True story for laughs: The strange things we were taught about America in the sixties

Africans, like people in other regions of the world, are fascinated by things American – American showbiz, American sports and their superstars, American technology, and so forth. That fascination goes back several generations, at least as far back as the time when I was in high school in Africa in the sixties.

American history, geography and technology were integral part of our curriculum back then. But I found out many years after graduating from high school that some of the things that we were taught – I mean taught formally in class – about the United States were pure fantasies, science fiction sort of stuff.

In our Technology class taught in the equivalent of the U.S. 8th grade, the teacher told us that in American slaughterhouses, animals were not slaughtered with knives as was the case back then in Africa. Oh no, no way! America had passed that primitive stage, we learned.

Thanks to American sophisticated technology, the animals were placed at one end of an electrical chain, and seconds after a button was pushed, the meat came out neatly processed at another end of the chain, with the milk packed in sealed containers. Sometimes, we were taught, the milk could come out immediately as butter is so desired.

But wait that’s not all. If it happened that the result wasn’t exactly what the employee responsible for that chain had programmed – which could happen even in technologically-advanced America – all he had to do was push another button, and the animal would return alive to the beginning of the chain, so that the employee could start the process over again.

We listened, amazed, and took note, as the issue could come up in a quiz.