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.