Dear Diary,
Welcome to the Munda wa Chitedze where ever y thing and anything is at peace, only at peace.
You see, at this time of the year, when we start hearing the Christmas carols, we get so many people asking for piece-work.
“I can help you drain the pig sty. You see I won’t need much, just something for Christmas,” a villager would say.
Another one can also dare: “The chitedze is ripe enough with the heat. But the rains will be here. Let me help you pick the mighty pods.”
Yes, days and weeks before Christmas, everyone is seeking money. Tell you what, banki m’khonde members are on each other’s necks.
Just for the askance, is this feeling of making a few bucks as we trod towards Christmas also a phenomenon in the corridors of the United Nations?
December is the human rights month. It is the time we look into the plight of people with disabilities. A time we reflect on Aids. We sit back to look deeply into those issues affecting the very core of our unalienable rights. The text in every Bill of Right must be treated with the sanctity it deserves.
But you see, the propensity to spend comes most in this month of December. Why do you think this is the only time balloons sell like hot cakes? There is no greater time for consumerism than the yuletide!
When you are too broke you think about consumerism and such superficial thoughts as the evils of social enterprises.
But, no one is ever broke towards Christmas. Like I said, most of those affiliated with the UN obviously reap a penny or two from the many days in the calendar.
In the civil society world, we will celebrate the days for the bucks that reduce our human dignity. We shout from chimney talks and posters: Look, some international organisation has brought us from the dungeon of barbarism so that we no longer relieve ourselves in the bush! Funny ha-ha and funny strange at the same time.
You see, loads of bricks and cement, heavy labour, paint and artisanship is wasted on exclaiming that someone has taught us how to dispose ourselves properly!
Wait a minute, you mean some international civ i l society organi sat i on should come here and pump in money to teach our girls and women how to properly handle their monthly cycle? Have we sunk so low as a people?
Look, what are aunties for? Money for Christmas.
Then there are others who like to travel abroad for Christmas. But there is another scarce lot that goes abroad to make money to celebrate Christmas. They can leave the comforts of their homes very early in the morning for the airport as it was their first flight.
But then, one thing is clear, it feels very bad when you are on a plane from, say, Abu Dhabi and then you are landing at the Kamuzu International Airport.
It feels really bad to see those grass thatched houses that are in real contrast from the Burj Khalifa that was obscuring your view for a few days. Then you see some houses whose roofs were taken away in the hurricane and you pray for more of the same so that come some time in September, you will be able to say: “Look it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t perform. Mother nature never loved me!”
You see, kouluka kadzatera. You see, burning benzene to buy petrol is just like selling a jalopy only to get yourself aboard a kabaza, that mdulamoyo.
Dear Diary, I have been long-winded, but hey I am thinking of entering into a government-to-government deal to be selling chitedze for teargas. That would work better than selling it to that US teargas manufacturer, Combined Systems, which produces enough tear gas to confuse a whole stadium into a pandemonium.
