÇô for there has been much heat directed at the man recently. The man needed a fridge to frigerare. But journalists like to make issues out of nothing.
So the man felt offended by these insinuations: “Don’t you have any important news to write about?” What is so important about the purchase of a fridge? Two things obviously; its price and the fact that it overshot the official budget for a minister’s kitchen items. But we must not miss how good the question is. “Don’t you have any important news to write about?” People are looting the country of millions elsewhere and you have the audacity to be following a stupid fridge story. Why not write about developments and the good harvest?
Why not write about the good relations between our country and England? But the man must also support the Right to Information Act so that people could unearth what he calls important news. So the matter is not really about the fridge per se.
The fridge has become a sad motif for what is wrong in Botswana’s landscape. Remember that part of the hot P5 million-plus robbed from Sir Seretse Khama International Airport on December 18, 2006 was found stacked in the refrigerator of Gaborone businessman Jeremiah Solomon Modise. In this case, as it was then, the fridge becomes important beyond the serving of refreshments.
The fridge becomes a platform from which questions of personal interest are raised. It becomes a unifying force between people who are fighting perceived corruption and conflict of interest and those reporters with a nose for impropriety. The fridge becomes a metaphor of impropriety in the allocation of tenders.
Through it, questions of whether a distinction can be made between a wife’s property and that of the husband may become fascinating. Through the fridge questions are asked if motlogolo can investigate malome impartially.
Through the fridge, people question whether a president can suspend his cousin motlogolo wa gagwe a santse a mo tlhotlhomisa. Through the fridge, questions of whether it is fine to have relatives dominating various government positions at the same time become interesting and pertinent. Through the fridge, people begin to consider the refrigerator government and wonder if the government cares about its people.
It has been said before that “The integrity of this country cannot be determined by one or two shootings.
Our image is not that fragile.” The fridge makes us ask bigger and broader questions of national interest. So before I go to bed tonight, I will gather my two boys and narrate to them the story of the man and the fridge.
I will tell them of the Latin etymology of fridge. I will also tell them that there are small fridges and big fridges; that there are expensive fridges and cheap fridges and that they equally do the job of cooling very well.
I will then ask them to imagine what could be cut up and put in a very large fridge. With a vivid childhood imagination, I wouldn’t be surprised if they answered, An elephant!
