Thursday, August 9, 2012

Mishaps of a Sanfuur

Sanfuur is a derogatory term given to university freshman. According to Jordan's paradigm, Sanfuur-Hood is characterized by naive thoughts and silly questions. The drivel comments that are usually made by sanfuurs are looked upon with pity and the clever remarks they come up with are intentionally neglected and if the sanfuur insists on his idea he is scornfully frowned upon. I once heard the word "sanfuur" traces its origins back to some cartoon show.
A Somali proverb goes "Geel laba Jir soo wada mar" which loosely translates to "every camel was once a suckling" 5 years ago, I myself - the senior – was a sanfuur, I was at the very bottom of the food chain, luckily I was one of the few sanfuurs that survived with no circulating funny anecdotes o
f their sanfuur-hood, How was that possible , well ""The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."~Einstein

We have many friends with riposte tales, Start with Hassan who fell for the cliché of "Fadal macaana"(فضل معانا) and followed our Omani neighbors ,with their bewilderment they served him a cold tea from the night before. On another occasion with the company of Mohamoud they went to the grocery store and they fell for another cliché "Khaliiha caleena"(خليها علينا) and they left without paying for what they have purchased.
But Kainun tops them all; He 'borrowed' a spoon from university, rubbed on a girl's hair with the watch of her mother and briefly stole a water bottle from some lady in the university cafeteria and many others. For a complete year I thought falafel contained meat Hence I was known to ingest and even gobble large quantities of falafel.

There are other apocryphal stories with anonymous protagonists like the guys who went to buy food seasonings (بهارات) and they didn't know what it was called therefore they went all the way to literally draw food seasonings on a piece of paper for the shopkeeper. How would you draw Seasonings! it beats me...

There are two ways to survive sanfuur-hood, first by being an obedient lackey "dhiidh" or by being fiercely independent anarchist and never hang around other sanfuurs, in order to prevail you should rub shoulders with the elite. Another important trick is to never ever share your mishaps with anyone "Hadal intuu afkaaga ku jiro ayuu amaano yahay" "thy words are yours, till you open thy mouth". ...

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