I cannot count to save my skin!

If I had my way at school, I would have bypassed subjects that involve a lot of counting and adding up of letters altogether.

Misery loves company, or so they say, but I am sure I am definitely not alone on this one. Let me get a show of hands for how many of us can explain – in the most elementary terms – what 450% inflation of a total GDP of N$2.5 billion in gross earnings in market forces fluctuates at a 5:3 ratio… I thought so!

I mean, who really wants to know how long it takes to boil two eggs, or how long someone travelling between two places takes to reach his destination.

I mean, if one egg takes five minutes to boil, shouldn’t two eggs (even if they are boiled together) takes ten minutes to boil?

Do not get me wrong, it has not always been this love-hate relationship between arithmetic and I - there actually was a time that I cherished the subject.

For instance, if they ask me ‘how many birds will be left on a fence if a hunter shoots down one?’ The answer was plain simple - none! I know this from bird-hunting expeditions in my hey-day as a goat herder during school holidays.

Trust me, there is no way nine birds will be left at the same place where they just witnessed their mate falling prey to the wrath of a catapult. Well, according to arithmetic, the correct answer is nine.

As my relationship with arithmetic got stronger, I realised that arithmetic was not keeping its end of the bargain. The deal was to present problems that I could identify with - something like “if Charlie drives ten goats into the field in the morning, and returns home that evening with only five, how many would have been taken by the jackal?’

It would be easy to answer such a question because I would simply be counting the number of jackals I had to skin alive the next day! But I was instead presented with problems dealing with Eskimos, London Bridge and Broadway - things I knew nothing of.

I remember being presented with a problem that left some nasty cramps in my stomach, and a permanent dislike for mathematics et al. It went something like this; “Little John Cook rides to work on his bicycle every morning, and back every afternoon - a total distance of 40 km and usually takes 1 hour 30 minutes per trip. How far would he have travelled if he rides the same distance over two weeks, but resting at each 10 km interval? Also, assuming that little John has asthma - which means he will need to stop at least ten times more on a windy day to rest, how long will he take to reach his school on such day? Now, convert your answer to the nearest ten and simplify it. Show all your workings.”

That was it! I broke off the engagement with arithmetic, and never again did our paths cross. My bet is it probably warmed its way into some bespectacled and untidy dude in some lab - who would have probably embraced it, and they are now living happily ever after.

As I celebrate my freedom from arithmetic, I am now bombarded with a bunch of trivial figures that makes no sense at all. For instance, the fact that “10% of all car thieves are left-handed” made me wonder what it had to do with the price of bread in China!

Such random figures made me conclude that; since all dogs are animals, and all cats are animals; all dogs are therefore cats! Or if a total of 4 000 cans are opened around the world every second, and about ten babies are conceived around the world every second – it would mean that each time you open a can, you stand a 1 in 400 chance of falling pregnant!

So, when they say one in five people in sub-Saharan Africa are innumerate, I count my colleagues in the office from one to five and the fifth person is always….

Until then.

[email protected]