One for the New Year.

Season greetings.

This post comes a bit earlier than Friday because its content is supposed to be applied and used before Friday comes.

In the previous post (which this one follows up) I shared about the importance of taking stock based on the goals that were set and plans that were made prior to the start of the year. For those that actually had the goals set, that might have come in handy but I do not think we would be truthful to say the same about the one who did not set goals for the year.

Though not “logically chronological” this comes as a follow up from the December 25 post. This is about putting something together for 2016 and hopefully when we talk about taking stock of the year on Friday the 23rd December, 2016, this should make the reference points.

So…

How do you plan for the year? Not too complicated. Some of you might have read my article titled Goal Setting in Four Questions and planning for the year doesn’t go too far from that. Addition of few specifics to the content of that article will be sufficient.

To begin with, setting goals and planning for the year is primarily meant to give a person direction as opposed to initiating radical changes. This is why I would recommend setting goals and carefully planning them out as opposed to having New Year resolutions (which tend to be radical and unrealistic most times from observation and experience). It is about setting a bar for your reach or progress, based on your abilities and potential. The fact that potential has been factored into this means you can aim higher and stretch yourself where you can to do greater things that you have previously done. It is all possible.

To get to the how of this all, firstly you need to have dreams for the year. This is about what you want in the next year, and it has to encompass all the dimensions of life; career, academics, spirituality, social life, finances, ministry etc. clearly define what you want to achieve in the year in all these aspects and put them on paper, giving clear detail to each element. Of note is that it is important to put an umbrella goal if you can. By doing this, you can sum up all the “sub-goals” in the different aspects of life into one “theme” to be governing the pursuit of all the goals.
Next on the line is the setting of timelines on the goals. As already said, the planning that is being done is that for the year. While the fact that all the goals have to be spread through the period of at least a year stands, it is also important to give timelines to each individual goal. Some of the goals will require more time that others so it is important to allocate enough time to all goals while making sure that you are not allocating too much time to each as you can use the free time after accomplishing goals to work on other goals. Of note is the fact that some goals are subsets of others, so it is good to divide the time properly and in line with the overall goal.

Allocation of time to a goal goes in line with planning for it. You need to look at how a particular dream will be realized with as much detail as possible. It is important to pre-view how the goal will be achieved and with what resources. In this part, attention should also be paid to who may help in the plan and what it will take to take them on board. This is an important part that is skipped after we have drawn all our aspirations on paper but we should come to terms with the fact that achieving goals takes an effort.
Through these steps, there should be an element of writing down. As already stated, there has to be a reference point when you are taking stock of how much you have achieved over time and written goals come in handy in that time. I personally would recommend a proper hard notepad as opposed to some application in a computer, smart phone or tablet.

Having dreamt set goals, planned and written all the stuff for the year, it will be time to set out and do it. Yet another stage that separates the successful and those who are not. It is good to commit to these goals and to make sure that they are pursuit and reviewed on a regular basis. There might be some setbacks, but those should be taken as stepping stones and not stumbling blocks. Where necessary, you might need to move from your comfort zone (not overstretching, though) to get to the goals.

Another important thing to consider while setting these goals is the fact that yearly goals need to be consistent with major life and long term goals. Let the goals for the year be the ones that if achieved will take you a step closer to the person you want to be in 10 or 20 years. Researchers observed that achieving little goals fuels a person to work towards the bigger goals so it is of vital importance to have long and short term goals that are synchronized.

To all who have read this, I prescribe a diary for the year 2016. It is important to plan each month to the week, each week to the day and each day to the minute if possible; and of course to adhere to it. Takes time to get accustomed, but it is worth the try and the benefits cannot be overemphasized.

Summary? Set goals and make plans for next year, and not resolutions.

Wishing you, wonderful reader, a prosperous 2016 in its literal sense. May  all you write in your  “planner” for the year be realized before December 31, 2016.

Keep reading the articles next year.

25th December; How Special?

25th December, 2015. Very special day. Of course as a proud Christian, this is the day we commemorate the birth of our LORD, Jesus Christ.

For fellow Christians, this should be a point of reflection. Jesus Christ, brought positive change in this world and that is what each one of His followers should be doing on a daily basis. It should also be a point of reflection and self examination about our readiness for His second coming and as to whether we are having personal encounters with the Jesus who made himself available to everyone in His Earthly journey.

Oh. Was about to turn it into a homily (that's the Catholic word for "sermon"). The whole point of this article was of course about how special the 25th of December is. Apart from this day being Christmas Day, it also marks the beginning of the last week of the year because in exactly one week it will be New Year's day (I hope I won't get a Mathematician counterarguing this in the comments). If you look at things the same way I do, you will discover that this is worth some attention.

End of the year. Again another time for reflection on how much progress has been made over the year compared against the preset goals for the year. I am hoping that the esteemed reader had some goals set for the year 2015.

There are some who are not yet in the habit of this sort of self evaluation. Contrary to talking about how bad lack of self evaluation is, I will talk about the benefits of its use.

The main benefit of course is that this whole exercise give life some sort of direction for the coming year. No fancy explanation for that. And of course the Author of Psalm 90 pleaded with the LORD that He teaches us to number our days so that we may be wise. It is therefore wise to use the calendar as a landmark when setting goals and planning (and yes, they are not the same).

Again, this whole post assumes that people have been setting goals, because of late I have noted that many of us do actually like to set goals. The element that lacks on the other hand is that of evaluation. At the end of the day, what happens (without evaluation) is the people go on and re-set the same unfulfilled goals without taking a look at why they were not achieved.

So how do we go about it?

First it is about going through the written goals that were set probably in December, last year and their deadlines. The next step is to separate the fulfilled ones from the unfulfilled ones.

For the achieved goals, it is worth reflecting on the experience on how you achieved them especially on the  "how" part. This is important as it is something that can be built on in the next period of time in which you will execute plans for certain goals.

For the goals not achieved, evaluation is equally if not more important. In this case, it is good to look at what went wrong between the setting of the goal to its realization. This, again will help with the planning as it helps with adjustment towards the achievement of the goals. Worth noting is that thus can also help you seek guidance from people who have previously achieved similar goals or are knowledgeable on the same.

This evaluation is important as it is a vital element of setting goals for the next year.

Anyway. Its Christmas Day and my Whatsapp is flooding with messages. Yours too, probably, so I shouldn't keep you reading.

I hope you all had a wonderful day and that you did not take Christ out of the Christmas.

Merry Christmas from Richie.

I will leave the New Year in peace for now. No rushing.

Clean Malawi, but whose responsibility is it?

I have been blasted left and right for not posting the Friday update last week. Napepe achakulungwa. I got tied up with things. Anyway. That is just an excuse but here I am, making up for my sins.

Being on holiday, I had to go home and to be in "Malawi-proper". I am not trying to boast about the place I spend much of my time at (the College of Medicine) but I think that place takes a person away from the realities in our country. I mean, there are no blackouts that side. How can that be the real Malawi?

There has been one striking difference between the inside of COM and the outside that I have noticed now than ever before and that is about the level of cleanliness.

In as much as the city of Blantyre has improved on the looks litterwise, I still think we have a long way to go. It is not strange to see pieces of paper, plastics and bottles on the streets. Things that are obviously not supposed to be there. The other thing you will not expect to find, but will find is that expensive take away box. The sort of box you get from Malawi Sun Hotel. It will be just on the roadside, a car window throw away from the side of the road. I until now get it as to why someone in their right mind (and we are talking about someone who can manage an expensive take away outlet here) would choose to toss a box over the window anywhere in the middle of the city's central business district (I studied some town planning too).

In the peripheries of the city there is this bad habit of throwing all the household refuse in the rivers or on riversides, and not only is this going unpunished, but I might be the first person speaking about it which means that people are not. I am told we have organizations that advocate for care of the environment, though. How ironic!

That is the problem at hand, and again it is man made. As per tradition, we need to find someone to blame, but before we go to Noel Chalamanda and his council or whoever is managing councils elsewhere (I don't think the problem is limited to Blantyre), I think we all have a part in this mess.

In the first place, our cities are plagued by the intolerable habit of throwing litter everywhere. The unfortunate part about this is that this seems to be done by everyone including the very people we consider educated and smart. For some reason, we Malawians like eating but we do not like to sit down for it, so when we get whatever food in out plastic bags or lunch boxes, the pack goes where the food ends. That is the same with remains of fruit and chimanga chootcha we eat in town.

When it comes to garbage from the homes, the river seems to be the conventional place for emptying bins in the townships. Some who find the river too far have gone to the extent of throwing litter on dirt roads, claiming to be covering potholes.

While acknowledging that we have been irresponsible with the way we manage our waste at individual and household level, our city councils have not done a good job in collecting refuse. Most of the townships do not have points where waste can be collected. This gives me a feeling that somehow as a nation we are not serious about waste management and we might keep having this problem of people throwing their waste in places where waste is not supposed to be found.

The whole issue of household waste management might be hard to address at Richie Online level, but I think we can sort out this issue of littering everywhere with majumbo a chips and take away boxes. We actually do not need a first lady to tell us these things. We just need to change our mindsets to the "bin it, don't toss it" mode. I don't think it is too much to ask for to everyone who has been bright enough to read this article. You probably should share it with a couple of friends before we make T-shirts for the "Bin it, don't toss it" campaign. It could be funded, right?

To sum it up, we have been talking of tourism and all, but that cannot work if we keep having dirty cities and district centers. I am only focusing on the looks of our towns here and I don't have to talk about the diseases that can be avoided if we were to avoid some of the malpractices we have always been into.

In short...

Don't litter anywhere and throw your household waste at the best place possible to avoid causing harm to others.

This whole thing of just throwing half consumed mango seeds and cassava peels along Victoria Avenue has to stop. What is it with us and eating because we have seen food while walking in town, anyway?

Zichepe ndipo zitheretu. Let us keep our cities and residences clean.

Merry Christmas!

One for ESCOM

This week, like the rest of the COM community I had some exam. One of the implications of writing an exam was that I had to ration my movie and music consumption to make time for studies. Reasonable. What I was thinking was that I would have time to compensate on that when I go for the holidays (I know some are frowning because they expect me to be breading some Robert Kiyosaki book). Just for the relaxation. Those were the very thoughts that made me leave for home barely two hours after getting out of an exam room. Sounds like a reasonable plan to make, but it took me less than a minute (into my arrival at home) to realize that I made the right plan in the wrong country.

Those who know me have always known me as a Zomba boy, but I just recently moved from the former capital to the commercial capital. Well. Not the heart of it, but rather some peripheral part. I am now based in Lunzu. Fair town, if you think of it. Big enough not to be boring and small enough to be navigable. If you know what I mean.

I am told that my parents were staying here when I was born. Can't remember much from that time because its too far back, and as such I know very little about this town. Save for the little I hear from half baked local songs about the night life here of course. The plan, therefore, was to come here, lock myself up and watch my movies, as already said. Of course I do have friends here, but some are working and... Well, let's just say are unpredictable. When I arrived, the town was unusually silent. Well. I obviously knew that something had gone wrong and ESCOM had done their usual thing.

That was the moment I had a reality check and welcomed myself to "Malawi Proper". Ever since I joined college, this whole thing of getting used to power outages left me because I can only count 6 of those in my 5 years of college. Now there I was, into one and when I asked around, people told me that I should not be worried because "when the power goes out like that" it comes back at around 8 pm. Sounded like they were okay with it, from the way they said it. I am not sure whether it is that they don't use the power that much or that they have just gotten used to it that it has become a normal thing. Either way, something is seriously wrong and it needs to be addressed promptly.

The body responsible for providing power to us is not doing a good job and that is a well known fact. They had the slogan "power all day everyday" but incompetence forced them to prefix it with the word "towards". That was justified and if they are thinking in the same lines, they might as well think of changing it. The reason is simply that there has not been a single improvement and worse still these power outages have been getting worse by the day which renders the word "towards" an overambitious addition.

I understand there is a boss at ESCOM. Possibly there is a board governing it and as a parastatal there is some sort of government involvement in the operations. This is what makes me puzzled as to why there is gross regression in the service provision for which no one has been "sorted out". Someone is being irresponsible here.

From my basic understanding, ESCOM is supposed to be a combination of the technical staff (electrical engineers) and management along with other support stuff. From the look of things, it is only the support part working while the technical people are not, in shallow terms. In other words, the management are working on a lot of "improvements" like hiking the rates of the power while the technicians haven't worked on improving the power with a single megawatt or whatever the unit is.

My question? Where is the ministry of energy (trying to avoid the minister, there)?

Can't talk about the minister's boss, because he recently told us to bear with ESCOM. Yes. The very man who talks of bringing investors in the country. One would if the investors would bear with ESCOM too.

Some Indian business tycoon once told me some reasons for the failure of our parastatals. He said that the first one was lack of political will and the other was that they are being run by lazy Malawians. Maybe we should magufulify ESCOM and fire some few guys (FIRE and not transfer to another parastatal). Or maybe its the issue of leadership which we can't do anything about... At least in the next 10 years (I don't see any good leader rising up that soon).

If you think of it, it might be our dependence on ESCOM that has left us this disappointed and writing about power in our social media and blogs. Perhaps we needed some alternatives, in the name of private companies that could provide us with power. It would probably be more expensive, but at least we would have it for at least 20 hours if not 24 of the day. Someone needs to fill the paperwork for that one.

All in all, I think our cooperation has failed us big time. In my new home, I have seen people adapting and barbershops are still open, on power from generators. I should probably just get my own "gen set" instead of complaining, but should we be struggling to have something as basic as electricity when we pay good money for it? Gadaffi used to give that to his citizens for free for goodness sake.

Blantyre Water Board. I also found dry taps here. I am watching you.

Lesson? Brace yourselves. You might not have the electricity for dancing to Great Angels Choir and Skelewu on New Year's Day. Prepare for it and don't complain because I have warned you, not in the capacity of a prophet, but someone who knows a thing probability.

Of Leaders and their Comparison

One of the people from whose words I draw wisdom, the late Dr Myles Munroe, once gave a sermon on unnecessary comparison. He talked of the situation in which someone driving a good Toyota Corolla which is normally functional begins to feel bad about it upon seeing someone passing by in an AMG Mercedes Benz. I added the car brands myself but the point he was making was that sometimes people desire some material posessions when they have other materials that work as well.

So where is this leading to pachisanu ngati pano? Well. Today management, for some reason has decided to compare two people; one who was on a BBC interview recently and the other who was in the streets shoving rubbish in a bid to have a clean city. Does that ring a bell?

Yes. Leadership. I am told that in Malawi there is a general outcry that there is lack of direction from our first citizen. While that is happening, Tanzanians happen to have found a leader who is being impressive and has gained a bit of a spectacle from the rest of Africa and beyond; John Pombe Magufuli. Guess what has happened? Malawians have joined the world of people who have taken it to the social media to praise worship Magufuli and to talk about how much we need a leader like him. Bad? Obviously not. I am in fact one of the people who took it up to Twitter with the #WhatWouldMagufuliDo hashtag. Some of these things are just fun but I have just noticed that some of the people are taking this too seriously and blowing it out of proportion.

To begin with, our president. He recently found himself on an interview she had on BBC's Hard Talk. On the overall, people have commented that the interview was a disaster. I better not comment on that but having listened to it, the president mentioned a couple of important points. Some I have forgotten but the one that struck me was the fact that he acknowledged that aid is not the way to go and we need to move towards having our own resources. Well. Good talk, and I hope it is not just a cheap talk.

Then came the part I partially agree with; the fact that we need some transitional period between the current state of donor dependency and complete independence from donors, and that farm diversification will do the trick. Well. Those were half truths we have learnt to believe in over years. Better not comment on that. You know how those things work, if you really are interested in your country.

Of course then came the part I totally disagree with; the one of blaming the predecessor on almost all things that have gone wrong in this country's economy. With all due respect to our leader I just find that wrong. No need for emphasis on that.

Again, one thing HE said was that we might move from the current situation to a better one in 5 years. Well. I think that that is an overstatement. I know how short 5 years is. I have spent 5 years and 6 days in college and I don't yet have a degree so I don't think it is reasonable to talk about 5 years as a period to resuscitate a nation in a crisis (or is it a dilemma?).

It is not surprising, then, that in the wake of this Malawians have joined the choir of Magufuli praise worshipers. The thing that we know but forget to ignore is that we can never have him be our ruler and that we may as well not have someone exactly like him. If we had him we would probably be swearing at him, anyway, because we are not used to doing business the unusual way. We probably have already insulted one or two leaders for doing that.

If you look at what Magufuli has done to get the world sick with this Magufuli fever, some who are too critical thinking would call it "pulling off a stunt". He paid surprise visits to places and sacked people who were responsible for things that were not working well (as opposed to some staged "surprise" visits). He has set up austerity measures so that they can spend less and he has worked on the ground with his people in trying to make sure that the cities are clean. Stunt or not, I take that as something impressive and the hype is somehow justifiable.

The question I am asking myself, however is that of whether we have to be excited about this son of Africa who is doing business in a very unusual manner. Could it be some "Bingu's first term" phenomenon? Maybe yes. Maybe not. All I know is that the man seems to know what he is doing but for the many that read this blog, you and I have our APM to sort out. It is either we deal with him (the unlikely) or learn to deal with what his leadership brings on us (the recommended).

In the introduction I talked of comparison. Well. Yes. We are in the Corolla and I am not saying that ours is fully functional. It might have a couple of flaws but as long as we cannot afford a Merc, I guess we have to hold our peace (or maybe fix it) and try to work out with what we have till the time when we can afford our own better thing. Crying over Magufuli will not help us in any way and yes, no one is coming to magufulify the nation. As for our leader, let us bear with him. He is not the first leader to have issues, is he? You have issues too, so why should you point to him?

Having said this, I would like to quote some pastor who said that our problems as a nation will not be sorted by the current generation of leaders, because they think at the same level where the problems were created. Very true, in my sense.

So what do we need? Someone who thinks at a different level. Might not be level Magufuli, but a different level. The Tanzanian leader has gained higher ratings by being different in the positive way and that is one thing that all those who desire to lead this country should have; an idea of what they want this place to be like and the courage to make some radical changes to make it so. You could be the one, so think of one positive thing you could learn from these leaders in Africa, the Kagames and the Magufulis.

On the other hand, I think it is time to sit down and observe what happens in Tanzania and see where they go with the new leadership. I am not saying the new president will nosedive into a crisis, but I think it might be too early to be over praising him this much.

Probably not as important as the last four articles, but sometimes we need to read and write for the fun of it, do we not?

Anyway. I shouldn't spend much time here. Got exams around the corner and I am done commenting on comments.

Nice weekend, and yes. Magufuli is overrated. Oh! Might be overrated.

The Industry: Ready?

Yet another Friday and this one is exciting and I must say this Friday comes after a nice week for many reasons.

So what do we have on the table? Some few insights about the industry, of course.
Some of you might have noted that my writing is biased towards the intellectual in college and the young graduate. I must say that this is not an atypical piece.

This whole thing is based on the experience I had some time earlier this year. I happened to be in a group of intellectuals, some from my home called COM and others from some other college of the University of Malawi which I will not mention for the fear of losing my teeth.

After we had discussed whatever we were discussing, I happened to have a chat with some of them just to see what their thoughts were about life after school.
Of note is that by then I had just been introduced to the whole goal setting business and I was so zealous about sharing it. I was doing it for their good anyway, because as of me, I had my life after school sorted. I knew I was going to be employed two months after graduating but these fellas did not have a guaranteed job, anyway, so being the me that I am, I wanted to have some thought provoking chat with them. Which went well…

To avoid giving too much information, these people had brilliant dreams. They thought of life after college (the so called industry) as rosy. Actually one of them wanted to work in a top government post while the other wanted to be an investment banker. Fancy stuff. The chat was all good until I asked as to what they were doing at that moment to achieve their dreams. I must say I was not impressed by the answers I got.

I need to mention that these were final year students who were just months from graduating but when I asked them what they were doing to make what they wanted happen, they told me of the things they thought they would do in the very life after college I was asking about.

Well. I will stop blaming them for now, but I must point out that this is not a strange picture among young people. I once had a discussion with one Michael Ndimbo about how young people can spend hours talking about how someone has a nice fleet of cars without questioning as to how he might have acquired them or most importantly thinking about it.

To get back to the case of the typical intellectual, most of us go to college by convenience, probably taken for the program that was our third choice or being redirected altogether. When we get in college, what we do is to thank God for the opportunity (not saying it is a bad thing to do so) and forget that the opportunity was given for us to make something out of. End result? We go into our programs for years or more without thinking of plan B let alone plan A of our lives in preparation of the future ahead of us. In other ways, most of us hardly have career paths.

The thing being advocated for here is that of taking action right from the start other than leaving things to fate but on the other hand it has to be pointed out that people need to know what they want to become to pursue it. Well. That has probably been said here a couple of times so I will go back to the subject of the day.

If you fancy a nice job in this world of rampant unemployment, there is an obvious cost to it. There will be multitudes scrambling for the same nice job but the question you have to ask yourself and that should prompt action should be that of what you will do to make sure that the employer gives you the job even if there were thousands going for it; the sort of thing that would make you stand out.
Nowadays the belief is that the first degree is not enough so most of us think in terms of doing our postgraduate training as immediately as we can. Again what we forget that postgraduate training takes some money and effort and it is almost not feasible to pay as a young graduate; which of course entails the need for a scholarship. These scholarships we are talking about also do have their conditions and chances that people will be crowding all over them. Again, the question that comes is what you are doing to make sure you stand out among the many who want the same opportunity you want.

If you begin to think about how competitive the so called industry is, the need for proactivity in college period becomes obvious and nothing near unnecessary. Again the problem is that most of us do not see the need for leaving the present to do something for the future, sometimes because we don’t care and the other times because we do not take some time to think about the future.

The two scenarios sound a bit selfish for someone who says they want to make an impact, but even that requires a preparation. You need some sort of preparation and the right skills and knowledge to impact lives. Probably a team too so the connections do matter on this one.

Now that a kubanja kwa a Kamwezi has spelled this out on a Friday evening, are you willing to begin thinking about the future? Are you willing to plan and map out your career? Will you have that fixed aspiration and begin to work towards it in a focused way? The grades. The CV. The connections. How are these aligned towards making you the person that you want to be in the near future and beyond?

Don’t get surprised by things that do not have to surprise you, remember?

I hope you are ready for what is called the industry or that at least you will be when you get there.

Complete Workmanship

Friday again. Usually having to write the update is not a thing that gives me a headache but for this time alone, it is a bit of an issue. It of course, is because I happen to be on a 24 hour duty call at the Gogo Chatinkha Maternity Wing. Showed up in this hole at 6:00 am and I will be leaving tomorrow at around 8 or 9. That's is what makes life fun as a medical student.

Being in the middle of where the work is, I could not think of any other thing than workmanship. I always try to think of ways of fixing our man made issues and I think one of the issues that are hindering development is the issue of lack of workmanship.

I once had a chance to chat with Mr Sharma or Sharma Industries and he happened to sharehis hiring policy with me.. He told me as to how he doesn't like giving a certain nationality big jobs because of their tendency of working with their eyes on the clock, always waiting for 5 pm to knock off without thinking about what the implications of leaving will be on the productivity. Mike Mkali also echoed the same when he was asked about what sort of employee he wants to have. He clearly said that most business owners nowadays would rather have partners than employees because employees are mostly concerned with how they can benefit from entities rather than how companies or organizations can benefit from them.

Well. We have a starting point. I am sure that many would identify with what I am talking about here. Probably some of us are in the same spirit of taking jobs just as a means of survival other than a way of making a difference. Most of us are not in our dream careers, anyway and we get to wonder as to why we should care about the interests of the employer, who probably doesn't care about our interests.

If you look at the root cause of the whole thing, it might arise from something as deep as our very school system, but I do not think that explaining that would be good for a Friday update. To offer a better explanation, I would say that this lack of workmanship comes from lack of responsibility among intellectuals.

To prove a point, I would like to point out that for someone to be a complete workman, there are four important elements that have to be present namely proper skills, proper knowledge, right attitude and motivation.

Proper knowledge. I like to think of every field as a language. When a person is studying engineering or medicine, what they firstly have to do before they go into the field is to understand a new set of terms and the sort of communication mode the people use in the new field. Vital. Everyone needs to have this theoretical knowledge and that is why we are spending so much time in colleges and other training institutions memorizing books. Tough but necessary. It's for the knowledge because impractical as it may seem, it comes in handy sometime later.

Skills? Of course this is the application of the knowledge into something a bit more tangible and meaningful. Skill is more or less like the field application of the knowledge and this is very important in the actual work. I personally believe that knowledge without skills is almost useless, unless if you are otherwise in the academic circles.

Attitude. Now this is one element that a lot of us have been missing. Most of our trainings have been focusing on developing skills and knowledge without any emphasis on attitude and this gas affected almost all the other elements. People have gone into fields of study and work that are ideally interesting but failed to make achievement because of attitude issues. Ill attitude directed towards work, people at work and everything to do with work leads to poor yield of work and if you look at things in retrospect, bad attitude towards education leads to poor skills and knowledge, again leading to poor workmanship.

To the last point of motivation. This is the word that has been grossly misdefined to the extent that people don't get it for what it is. Others have twisted while others have narrowed it's very meaning. The point, however, is that motivation is just the drive that keeps a person doing something. The interesting bit is that the problem we have is not lack of motivation, but rather that people do not have sustained sources of motivation. To be blunt, most of us work for money and do not look beyond it for our source of drive. That is why some people go into a workplace and do not hesitate to steal at the first access to resources. That is the very reason some people move from job to job, doing the very things that are against their convictions. Poor sources of motivation.

Having pointed out the problem, it is time to suggest the solution. Not rocket science on this one. If we look at the four elements I have talked of, they are anomalies that are easy to treat.

I think it is high time that most of us who think of either owning businesses or working started looking at progress as our motivation. It is very easy to look the other way, taking it from the fact that whatever we are working on does not directly benefit us. The better way of looking at it is that of balancing between our needs and the expectations of the one who hires.

Self development is another element that we need to think of. Attaining the appropriate skills and knowledge is important to every workman, self employed or otherwise. If it is not for the development of self or the one who hired, let it be for the nation because with the growth of every entity comes national development.

As intellectuals and young professionals there is a need for us to think about the future. We need to embrace our responsibilities to accumulate the right knowledge and skills and webshould always strive to have the right attitude towards our work and everything surrounding it as that is the only way to progress.

Money will always be a need but there has to be a time when we look beyond it for the greater good. We need to have a driving force that is beyond food on our table and maybe then might we be talking of true development in our communities and country.

Ready for the change?

I hope so.

Reporting from the COT (don't ask me what that stands for).

Random Thoughts on a Friday Evening

Great expectations create frustrated men. That is what I read from the story titled the case of a prison monger in some book called Looking for a Rain God. You probably read that too, and might be wondering why I have decided to bring that up on a Friday evening. Well. I personally believe that the statement was either inaccurate or incomplete.

For some reason, I think that in as much as great expectations create frustrated men, they also have the potential to create dreamers and people who have visions who in turn become achievers.

So what are these great expectations and who has them? Well. Me of course. And a bunch of others who joined the medical field looking for guaranteed jobs from something called the Malawi Government and its Ministry of Health (why do they call it a ministry, anyway?)

Yes. I am talking about the 48 or so doctors. They are not 51 as we have been made to believe because some of them were not Malawians and they are back home; probably driving Nissan Tildas by now while their Malawian counterparts are languishing at home contrary to popular expectation they had they would be employed by now.

Some might wonder why this is such a big deal. Yours truly will lay it down for you. The thing is that when you graduate from the College of Medicine (sukulu ya ukachenjede ya za chipatala ndi mankhwala according to one George Limwado) with and MBBS degree, the degree does not make you eligible to practice. The point is that you need to work under supervision for some good 18 months of fun before getting certified by the so called medical council before you can have the license to practice. The original arrangement is that the government is supposed to pay the new graduates as they do the working in this 18 month period, but for some reason the government has decided that it does not need these doctors (implicitly).

There is one serious implication of that. Newly graduated doctors will not have a chance of practicing unless if the government decided to sort out the issue.

Result? Others have gone out while others are languishing at home. Probably wishing they had applied for Law studies after their premedical sciences. What a waste of 6 years.

Recently I was asked about how I reacted when I heard that the government was not hiring, considering the fact that I am in the next batch of medical graduates. Well. I will share what I said. This is very demotivating considering that we went in thinking of job security, anyway. On the other hand, it got me thinking that things are changing and we need to change and that is where this post becomes universal with everyone having a thing to learn from it.

I have heard a couple of times that the government is broke so we might need to brace ourselves for tough times. In fact rumor has is that our dear boma is considering wage reduction, so if you were celebrating on the premise that you are not a doctor, you need to “rethink again”. Back to the medical personnel, nurses whose deployment was reversed are still at home and I don’t think things will be any different for the Malawi College of Health Sciences students whose results have just recently been released.

Moral of the whole rant?

I have learnt in this year that most of us get caught by surprise in things that are not supposed to be surprising in any way. Consider a parent sending a child to a free primary school (and yes, thanks to Bakili Muluzi for that). The parent does know that the next level of school is secondary school which is not that free. Guess what a typical Malawian Parent does? Wait till the child gets selected to secondary school for him to have some short lived joy before starting to think of where he is going to get the fees money. Nanji akamapita ku koleji. That is where our friends from the west beat us. I am not saying everyone can manage this, but if all the capable people could think of doing this, I think some of the demonstrations by intellectuals would have not been happening.

Here we are. Always surprised by not so surprising things. Unfortunately this has spread like a cancer to the whole nation. We hardly have a vision as to where we want to develop and graduate to and the only vision that governs our country is the ruling party’s bid to win the next election. This is probably why many intellectuals know that there is a whole lot of unemployment and hostile business and investment conditions but are not acting on it. They want to be in for the surprise after graduating and staying without a definitive occupation for two years. Ladies and gentlemen, this whole issue of kukanda (Prince Muta uses this as another word for unemployment) is real but I am sure something can be done if we begin to look at it from a reasonably far distance.

I could write all night, but if we are to go back to where we started from, the main point is that these unmet needs should not create frustration in us. To everybody who reasons, this whole national crisis or whatever you call it should be a source of opportunities to make a fortune and impact.

One Dr Benjamin Mosiwa once said that intellectuals need to be thinking in terms of graduating as solutions and not as problems to the country. What he meant was that no one needs to graduate with nothing to do in mind, because in that case they just end up adding to the bad statistic of the unemployed. Something to think about.

I do not feel obliged to lay down what “doing something” about the future we want to have should be about. I believe that it is a tailor made thing based on personal aspirations and goals (assuming that we all have some). I hope this has provoked some thought process in you, and that you will not get surprised by something you clearly knew was coming.

Great expectations create something, but what will that something be to you? Will it be frustration or a brighter future?

Thoughts random. Yet not too random.

Tilombe…

Goal Setting in Four Questions

A couple of weeks ago (if not last week) I shared something about redefining success. Important to note was the fact that the mention that the redefinition of success was something that would follow the setting of goals. Goal setting is yet another interesting thing that is yet to be embraced by many, young and old alike and that is because most of us do not believe in the importance thereof.

I wouldn’t want to go into details on the importance of goal setting, but common sense has it that is you set your goals then you at least wouldn’t be living a random life and getting whatever life throws at you for yours. People who set goals also set standards for the sort of quality of life they live and the manifestations of these have been proven.

Many would ask the how question. There are so many times that people talk about setting goals and writing them on paper, sometimes without giving a clear way of how to go about it. Well. That is one thing, but on the other hand, my experience has it that some people have given goa setting a rough and “not so user friendly image”. I have had my fair share in that. I was at some point (in 2013, I think) given a 22 page notebook in which I had to write my goals and what I wanted to achieve by 2023. Not a bad thing, if you think of it, but I was barely 20 then; and expected to envision my life at 29. Write my rubbish and all, but it taught me a lesson that I needed to have some good foresight of the future me.

I have every reason to believe that in as far as goals have to be concise the 22 pages I was given were a bit of an exaggeration, and that is why I would like to share another view of how goal setting could be done with simple questions that everyone could ask himself or herself; the what question, the how question, the when question and the who question.

The what question. This is about asking yourself what has to be achieved. There are so many aspirations that a person might have in life and the constant posing of this question to the inner self is one important step to working towards and thus achieving any goal. If you think of it, there is a very minimal chance of achieving something that you haven’t thought of achieving because there is no possibility of working towards it.

Everyone might have an aspiration, but it is not enough to envision yourself driving a nice car. That is too vague and you need to be as precise as “I want to drive the Range Rover Evoque Victoria Beckham special edition”. Add the model to that too. Now that is precise and worth calling a dream.

One thing we don’t have to ignore in this step is the difference between a want and a need. It is said that men do not grow old but their toys just get bigger. That is what is said in reflection to the attitude of men of liking luxurious things. Women are not exempted, anyway, but the idea here is that some luxuries are not worth including in our goals. Think of something that will add value to your life. One Dr Cornelius Huwa (Oh, yes! Him.) who spoke to us in our foundation year orientation taught us about assets and liabilities; things that add money to our pockets and drain from it respectively. Well, he said we need to think of accumulating assets. Something worth remembering and considering in the “what” question.

Having gone through the first step of knowing has to be achieved gets you to the next stage where you can think of how you can get to achieve it. Yet another neglected area and this is what makes a difference between people who actually set off to pursue what they have envisioned and those who stay behind. You might agree with me that there are many people who do have many wants and aspirations who never bother to think as to how they precisely can achieve whatever they desire to achieve.

The how question should be guided by the aspirations at hand. Every goal, be it financial, health, spiritual, academic or social has some way or ways to it and these are the ways that have to be explored and noted in order for one to achieve their goals. In short, one needs to knowwhat it takes to achieve the goal.
Then there is the who question. This in its shallow sense entails that one knows who can help them reach their goal, be it friends, mentors, family or anyone who can be of help. It is important to know that not everyone close might share and believe in the personal dream you might have and as such dreams do not have to be shared with people who have the potential of not sharing with them. The reason is simple and it is that they usually end up choking the dream before it comes to come to actualization. They will even bewitch you for it, sometimes if you believe in that sort of thing. Dreams need to be shared with people who can fed them and add value to them.
On the other hand, there has to be an element of giving to any dream. If you think of it, most times we visualize our future and successful selves in terms of us only. I was once asked the challenging question some time which made me realize that I need to factor in the benefit of others in my dreams. This particular gentleman once asked me what I would do if I got all I ever wanted overnight, be it academic credentials overnight. That is when I realized that it is easy to attain my goals and build myself a little ball of self-comfort forgetting the others who could benefit from my resources, financial or otherwise. Something “munthu aliyense ogaya” needs to think about.

Another important question is the when question. This is just about the timeline of the achievement. Some would tell you that eventually “aliyense amaiphula” (everybody gets to prosper) but to be frank I would rather drive an Audi A8 while I still have a feel for speed other than when I am in my 70’s in which case I won’t have eyes fit enough to push it to 180 kilometers per hour. The “when” of a goal matters, because setting timelines to goals is also a key prophylactic measure to procrastination.

Adding more words to this writing would not add any value to it. The short message is just that we need to get into the habit of setting goals by asking ourselves the simple questions, but those which matter. It is important to have a precise idea of what exactly you want to have to the detail, how you will get it (legally, of course), when you need it and who you want to help you and to benefit from your achievement. Then comes the element of putting it down on paper and revising the goal if needed.

Of course these things do not do themselves so there is need for working out the goals to make sure they are achieved. Yet another area that differentiates dreamers and achievers. Topic for another day.

I hope this has either added or removed something from your life. I am okay with either, so long as you haven’t remained the same.

The Manual

Friday again.

As alluded to on the Richie Online Facebook page (which some of you have chosen to have the boldness not to like up to date), this Friday we will do less of the jokes and more of business. Very important considering the fact I talked about the previous post (on redifining success) that we all need money.

The most conventional way in which people earn a living in Malawi is through labour; skilled and unskilled alike; and the fact that you are reading this means that you are probably going the way of the former (skilled labour, that is). Issue is that, however, employment is hard to come by these days if we are to look at things in realistic terms. I am told that the figures from the National Statistics Office entail an unemployment rate of 50% among the Malawian youth and some go on to suggest that the figures are cooked to obsecure the true picture on the ground. Whether the latter is true or not is of little significance because half of the country being unemployed is already too toxic and paralytic to the economy of the country.

Here is the thing. People who are employed are more likely to be financially stable and and with financial stability at individual level chances are that the country will also be financially stable and this unemployment rate surely has a crippling effect on the economy in those lines. We shouldn't be, therefore, surprised with the general outcry and the increase in the number of fingers to the government.

To add to the already existing problem, the government which is busy training people seems not to be in the mood of hiring. There was once a time when teachers used to be employed straight from the TTCs and when doctors would have a job barely 3 weeks after accessing their finals results? Now? You know, of course.

All complaints raised, we need to realise that their are some people who are on two or three high paying jobs. And yes, in the midst of these some are prospering in jobs and businesses alike. There are people who are getting jobs whilst in college while some stay for years at home without proper jobs. Realizing what accounts for this difference in fortunes will help us realize and probably cover up the gap that is there between many of us and financial prosperity.

To the point solutions.

The first of these of course is about hard and smart work in everything we do. Most of the people who spend time reading my posts are intellectuals or newly graduated. Interesting group of people which can be careless and myopic. Sometimes many of us disregard our performance in work places and institution forgetting that they may have a strong bearing on our future. Probably high time we realised that the impressions we give with our grades and work performance have an ability to make us or break us.

There was a whole statement that was made in support of marginal passes in college. At some point people even made the "Ku College Bola 50" Facebook group. It is this spirit and that of thinking we don't have to work hard in workplaces that is killing most of us young people, leading to unemployment on the personal level.

Another solution that most of young people could use is the realignment of priorities because most of us got them twisted. One Pastor Ken Mlomba once posted on Facebook as to how sorry he feels when people have all the smart gadgets while claiming they have neither business capital nor school fees. That is how we see things nowadays. We give so much attention to things that do not matter leaving out the ones that do. Talking of resources that are misplaced, it is not just monetory but time too. The time most of us would spend social networking could be invested in self development but most of us do not take up the task.

I have known how some people transformed their lives when they began seeing every resource they had as an opportunity to have something greater; every single minute they had as an opportunity to self develop. High time everyone followed suit.

And then comes another important one. One thing some of us need to do is to understand the concept of baby steps and learn to know that progress is progressive, meaning that it is a process and not a one time event. Most of us nowadays would want to get there without going there. Practical? Not at all. We want to get to the best positions in our companies without rising through the ranks. The reality in this world is that there are little chances that it will happen that way. That goes to my friends in entrepreneurship too. You don't expect to start a business today and be like Thom Mpinganjira the next day. Doesn't work that way. We need to learn to walk in baby steps before starting to run. It is the little things that are available; jobs, school and business opportunities, that will lead to greater things later.

There is another popular excuse that goes among young people. Most would point the big people in higher positions, be it in the public or private sector for their problems, citing that the people higher up arebnot giving young people opportunities. One Dr Matthews Mtumbuka once said that people who want to get things done do not wait for an opportunity to be handed to them, but rather they go and take it from where it is. Frowning at the statement? Well. I agree with him.

Most of us sit and expect opportunities to come our way, but there is a slight chance that someone would leave the comfort of his position to hunt for his competition. That is why us as young people need to be proactive enough if we are to get what we need for progress in our lives. Sometimes it makes sense to shake up people who matter till they act on our requests. I have every reason to think that no one would resist to grant an opportunity to someone who goes to them and gives them a reason to give the opportunity. The problem is that most of us demand stuff beyond us. We need to see what's worth and work on ourselves; building in that CV and knowledge profile before going to whoever and asking for a job or whatever opportunity.

Trust me, people are looking for people they can hand opportunities to and if they haven't found you, it is just that you are not doing something right to make you the right person. Sounds harsh, but it is true.

Meaningful connections. For some reasons these work and are infallible. Make friends that add value to life and are relevant to your career and aspirations. Very important. I mean, if you are in a field and you have contacts with people who are higher up; and of course you talk to them on the right things, chances are that when there is an opportunity it will come to your Whatsapp inbox before it gets to some newspaper. That is not corruption of course. I mean, between someone who I know and someone I don't, all factors constant I would go for someone I know. Simple logic, but most of us are failing to apply and are surrounding ourselves with friends that drain us instead of adding value to our lives. Something to think of.

I could continue to type and to say a lot, but the point is to really just break free from the sort of thinking we have regarded as conventional for long. Job applications shouldn't be restricted to big positions and to vacancies. We need to seize every opportunity as it passes by and to stand in opportunities' way by getting in touch with relevant people. We need to be proactive and to ask for what is rightly ours other than let others give us a measure of what they think we deserve. Priorities need to be set right and lived by. Self development needs to be at the heart of everyone and we all need to build a name and a CV worth showing out.

If we could sort these things out, it could as well just be enough to survive and maybe enjoy the so called harsh economy. I must say that these things are best tailored to aspirations and do not work crude. I hope you got the principle.

Consider that the second epistle.

Redefining Success

So I happen to be preparing this update on a Saturday and not the Friday. Some would be wondering why that is the case. Reminder. I am a student, and sometimes school can get on my neck.

In as much as school can get on my neck, I still get to have contact with the outside world. Probably due to my philia for the so called social networks where I have connected with people from all walks of life and liked (I guess followed would be the right word) all the online news pages, good and bad, partisan and non-partisan alike. That works for me because it makes me find all the relevant updates in one place. Updates on events, news, scandals (woe to him who broadcasts), ideologies and everything else there is to know. Good stuff.

There has been an interesting evolution in social network traffic among Malawian young people (in case some of you did not notice). Nowadays people are posting in terms of prosperity, poverty reduction, entrepreneurship, job creation, generational thinking and above that success. Of course we should also point out that some have been left behind and are still talking about swag, beer, drinks and parties. Hopefully they will join the other group.

Honestly saying, I like this whole evolutionary change in the mindsets of young Malawians. It gives me hope that I will see things work right here in Malawi in my lifetime, hope of which I had lost the moment I realized how things work in Malawi. Our minds are being turned around and oscillating at wavelengths of positivity and while some are just talking without doing anything others are on the ground working things out and producing results. Again, a good thing for those producing results.

So…

Here we are. We have a verbal positive change around us. Of the things that I have noted people to be talking about, one thing that has caught my interest is the issue of success which I think is being grossly “misdefined” in the modern day. For us to understand this whole phenomenon, I guess I have to take you through the origin of the messages that are coming through to the young people and causing this wave of change. 

Of late, there are some generous people who felt like it would be good if they shared the knowledge they have with others. The very knowledge that propelled them to the level they are. It is not a bad thing to think of it. In fact it is good. The interesting thing is that when these coaches get into training people, they share a lot of insights about how what they are teaching transformed their lives. Again, great things. Not a good thing to teach things you are not practicing. On the other hand, this has become a problem because it has, to some extent, narrowed the definition of success to the many young people out there.

The logic here is simple. If someone is in business, for example, and comes to tell you about success citing examples from his own life, you would turn towards thinking that the definition of success is having a successful business. That is pretty much the same story in academics, spirituality and pretty much any other thing you can think of.

What I have noted of late is that nowadays there is the gospel of entrepreneurship that is being preached around. Bad thing? NO! (My classmate, Jane once told me that there is such a thing called a big, fat, NO. This is the one). Toxic? Maybe.

I have heard of stories from a lot of notable people, some of whom are my friends, about how entrepreneurship turned their lives around moneywise. People would tell you how they are able to employ a certain number of people, and that is absolute success. What most of the young people are forgetting, on the other hand nowadays is that success includes but is not limited to stuff like entrepreneurship and job creation. 

You probably have figured out what the next paragraph is all about, and yes; you were right if you thought I wanted to advocate on the acceptance of diversity. Not all of us would go down into the books as employers and entrepreneurs. In fact some of us would have to work for someone or some entity and there is no inferiority in being an employee. For some reason some people have instilled into us this mindset that we don’t have to work for anyone but to have people working for us. I, to some extent, find that wrong and I will always say this that there is nothing wrong in being an employee.

Correct definition for success? In my view, success should be about the constant of achievement of preset and realistic and personalized goals in one’s life. The goals should include but should not be limited to financial success. They in fact must include a financial element. Tamvana? On the other hand, what we have to know is that there is a life outside finances. We need good families out there. Most of the readers I know are theistic (I recommend conversion if you are an atheist) so religious goals come into play too. There is also need for thinking about academic progress and those of you who are leaders need to also think about where you want to go with leadership. I shouldn’t forget about reproductive goals. Very important. 

Outroduction? In as much as we need to succeed financially (not only for ourselves, but also for our children) we don’t need to limit the definition of success to finances. There is more to it than that. The fact that we have role models who teach us the route to success does not mean we should limit our scope of thinking to theirs. It is important to get the principles of their thought process but not their very thoughts because chances are that they never read a book or got training under a coach to achieve what they achieved. 

There is a popular saying that if you don’t pursue your dreams someone else will hire you to help them pursue theirs. The popular interpretation of this entails that being employed by someone means inferiority. I could be so for someone who narrows the definition of success to financial gains. For someone who thinks in terms of making impact, it is a different story. There are some dreams worth fulfilment and if people have them they just need to be supported. Nothing wrong with that.

Young man! Young lady! You are part of the golden generation in this nation. Thank you for joining the club of positive thinkers, but for now it is high time you made your personal definition of success.

Consider this an epistle.

Richie.

On the Thing Called "Risk Taking"

It has been a busy and interesting week. Most of my friends (like Mikoyan) from whose thoughts I derive my articles were nowhere to be seen as they were busy preparing for examinations (Wait! I was also writing mine). Had no chat to talk about which forced me to go back two years, 5 months and 16 days back.


That exact date was a memorable day because it was my 20th birthday. For the first time I had two parties or something that looked like it and I loved that so much.


I will not get into the details on the parties but I would like to say something about the advice one Kabambo Kalombola (we used to call him Alfred then) gave me. I have forgotten the actual words he said that time, but what he was saying was sort of advocating for the "screw it, let's do it" kind of life, if I am to borrow Sir Richard Branson's language.


In his words, he had observed that I am the sort of person who calculates every move I want to make to the end before executing. He also observed that every moment I saw an anticipated danger to any plan that could halt its completion, I would leave the project, important as it may be. Maybe most of that was taking reference to my reserved attitude to relationships. Gone now.


The point? He revealed to me a description that I have by word. I used to do that without giving much thought to it. After he said it, I got to give it a serious thought and perfect the art of fact-based foresight. It's amazing how an advocate of something I have never and will never agree with was able to help me perfect the opposite in me.


I did not need to read any book for me to be like this. I was born in the month of May, which makes my sign Taurus and in the year of the Rooster in the Chinese Zodiak for those of you who believe in that sort of thing. It might be the thing that explains my prudence for you. In my own right, I think it is my upbringing that has made me "overly careful" as dear Kabambo ( who is too much of a risk taker) pointed out.


If you try to think of the benefit of the when thing, here is the philosophy behind it.


You need to do an assessment of anything and as you do that you need to have a goal in mind. When you have the goal you need to map out all the possible ways or processes to it. By this you also need to think of who will be involved and how they will affect the achievement of the goal; the sort of people they call stakeholders in the corporate world.


The point of doing this assessment is to see whether what you are up to is feasible or not. If it is and you see no possible hiccups in the way, you go for it. If you see that there will certainly be something between you and your goal, that is where you need to make a critical decision. It is just that you either abandon the project completely or try to fix the potential problem before you hit the road. The former is what dear Kabambo faulted me with. To be honest I like working in comfort zones so I don't like cracking my head with fixing issues when I have an easy way which is called abandoning ship. Not something you have to learn from me, anyway. We are different and some of these things are done looking at the benefits of the ventures. The rule is to never fight losing battles, for those of you that missed that one.


Now here is where the feasiblity analysis gets interesting. It is not always in black and white and as simple as feasible and not feasible. There will be some times that after factoring everything out you might just end up with an ambiguous result; not knowing whether you will succeed or not. Some of you might be able to identify with this sort of situation. There is no single way of handling this situation.


There might be some time that you might just have to get to it and deal with circumstances as you go along. Ray Bradbury once said that sometimes we just have to jump out of the window and grow wings on the way down. The sort of thing called risk taking.


Risk taking. Now this is the sort of thing that people have grossly misunderstood over the times. If you were to ask me about risk taking based on the analysis I just shared, I would think of only one situation as one that calls for risk taking.


When you are sure that something will work, fine and good. You do not need to take any risk. On the extreme end, when you know there is a clear hiccup that cannot be fixed, you do not need to go for it because that is stupidity as opposed to risk taking.


Risk taking is the sort of thing you do in a 50-50 situation and it is about venturing into the unknown.


Some might think I might be advocating for the sort of lazy and "in-the-comfort-zone" life I live and love to stay in. Far from the point. On the other hand, I am just trying to draw the line between risk taking and the other close thing people mistake it for; and it is called carelessness.


I could write some more paragraphs on this, but I guess reaching this far you have gotten the sense of what I wanted to communicate. Like I pointed out, even Jesus himself once talked about making a calculation of costs before we start building a house. I guess that could be another one to draw a lesson from, otherwise not all we call risk taking deserves to be called that.


That being said, I should also say that not all risks are worth taking. Topic for another day,   but that's it.



Post script.

Richie Online is now on Facebook. Do the like thing. Mwazitsata?

On the UNIMA Golden Jubilee

Friday, 9th October, 2015, There is a lot of activity at the College of Medicine as I write. Spaces being cleared, cleaning done, shades constructed and a whole lot of other things. I am told it is the celebration of the University of Malawi's 50 years of existence. How awesome! 50 years is a whole lot.

I must say that I will not be part of the celebrations. At least not directly, because the very time His Excellency (all my respect to him) will be driving in will be the time I will be leaving for my weekend call (let's call it hospital duty and yes, we do work on Saturdays as students). Can't complain, though. At least I will be one of the people who will be representing the few hundred people who still do school work on weekends while the rest celebrate.

On the other hand, I am looking at this as the main event of the Jubillee celebrations. I heard about the UNIMA at 50 tree planting before. Good initiative. I just don't remember why I missed that one.

I am told that there will be a lot to showcase at the event. I am also told that there will be a parade of the alumni and some UNIMA choir. That makes me wish I were there to witness the whole thing, but on the other hand I am thinking that it is okay not to be for some reason.

You might call me names for this but I think we don't have much to point to as we celebrate the golden jubilee. There are two reasons for which I say this and I will get into that.

The first reason for which I say the celebration is not worth the attention is the state of the university itself as we speak. There is a lot that has taken place in the 50 years that the university has existed. Colleges have been added and taken out. The university has seen a lot of people graduate into various fields and many programs have been introduced. So much we can talk about. My concern is, however, that most of the reforms and restructuring exercises that have taken place have not brought about progress in the university.

The first issue that comes to mind is that of the way in which colleges in UNIMA are admitting students. The people responsible rightly saw that there was a need for more people to be enrolled into the university and to graduate for the development. What wasn't done right was the reform that was done to achieve this. Interestingly enough, nowadays students are being enrolled based on classroom and not bed space. Result? Students from COM at Mount Pleasant and those fro. Chanco in a ghetto called Chikanda. How convenient that is, all of us already know.

And then comes the issue of food. For some reason this too was privatised and the end result is students either not getting enough money to keep them through the month and getting the allowances late. At some point in one college people wanted to mix up this money with fees resulting into a demonstration that left the school closed. That is the UNIMA we have at 50 years.

The other issue is that of infrastructure. Truth be told we are lagging behind when it comes to this. Most of our structures in the university are hardly maintained and many facilities are in a poor state. The very structures that were supposed to be the landmarks in the colleges, talk of the Lecture Theatre at the mighty Polytechnic and the Library at Chanco, are not in the most desirable state you would want them to be. I shouldn't talk about the already "not enough" hostels in the colleges. While the students bear part of the blame for not taking care of their own things, lack of maintenance has been a main player in this situation. A friend of mine once showed me a picture of the university in Taiwan and he told me it is from there that the Chancellor college design was taken. The fact that the university in question looks sparkling new while its little sister called Chanco is in a bad state leaves a lot of questions than answers.

Having talked about the state of the university, I should point out that the other reason the celebration doesn't seem very necessary is the impact the university and its graduates have had on this country. People have been trained for years in the university; graduating after finishing and I do not think that we have seen enough of the intellect translate into material development, which I guess the aim of the training in the long run is.

Before I talk about how graduates have failed to give back to the country, it is better that I point out how they have failed to contribute to the very institution that trained them. Most of the graduates benefited from a loan in as far as fees are concerned, in the name of being needy students. Probably someone would say that the university should have put up a tracking mechanism for the loan repayment. Good excuse. On the other hand, I think we have been irresponsible with our university and that is why we find it in the state that it is. I am saying this because I am inclined to believe that by design this whole loan for needy students thing was meant to be a self- sustaining revolving fund with little, if any external boosters.

Now to the big one. We have seen a lot of people from different fields graduate with so little added to their fields. So many economists in both the private and public sectors and a crumbling economy. So many electrical engineers and we continue to be on daily doses of blackouts. Some fields of course have shown a lot of progress but with the people who are supposed to be experts in the many fields of study in our university we are supposed to see more than we have achieved now.

Well. That whole writing was for the love of complaining. I do not suggest that we cancel the celebrations or close the university. What I would call on is a moment of reflection. As students, administrators and stakeholders, there is a lot that can be done to improve both the process and outcome of the training that the government is investing in the training of the many that are getting through the corridors of mother UNIMA.

Fellow intellectuals, as we sail through the university, we need to understand that we have an obligation to give back both to our university and to our country at large. There is more to the skills we are attaining than just bringing food on our table and clothing on our bodies. We need to think of how we can use the knowledge mother UNIMA is bestowing upon us to develop our motherland. It is with these changes that we will celebrate a progressive century of existence otherwise we might have nothing but failure to celebrate about come 2065.

The university organized an essay competition on the reflection of the 50 years of existence and the possible ways of making the university better. Intellectuals wrote and I hope those views will be taken into account as we move from the maintenance management of our dear UNIMA to bringing in innovations that will work in propelling the University of Malawi forward. There is a hope for a better UNIMA.

Happy 50th birthday UNIMA and may we all work and live to see you be what you are meant to be; an institution of excellence.

Yet another chat

You probably read the extracts from semi structured chats. Well. I don't like having volumes, but I had another chat I would like to share.

This one was with my good friend, Mikoyan. Well. Mikoyan is not his real name but I gave him that one for our love of Russian military aircraft. We were talking about how wonderful the Sukhoi SU-35 is an awesome plane (too much detail, ain't it?) and rather unnaturally our chat escalated into having Malawi manufacture jets. Or the possibility thereof. Now that was a turn that we were not supposed to take because it brought memories of how we don't even have a presidential jet and the moment we got there we started talking about our poverty. Sad ending to a cool thing, right? That is the moment in which you don't like being a a Malawian, but some of us are different. While others ruin the country we are busy thinking of how to rehabilitate it. And we talk about it.

There we were. Talking about the country and the issues. I can't remember how the story escalated but we ended up talking about food security. Two important points came up on that.

The first one was of course why we are still in this dependence on rain in our agriculture when we in fact we have an axis of all year rainwater in the country. Before I had my vision tunnelled to medicine I read some geography books (not sure as to why they call it human Geography. Doesn't make sense). They said in Israel they get water from the dead sea and desalinate it for agriculture. Someone also once told me that they import some soil from Egypt. Know what? Israel makes over $2 billion in exports of food. 2 billion.

Come to Malawi. Good soil and fresh water and people still complain about poor rains leading to poor yields. Zero pa ten. Shows you that something is not right around here. Looming hunger around and no one mentions winter cropping as a solution.

The other point was that of our farming being too manual. Still using a hoe is just too inefficient but somehow more than 2000 or more than that years after Prophet Elisha used a plough we are stuck with the hoe. I won't go into the fact that people have donated tractors which have ended up rotting in some warehouse. I mean, the tractors are meant to be in EPAs (Extension Planning Areas) or district offices. Interestingly enough some of them do not have cars and the ones that do hardly have fuel. Just not sure if a tractor would be operational when people are not going for meetings (here in Malawi we love meetings).

Anyway. That was out of the love for complaining. We might think of what the government is doing to address my worries and those that you have. Well. I am sure that on paper someone drafted a nice policy on irrigation; but this is Malawi, so policies end up in the same books they are written and on desks at the lake. Nothing materializes.

Again someone is thinking I am talking about those in offices. Well, not this time. We Malawians are just resistant to change and in as much as some things are not brought to beneficiaries, I have my doubts that they would make a difference in the grassroots. The reason, according to my good friend who has worked with people in the villages, is that these programs are meant for farmers and sadly we don't have any. Whatever he meant I can't explain, but he was right.

Conclusion from the whole thing? If you want to make some changes don't draft a national policy. Instead make a policy that impacts your life and that of your spouse and children. If it is working draft another one that encompasses your friends and then you can extend it to friends of your friends. If that works again, gather friends of your friends' friends and include them in your game changer; but make them pay for it (I need to emphasize on this one. This one should not be free). Main point is that you should have results and work with a limited group of people where you are.

Mikoyan told me there is one issue with that strategy. He says the old stars will end up bewitching you. Well. They could, but this is a challenge worth taking.

That was humor (you were supposed to laugh at that) but on a serious note, here is what I have to say. Henry Kachaje once said this country is poor because poor people live in it. If some of us could take the overlooked resources to full use; and few more emulated and more emulated from the emulators, this country could change for the better.

Another proposed to our man made problems; again from a semistructured chat.

Upping the Cyber Game

It is 2015 and that means we are in the 21st century. I wasn't there in the 18th but I have every reason to believe that this is the best time there has been. Of course this thought is a bit shallow because I am just considering one thing (let me critique it before you do) and that is the technological advancement that has taken the world by storm.

Truth be told, lazy people have invented a lot over time and they have made life super simple. Pretty much every field from transport to food production has been simplified to the simplest level that I do not think things will get any advanced than this. I mean, if someone made a nsima cooker, how simpler can life get? Usipa cooker or something? That would just be unacceptable.

Digression. I would like to talk about the very innovation that is making you read this post and that is the advancement in information and communication technology (ICT. This is what it stands for. In case... Yeah).

This whole digitalization of the world, the coming of the internet, computerization of everything is just so good that it has made interaction very simple and enjoyable. On a more important note, it has revolutionized the way in which things are done and the quality of outcomes of many things in almost every field.

To add to this, we are now in the age where a smartphone is no longer considered a luxury and almost every Jim and Jane has their own 3.5 inch touch screen Droid, or windows phone or something in those lines. Good development. In fact I usually use my phone to update the blog. Just one of the 70 or so things I use my phone for.

So much good stuff said but let's not get carried away because there is an issue at hand. In as much as we have these innovations, not all of us have embraced them and put them to use. In other words we still have people living in 1960 while the rest of the world is in 2015.

Before you begin to judge let me make a point that I am not talking about people who do not have the financial ability to purchase a 7 inch phone called a tablet for swagger or whatever they call it. I an talking about people who have the technology at their disposal but are not putting it to maximum use. If you are one of them, well, this is for you and you might join the rest of the world in 2015.

The first thing that we all need to understand is that a readily accessible and working e mail address is a basic need nowadays. The world is moving away from the traditional paperwork sort of mailing and taking it cyber. No one should be left behind on that. Actually many people do have e mails nowadays so that is not something we have to waste time on. The issue here is about using and checking e mails.

I happened to attend a meeting involving members of staff of some organization and someone suggested that the ideas discussed be shared over the organization's e mail network. Ideally that was supposed to be a good idea but I learnt that it wasn't when someone shed a light on what happens in the organization. So according to the gentleman people there were not used to the e mail checking culture. He talked of how he had gone to follow up on the progress of a proposal he had sent over mail only to be shown the e mail address with 1000+ unread e mails. The excuse? "If I can't read all these e mails, how special is yours that I should open it? Just bring the hard copies." Typical example of someone living in 1960. If you are in the same world, you better up your cyber game because this is 2015. Surprisingly some of these people who do this have a laptop, iPhone 5s and a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.0. Still can't check mail. You tend to wonder what they are for. Watching Chris Brown or the Great Angels, probably.

Another thing that we have is the wide array of social networks. Ideally we had Facebook and it was all fine. We used to do many things on it; speaking our minds out, showing photos (of spouses, six packs, material possessions and everything), criticizing the government, finding jobs and loved ones, campaigning for our political parties and everything that we used to do then. Now most of those tasks have been divided among new networks like Whatsapp, Twitter, Viber, WeChat, Instagram, Skype, Linkeldn and many other networks (I only remembered those I am on). It is interesting to see how people use these networks but one thing I have noted is that most of these are grossly underused because people are not flexible.

Most companies or government offices have internet access and modern computers now. It is easy to do online conferences but you would be surprised at how many find excuses to keep away from this cost saving intervention.

Among the youth we have this outbreak of Whatsapp groups which are created based on interests. You will be surprised at how resistant people are to Whatsapp groups in the workplace setting all because of formalities. Ati zomakambirana za ku ofesi pa Whatsapp ndizibwana. Well. You may as well stick to the e mails, which people don't check and not have results while others are moving forward with these simple measures that are not formal but produce results.

Computerizing our systems is another vital element that we need to consider if we are to be more efficient. There are simply many registration, voting, payment and monitoring systems that could benefit from computerization to avoid queuing up and loss of information due to paperwork issues. I have heard of a couple of cases where bosses have been shunning computerization for various reasons from protection of positions from the innovators, avoiding of exposure of malpractice or protecting the loopholes through which they defraud government or companies to just mere resistance to change. The world is moving fast and we do not need such. Solution? Everybody needs to up their cyber game.

I could talk more and more about this but here is the point. The world is changing and we cannot ignore that fact. We need to move with time and use all the resources that are at our disposal. Being computer literate and being able to use the internet are basic things nowadays and they are vital in all sectors including education, agriculture, medicine... Well. Pretty much everything.

A little on the smartphone. Most of us do have these but only very few use them to their full potential. So someone would splash out having bough an iPhone 6 only to be using Whatsapp there. You send them an e mail and they would not respond saying that their dongle is having issues. Again, unacceptable. In my view, having smart gadget you can't put to use is a waste (someone is frowning at this) otherwise you might as well have a Samsung Galaxy Young if you want the Whatsapp that everybody is on nowadays. In short we don't just have to buy gadgets for the sake of buying them. Anyway. Probably a code for people who are not swimming in money (yet) like me.

A lot of talk, but if I am to summarize it in one sentence or two, here is what I would say. The world is advancing and so is the information and communication technology. If we are to advance we probably need to be thinking of how some of these technologies (not just ICT) can fit in into our various fields to help us operate more efficiently.

Otherwise, this is not 1960 and everyone need to up their cyber game.

Reforms; Blessing or Curse?

Social media is awash with criticism of some of the things the Malawi government is implementing. Reform is the word that is being used here but from what I have seen not many are happy with the undertakings, or at least some of them. Pretty much everyone has one or two things that he or she is not in agreement with. My theory has it that it is because we have heard about so many of the reforms in a very short space and because they have been accompanied by so much of "bad news" from the media (best we don't talk about that).

We have seen and heard a lot about the radical reforms in the education and health sector but while I agree that the implementation of the same will have a lot of negative effects on  a lot of people, I have to point out that some of these implementations were long overdue and they just had to be done. Underline some (for there are some I don't agree with).

In case you don't know what I mean when I say some of these implementations were overdue, let me cite a couple of examples. Fees for teachers training. Some of you might hate me for this, but truth be told, it was not sustainable for the government to be training teachers solely on taxpayers' money (and yes, I pay tax). In as far as teachers are important, we just had to reason and calculate the cost of keeping a student in the TTC and make sure both entities involved (government and trainee) contributed. It is that simple.

Now somehow we have come to our senses and decided that enough is enough and people are complaining. I mean, this might just be the same issue of the spirit of entitlement Malawians have just been raised into. I could say the same about the loan bill, the issue of introduction of user fees in hospitals, hiking of school fees in secondary schools and tertiary institutions and many other which we have seen, but before you cast the first stone you have to hear out what I have to say.

While some of these changes are necessary and worth giving a nod, I am worried about the way in which they are being implemented. I don't know about the way people think, but in my view, things like these are sensitive (they could cost someone the sort of thing they call "political capital") and need prudence in implementation.

I am obviously not the most intelligent man on the planet and neither am I the wisest but I believe there was a better way of making these adjustments. One word  comes to mind on this one; gradual.

An example from my secondary school on fees hiking. When I was starting fees were around K7000. We struggled with that but for the next year they "adjusted upwards" to around K8000. Later that year we moved to around K9000 then a whooping 5 figure number of K10, 000 and before we knew it fees were at K15, 000; two times the figure we started with (its slightly more than two times, isn't it?)

I hope you are already getting my point here. I might not have noticed the toll of the hikes because the fees were not coming from my pocket, but obviously the slow adjustment made it easier for the ones paying the fees to cope. That was St Patrick's Secondary school. Our government ministries? Move from zero to 40 grand. Now that's the sort of thing we call "from the Simama League to the CAF champions league". It simply doesn't work! I am surprised that someone didn't see this coming or probably chose to ignore the anticipated reaction.

The other issue that is making this more of a highlight is the fact that we usually are not good with continuity and perhaps we shouldn't point our fingers to the government on these issues. Someone up there is probably thinking that these changes have to be made before they leave office for the good of this country (just thinking) because if they put a long term plan on this to gradually make the changes someone might come in and undo them along the way to gain political capital. I don't know. Malawian politics. Not my field of interest.

The second big issue (and this one directly concerns me) is the way in which I am told the government is handling the hiring of much needed professionals like teachers and medical personnel. While everyone knows that there are shortages in the fields one tends to wonder why we have so many "qualifieds" sitting at home without being deployed (I am told this is about to get worse). Too bad for the one who joined the health and education training with hob security as a motivation.

My thinking is that we are making adjustment at a pace so fast that many will not be able to adapt normally. This process had to be handled like weaning a baby from breast milk. You don't just stop it but first you introduce other feeds and then slowly take them off the breast milk.

Looking at this whole thing has just made me realise one thing that the process of doing something matters. In as much as the "what" of change is important, the "how" matters too.

I think now I understand why with the same input of studying some pass and some fail; why with the same input of dating some reap happiness while others misery; with the same process of agriculture some countries earn a lot of forex while others don't have enough to feed themselves. The process matters. The "how" part of it matters.

I cannot write a letter or an e mail or whatever people write to Capitol Hill (or is it Capital Hill? Whichever) to tell someone to reverse these decisions. All I can write, dear reader, is this message to you, telling you to brace yourself for times are changing and the world we are venturing into might be a bit more challenging more than it already is.

Those who think employment need to find better ways of marketing themselves and seeking jobs. Those who do business need to find better ways of flourishing in business and most importantly those who would like to make a difference in this world need to think in line with the changes. These solutions might not be elaborate enough but they might just be  the ones that will make a difference in our lives and the lives of others.

The Concept of Fact-based Opinions

Something I am introducing. I did not bother searching on Google for this because I am sure no one has ever explored it although it is something few use on a daily basis. I would have made this concept part of my undergraduate dissertation (that's what they call it at Chancellor College, right?)

Before I get to the concept, I would like to tell you why it has showed up in the firsr place and it is directly related with the very existence of this blog.

Dear reader, this page started a couple of years ago. It was a mere experiment made out of the desire to have my name for a website link (you probably didn't have to type the whole name of mine since you followed this from Facebook or Whatsapp, n'est pas?) Worked well. I had my site going.

Site made. The next thing was that it needed content. Immediately something came to mind. Yes. And automatically it was about God. I was a new convert to real Christianity from mere churchgoing, so I decided to write about God. Nice stuff, right? Atheists are nodding in disapproval at this. But that is okay. Nzabhobho. Till you join us. Your nod of disagreement is one of the readons the content sort of flipped, anyway. Well. Reason number 10 out of 10.

I switched to writing the way I write now for a couple of reasons. If I am to summarize them into two, here is how I would say it.

1. I knew there were some people who would do it better than me. Writing t
he spiritual things, that is.

Truth be told, I have around me people who know the word; priests, pastors and name it (I don't have any prophet friend, though. If you know any, hook me up). I thought that if people are there who can do something better than I can, I need to pave way. At the end of the day we need results, anyway.

2. I thought I was better at something else. Now this is something feedback from people but a bit more importantly from myself. Positive feedback has been on the rise since I began writing what I write now. And the other part of it is that it is easy to write the way I do, anyway. What I need is a K55 bundle, 20% battery power in my phone and 20 minutes. Good to go and a blog is updated for the 10 or so keen followers (or are there more? Whatsapp me).

There we are. One factor pushed me from where I was and another welcomed me to where I am.

Now to the concept. I talked about how the writing is all spontaneous nowadays and that is mainly because I just write it off the dome (if I am allowed to use rap language); no need for references whatsoever. Again, it is easier that way. I want to write and whatever comes goes.

In the later day, what I mostly write is what I think about a particular subject. I have received some feedback from one influential friend of mine who once told me to include citations and references to show that I also read what other write. Truth be told I wouldn't manage that. That would make me divert from the sort of writing I do now and make it a tiresome job to write. So I will keep doing what I do.

Ideally, saying that I write what I think would entail that I write opinions while citing would mean that I am selectively writing facts. But I am Richard and the world is not just black and white. It has many shades of grey, so it is not just about facts and opinions; the two converge at some point and something called a fact based opinion is bred. Again, you won't find that in books because no one was bright enough to write this before me (zocheza koma zoona).

One would argue that the facts based opinion I am talking about is just a variant form of an opinion. Not too important, that argument. Here is the thing. As I am introducing this concept which is the backbone of my writing nowadays, I also want to advocate for an improvement in the way people argue cases (including but not limited to those in courts).

We have for long been a people who rant on issues using empty opinions with little facts if any. I don't know who has infected the other, between the masses and the MPs we have in the August house because honestly I am not impressed with the quality of debate that side. Anyway. That aside. Main point, you wanna have a strong opinion on something, make sure you got facts backing it up. Logical.

Having said this, some might wonder why I write then. Truth be told, I write just because I like to share a piece of my mind. But there is a bit more to that anyway. More importantly, I think I have something to share.

Here is the thing. I have had my share of the thing called experience in this world and I have been through the bad and the good. Issue with me is that these things have grossly re-wired the way I think and act and I think through my pains and joys I have learnt one or two things worth sharing.

I have also accumulated little fact which helps me analyse what goes on around the world for people, so there we are. I write. Partly to cure my verbal diarrhoea but also for you, dear reader. Not for the fame or whatever people think this is for. In other words, I write because I am a writer and not the other way round.

That got too personal. Thing is that of fact based opinions here. You wanna argue, base your opinion on facts. Improves the quality of argument and the situation as a whole.

I will continue sharing my fact based opinions here. In fact I will change the motto of this blog (or whatever you call the thing at the top of the home page; just below the words "Richie Online") to Fact based opinions, because that is what this page will be all about. I must say some of the posts will be radical, but I guess that is okay.

All in all, radical or not, these will just be fact based opinions. Someone once said we see things not the way they are but the way we are. This is how I see things and it might be different from someone's view. Same facts. That is why we need fact based opinions because their diversity brings beauty. I will be having mine here. Share yours in the comments if you feel like. Or on your Facebook timeline. Or Twitter (this one is better for short, radical and controversial opinions). Just make sure they are fact based.

Word to all who have something worth sharing; SPIT IT OUT. We need it.