When Game of Thrones is in its final season and you suddenly realize you’ve forgotten to watch even a single episode the entire eight years it’s been on, most people just call in to work then binge watch Netflix for a couple of days. Sure, sometimes you have to stretch to come up with an excuse you haven’t already used. I mean, how many times can Grandma die? But if you’re the president of an African nation, you conjure up a few rodents and reptiles and boom! You’re home for a month!
Just last week Liberian President George Weah packed up and headed to the house because two black snakes were seen in the building where he typically offices. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not faulting the guy. If even one snake of any color was spotted where I work, I’d burn the entire structure and three surrounding acres to the ground. The fact that I work from home does not change my decision matrix on that. But I’m not the president of anything, so maybe in his position, he could have scrambled the entire Liberian military to find the two snakes and relocate them to Nigeria. Seems they’ve got a rat problem and a couple extra snakes wouldn’t be a bad thing there.
Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari has just announced that he will be working from home for the next three months after rats damaged the furniture and air conditioning in his office. When the leader’s away, the rats will play after all. President Buhari has just spent the last three months “working” in the United Kingdom, and while he was away, the rats went full Mick-Jagger-hotel-room-remodel mode and trashed the joint. Or so he says. I’m not saying I’d be happy about rats in my office, but if you’re the president and you can’t get an exterminator out for three months, Nigeria may have bigger problems.
Closer to home, our own White House tends to battle cockroaches and rats. Donald Trump and Barack Obama have both fought flies because flies are obviously nonpartisan pests. But thro’ the perilous fight against rats, roaches, and biting flies, o’er the ramparts we watch’d, our president was still there. Which, right there, explains why we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. Now go on back to watching Netflix.
