Story of the Crabby Crabs – A Lesson for Silo Thinkers
Four o’clock on Thursdays meant that after a most boring two-hour lecture by someone whose name I could never pronounce, it was time for my half-hour lesson at one of my favorite places in Durban, the Westville North dumpsite. The owner of the dumpsite and incinerator, a retired university professor, was widely considered a mad man. Prof. Apofasi, the eighty-two-year-old Angolan might have been a little eccentric or maybe just simply insane, yet he was by far my most treasured teacher. We barely talked; most of the time I simply observed his experiments. And also did a bit of cleaning-up after him.
On this day I arrived just in time to find him lost in intrigue while silently observing two tin cans. One can was wide and shallow, and it contained four live crabs. The other was deep and narrow and it had about a dozen red-headed ants. Next to the cans was a piece of raw rotting flesh of what appeared to be fish.
The crabs in the shallow can, quickly raised their claws against each other in odium. Each time one of the crabs attempted to climb out of the can, possibly to get a bite of the fish, the others pulled it down. This went on for a while. Their exhausting war of containment become torturous for me to watch. Meanwhile, the afternoon sunshine remained unrelenting, heating the tin can and ensuring that the experience became more unbearable for the crustaceans.
And while the crabs squabbling dance got even more intense, the ants had easily climbed out of the heating can, made an invisible trail to the rotting flesh and were already strategizing on how to move this chunk of food to a place where it will not only nourish them but also others in their community.
At this point I got on my bike and rode off to Olivia’s. Her father never fancied those who arrive just when dinner is being served. “Come early, let’s talk about thot aircraft your class is pretending to build,” he would request.
The following day, I visited Apofasi at noon. I found him seated on a traditional wooden stool at a corner of the dumpsite. And since I could neither understand what he was drawing nor see the people he was speaking to, I decided to go check the two tin cans.
I was pleased to find that the ants had moved the flesh to a nearby ant hill. But I was utterly astonished to find that the four crabs had been tactfully subdued and dismembered, by a growing team of ant warriors, into manageable and consumable pieces.
A clear trail had been formed from where the cans were. And like mature scouts, each ant seemed certain of its role. Grab a piece of the crabby-crab, follow “rotting fish flesh” highway, under red-head ant security and drop the goodies into the eager depths of anthill bank.
“Hey bhuti,” Apofasi shouted “how fast can you ride your bike with a broken chain?”
There were questions from Apofasi I never answered. I would let them simply swirl in my mind. And this was one of them.
Meanwhile, I found myself reflecting on the self-destructive behavior of the crabs.
I also can’t help but reflect on why 75% of East Africa’s private sector organizations in 2024 delivered less than 35% of their expectations. And why government-based organizations productivity in 2023-2024 in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda & Tanzania) remained estimated at less than 12% of expectations. (C-Wise Survey 2024)
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