One for the Green Friday

Alright!

It is one Green Friday and despite being cloudy, the commercial happens to be hot like an oven. In other words, it is a very good day for writing and reading after having unsuccessfully tussled  with the crowds in an attempt to buy the TNM phones that were on the Green Friday promotion. The Green Friday did not start that well but throughout we have managed to stay green by being environment-friendly and we are hoping to continue with the green Friday by taking beverages suitable for a Green Friday. 

We are heading into an unpredictable time of the year which is also known as the festive season. I do not trust myself with the period so for some reason I will use this very article to wrap up the Richie Online year. Any article that may come in next week or any other day before the end of the year should otherwise be considered a bonus.

In the previous years, the blog used to be decorated with articles on analyzing the ending year and planning for the oncoming year. This year, however, I have decided to stay away from that tradition as I am now convinced that people who read this blog are smart enough to know what to do with their years. While I will be sharing with you on what I have learnt in the course of the year, I would like to alert you that there isn’t much worth learning from beyond this paragraph. However, you are encouraged to continue reading for your entertainment.

This year has seen me make one of the biggest transitions of my life. When I joined medical school barely 8 years ago, I was set for a good 8 years or so in which I was to follow a certain expected path of a medical student and newly graduated doctor.  When you are done being hammered as a medical student and a medical intern, the usual path is that one gets posted to one of the districts to work as a medical officer before proceeding into specialization. I came to the most mandatory part of this period by finishing my internships mid-year and having completed this stretch of the journey, I was excited to finally have the wings every young doctor needs to fly in the Malawi medical profession. I will be posted to the beautiful district of Mulanje, I thought. That, however was not to be as the person who eagerly wanted to repay the debt he owed the Malawian taxpayer was forced to pick a desk job with a research institution, thanks to a weird combination of fate and choice. While it doesn’t feel all that nice to leave the normal track of going to the district and being called “a DMO”, it does feel good to be at work synthesizing research stuff while wearing polo pants and trainers without feeling like the odd one out. Big win!

When we were starting the year, I had a lot of plans and expectations. I remember hanging a little cartoon of me on the walls of my living room. Surrounding what was representing my confused face were places I wanted to potentially work in and one US university I wanted to be in by December 31. While I am glad to report that I have ended up getting an internship in one of the three places and getting job offers from two others, one of the biggest lows from which I have learnt this year has been unemployment. Let me explain.

Having started the year with a clearly laid out plan, I was looking for a smooth transition from my internship into a seven figure salary job. Having not found one, I found myself volunteering at one organization for what was less than sub-optimal pay. The idea behind that was simple. I was doing a job I loved for almost no pay while waiting for a more suitable job. I persisted on it until circumstances no longer allowed me to volunteer there. The combination of the sudden termination of my volunteering coupled with my strict taste for jobs meant that I had to stay at home without any work to keep me sane and to bring things beyond water into the fridge. Having moved out more than a year and a half prior to this situation, I was far from willing to swallowing my pride and moving back in with the parents. Man had to survive the town and create his own miracles. This was one period that has given me a lot of clarity of thought about lots of things. I have learnt about the comforting and saving potential of family and friends and the role of faith, connections and discipline in life in general. One has to live within their means and there was never a better time to learn this in my life than in 2018. The few months I stayed home and threw a lot of blind applications to any organization that contained the word health in it or its vision have left me with many lessons and wisdom that I will carry to 2019 and beyond.

I did not just go into the year with career plans. I was planning on attaining new skills (driving, playing a musical instrument and swimming) and reading a lot of books in the course of the year. The turn of the tides meant that I was unable to accomplish all that. This was also the year I had opened shop for potential suitors (in line with my goal of getting married soon, lol). This whole bunch of plans (almost all of it) was dependent on the compliance of a whole lot of humans and that in itself meant I had a whole new field from which to reap a lot of bitter-sweet lessons. I have realized that while you need to ride on people’s shoulders on top of going through normal ladders and stairways, people will not always be available for you… And that it is not your place to question them for doing so. Perhaps it all goes to the fact that when someone is important to you, it does not necessarily follow that you are important to them. As of the issue of the potential suitor, we might have a whole article about that by the end of next month but the main point is just that these parents people are not making the girls like they used to in the 90s. Probably the same with boys, but that is an issue for another year.

In the course of the year, I picked up an obsession with communication and personal interaction. What I discovered (give me my PhD now) is that there are a lot of people who are either not aware of or deliberately disregard the existence of the basic rules of interpersonal interaction. Conversations are had to have and for career communicators like me life became less enjoyable over the fact there were very few people who I could confidently applaud as “okutha kucheza”. On the other hand, I realized that while I point out on people’s deficiencies in communication, I have my own issues in the area.

As a person who belongs to a family and societies, one thing I have realized is that I suck at being a member of society and family. Taking stock of my family life, I have realized that I have hardly been there for my parents, sisters, nieces and my very few good friends who are almost brothers. I am hoping that I will be a bit cooler than that moving on.

By this time last year, I had written an article calling 2017 a wasted year. This year has had its own highs and serious lows, but it has been offered invaluable lessons. I am going into 2019 with another road map and plans that may not be fulfilled but from what I have learnt this year, I will be more human with the way I respond to the successes and failures of the years to come. There will be expectations from people and I am hoping that those will align with mine because chances are that I will not bend towards fulfilling other people’s expectations. Those who feel like I am growing old have already hinted that they would like to see me find love and progress towards marriage. Those who have used their imagination to look at what my pay slip looks like are expecting me to be driving by a certain month and others are expecting me to be in the UK studying by October. Thanks for the flashy expectations and wishes. As of me, 2019 is just another year of doing the things I know how to do best; thriving, learning and networking.

8 Years down the Line; the Uncertainties of Life after College

Greetings, dear reader.

It feels good to write again. Having had difficulties putting up an article last Friday, I managed to throw in one on Sunday and it was available as text on request. That was just a quick note for those who were about to stone me for not writing last week.

I felt motivated to write this article as it directly relates to the highs and lows of my life after college as today is the day after the 8th anniversary of the beginning of my journey into the medical profession. It was on that 6th day of the month of December in the year 2010 that I and 193 others walked into the gates of the College of Medicine and registered as a medical student with dreams of a rosy life after college. 8 years down the line, I am sure I am not speaking for myself only when I say that we are all lost in the technicalities and politics of the medical field.

Most find it shocking when I tell them that being a doctor was never my initial dream. Having seen the exploits of Edmond Kachale, one of the best computer programmers in the land, I was geared to get into the same field of computer programming and to be an excellent programmer. You might be wondering as to what sort of accident might have happened for a coder to switch lanes and end up performing caesarian sections at the Gogo Chatinkha Maternity Wing. Well. MSCE happened and upon realizing that my grades were that good and they could easily get me into medical school, family and friends mounted lots of pressure for me to join. I succumbed to the pressure partly because it came from all angles of my inner circle and partly because I had seen some pictures of the College of Medicine that were projected by a team of then COM students (Dr Stephen Macheso, Dr Kondwani Katundu, Dr Arnold Kapachika, Dr Clifford Banda and Dr Emmanuel Banda) who came to give us a motivational talk. I aced the university entrance examinations and the 6th was the day.

We were welcomed to the college on the first day of orientation by Dr Chiwoza Bandawe, who welcomed us to what he called the “rest of our lives”. This was one statement I took lightly but lately it has come back to me as I realized that in as much as the first day of joining college marks a new beginning, most intellectuals do not give a serious thought to life after college. This is particularly worse for those who get into medical programs as there is an almost set career path which under normal circumstances people hardly deviate from.

When you do medical school for 6 academic years, you go for your in-service training for 18 months. After successfully completing the training for the said months, one is ready for deployment to the districts before coming back to the central hospitals for specialization or doing other postgraduate trainings. “And they lived happily ever after..” This is pretty much the same for the other core undergraduate programs, where people think that jobs are almost guaranteed for everyone who passes through the hands of mother COM.8 years after starting my foundation year, however, I have discovered that what once was an almost flawless career path has been marred by a lot of politics and technicalities that have demanded evolution and adaptation for the every person who is joining the medical profession on the premise of guaranteed jobs and job security (and those who push others into the profession with the same idea in mind).

In one talk he gave, one of the keepers of the profession in Malawi, Prof Adamson Muula once narrated how having finished examinations on a Thursday, their class started internships four days later on the next Monday. Over the years, this period has exponentially increased to months and new graduates from the medical school have been hired after constant application of pressure from various stakeholders over the years. The transition from medical school to deployment to the districts has also been very difficult and lately we all might have heard of the 80 unemployed doctors sitting at home and awaiting government. For those who graduated in with degrees in pharmacy and physiotherapy and completed their internships, it is pretty much the same story and the ordeal is even much worse for those who study laboratory sciences to whom the government has made no commitment to hire despite the chronic lack.

One might wonder as to why I am talking about all this and I can sense that most would think that I am doing this in the spirit of advocacy. Contrary to that, I am writing about all this in a bid to spread the message of preparation for life after college for those who are in different colleges and for those who at some point send or will send their wards to college. The reason I am using my own experiences and the College of Medicine as an example emanates from my familiarity with the college and the fact that the college is one of the few in the country, graduates from which are taken as very marketable on the job market. The change of winds in the ease of employment for a medical graduate entails that graduates from other fields will be finding it even harder to secure employment or start up their own businesses and while this may sound negative, it is good to take it positively and let it inform preparation for life after college.

In finances, most people get through college having a constant source of income for their upkeep. However, there is a certain stretch in a graduate’s life that most of us do not like to pay attention to and that is the period between graduating and securing a job. In this period, most young people suffer and break down from the double burden of being broke and being unemployed. If one happens to be in college, here is one thing that has to be thought through from the early days.
Unemployment is on the rise in this country and conventional job hunting methods may not work in the modern day. The modern day intellectual needs to act like a mole burrowing through stuff to explore new opportunities and to create networks that will in turn help in securing jobs or getting business opportunities.

Among the major things that most of us overlook during our lives in college are issues of spiritual life after college and marriage. Most of the people who subscribe to Christian and Islamic faith are fairly spiritual and morally upright while in college but it is not a strange thing to see moral breakdowns after college. Similarly, it is not strange to see people who graduated with excellent grades not doing well in family life. College hardly explicitly prepares us for marriage but it is (rather objectively) one of the best settings to start out on such a journey. Reason? It is the time before people accumulate papers and money and that is the best time when people can get to know and build one another towards marriage. This is as opposed to what may happen to when someone graduates as an engineer; to whom potential spouses may flock, not for the real love but for the financial returns and security. Perhaps those who are still passing through tertiary education should give a serious thought to this and the fact that utsogoleri wa ku CCAPSO should go beyond the campus and translate leadership in the church out here.

I could have written more but that would have made my piece undesirably long. All in all, we are still here 8 years down the line. We are not driving as we anticipated but I guess that will be sorted with time. We are yet to get married and participation in church is not as good as we thought it would be, but I guess time will sort that too. College prepared us but I am left with the question of whether it prepared us well enough for the uncertainties of life after graduation.

Who should text first? The age-old question.

Dear reader,

On a normal day like this, I would write an article and the opening would be something to do with the day being a Friday. I woke up feeling like the day was a Monday or something of the sort. The lack of activity on the busy area I overlook when I am out for a stretch on a normal midday makes it even more confusing as it is highly suggestive of today being a Sunday. Anyway. We are here and we can only wonder what day it is. I do not believe that we should name days based only on what the previous ones were, by the way.

It feels good to be back to writing ways. I have always told people who take interest in the person behind the Friday articles that writing is my way of venting out my anger and frustrations and that it is only through this way that I minimize the fallout and collateral damage. I sometimes feel what I would call a blend of pride and guilt when people tell me they have seen themselves in my articles when in essence I was just writing about myself the whole way. It gives me the sense that I have stepped on the raw nerves I strive to avoid but at the same time makes me realize that I am not alone in the darkness of my suffering.

Enough of the self-pity.

Coming back to writing ways was always going to be a difficult thing for me. Even in the thick of political and social media drama the choice of an article was going to be a difficult one for me. At the end of the day, I chose to write something about what most people in relationships are struggling with. The question?

“Who should text the other first?”

While I may agree with the one who is whining that this is a very stupid topic, I must say that this might be important for a few after all. By the time we get to the end of the second A4 page we should be able to determine the criteria by which we should choose who should text the other first in a relationship. Let’s break the ground.

I must state here that I do not have that much of relationship experience. My stint with these things lasted a little over two years and I have since taken a two year break from them. Not much of CV for someone who should be trying to answer this complex question, if you think about it but such a time provided a good opportunity to observe and experience some stuff.

The genesis and lifespan of a 21^st century relationship has evolved to an extent that most of the stages pass by in an accelerated. People meet and they exchange numbers. Before you know it, they get to be all over each other, texting through the night. In a matter of days, some premature relationship is born. The texting dynamics then keep getting poorer until the relationship dies a natural death. Needless to say, relationships are still good and everybody needs one. Well. Almost everyone (we will explain that in another article, koma enanu mukhoza kupitiriza kudya kanundu ndi kudumpha ma sipikala a Jai Banda).

On the texting dynamics, most of these relationships which involve semi-independent young humans are sustained by online communication and Whatsapp becomes vital in the communication because with time people have become too lazy to call. For some reason, the owner of this application decided that it was good for people to see when last the person on the other end of the line was online should they not be active in the moment. That is a good feature and it helps create realistic expectations in terms of response times. On the other hand, the same good feature has become a burden to some people in love as it creates questions. Imagine waking up a little after sunrise and not finding a good morning bae (or whatever you call each other) text from your spouse who was last seen online at 5:30. Hurts, right? You will not admit but we both know that this has been an issue mu chibwenzi chanucho. Even when there is no “last seen” involved, there have always been some issues that have restrained people from being the first texter in relationships in which spouses once put their school or career on the line because of spending too much time online.

There are several determinants of who texts first from my observations and experience. The first one of these (rather stupidly) is about who was the last to text. Some people just feel like if theirs was the last text on the chat, the other has to ignite the next chat with the first text. Of course it sounds logical, sometimes. The second? Whoever comes online first after the last chat. And then there is this thing of agreement. “Ukamaliza kupanga zakozo holla at me on Whatsapp.” Good stuff.

All those scenarios and things sound pretty simple but they have been sources of trouble for young relationships. People have had serious headaches on why their loved ones did not text them despite having been online at some point or despite them being the last to text and this has led to the collapse of some relationships. At some point, a game of egos has led people into thinking that they were not going to start a chat if bae was not going to.

I have swam a good number of miles in these waters and over years I have realized that these small internal barriers to communication have catastrophic effects on human interaction. .. and that these games are pretty unnecessary for someone who is serious about communication, in a relationship or otherwise. In my view, anyone who is really serious about interaction and the building of meaningful interpersonal relationships should not take sending the first text as a burden. It is just “Hi!”, anyway. The unnecessary pride we harbor and allow to flourish make the punching of these four keystrokes look like a herculean effort and at the end of the day we end of losing people of great value in our lives because we wanted to nourish our pride.

Having stated all that, I think we can go back to answering the question that troubles many every morning and evening (at the peak texting hours). Who should be the one to text first? Is it the one who last uploaded a funny picture for a status update? While that may be the nearest answer in the contexts of our pride hearts, the answer to all this lies in how much value we put to communication and whoever is on the receiving end of the communication. When we put so much value on the person on the other end, texting becomes easy regardless of the other factors that may be at play.

From the experience corner, I can say that such egos have cost me some potentially profitable relationships. From the observation corner, most relationships are suffering because of such trivial issues. I will not bring in suggestions or action points into this. All I will say is that if you are really serious about communication or your relationships, you will not need much contemplation to send the first text. For the rest of you, continue to act the way you act. Your relationship will take the natural course and eventually you won’t be needing to crack your head on whether you should send the first text, anyway.

Woza Friyay!

Homeland Insecurity

By the Venomous Hope


I do not remember the last article I wrote for the venerated Richie Online but it’s probably been some eternity. While on the bench, however, I have keenly enjoyed the writings of a number of scribes, including the host, dissecting various issues of national and personal importance. I have to confess that reading them has been more fulfilling than being harangued by the blog’s proprietor for missing the deadline. Writing this week has just reminded me how rusty I have become such that it took me hours to erase images of Wakanda from my brain and come to terms with today’s agenda.
For the starters, runaway TNM Super League leaders, Nyasa Big Bullets, struggled yesterday to dismiss from, FISD Challenge Cup, Zamani FC from Lizulu, a team composed of Irish potato farmers, plumbers and world-class kabaza operators. In fact, the team who are languishing in mid-table of the 8th division’s Bembeke League replied twice past the so-called People’s Team, and could have coughed up more if the referee was not afraid of losing his dental formula from irate Nyasa fans. This would have been inconceivable to Bullets under the legendary Kinnah Phiri. His coaching skills helped Bullets to reach the last 8 of the CAF Champions League in 2004 while sweeping the domestic title 8 years in a row. The few chronicled glory days of the Flames also coincided with the prime playing days of Kinnah who, since hanging up his boots in the early 90s, still hold the record for the number of goals scored for our beloved Flames by miles. And recently, he has become a hot potato to the extent that he himself thinks he can win any constituency in Nyasaland with a landslide.

Kinnah was one of the big wigs paraded by UTM in August in their Mzuzu launch and he endorsed Vice President Saulos Chilima for the 2019 general elections in a brief speech he made that day. Nonetheless, while positioning himself for a parliamentary seat this week, he has distanced himself from the UTM, and proclaimed to being a staunch DPP member since its infancy. We cannot berate his choice for political conscience but chopping and changing is one of the symptoms for our ailing politics. We all know Chenji Golo from Salima who has reinvented himself into DPP’s vice president for the Centre. Another Lower Shire lightweight, Salim Bagus, has just left MCP for the greener pastures of DPP this week barely months after being elected into the MCP’s inner circle. It becomes prickling for any party to lose the clout of members who pull crowds in political rallies especially with the May 2019 elections fast approaching. The mass exodus of previously diehard supporters including the likes of Chilima, Patricia Kaliati, Richard Msowoya, Noel Masangwi, and Lucius Banda, among others, from both DPP and MCP cannot be understated for the mere fact that politics is a game of numbers. DPP obviously is bleeding more than the others because of the caliber of noisemakers it has lost while MCP will be reeling from the realization that it will be twice harder to convince Malawians of the evils of DPP now that UTM is also preaching the same gospel. Parties will end up hiring own Balaam’s to curse opponents before the D-day.

Talking about seers, in May 2017, Afrobarometer survey revealed that 32% of respondents will usher MCP to victory if elections were held during that period while 27% chose DPP, 11% UDF, and 9% PP. Afrobarometer is composed of some elite university professors including Edge Kanyongolo and Happy Kayuni. Just a month earlier of the release of this report, UK-based Economic Intelligence Unit prophesied that Peter Mutharika was on course to retain tenancy at Sanjika because of the ‘exceptional performance he had shown.’ And just last week, Boniface Dulani’s Institute of Public Opinion and Research (IPOR) delivered an oracle that favors Mutharika’s DPP to narrowly scrape past MCP with 27% of respondents choosing DPP while 24% opting for Chakwera. UTM polled 16% despite that it had only clocked a month by the time the survey was conducted.
The fact that no party is convincing enough to get more than 35% of the projected votes is alarming for the country with majority citizens swimming in the deep waters of poverty. It is an indication of how confused voters are especially with regard to the issues politicians present to them. The manifesto of a Malawian political party is just a carbon copy of another; you can only be convinced of the original creators if you personally benefit from such a party. It is the reason the likes of Kinnah Phiri do not find it difficult to associate themselves with the flicking candle light yesterday and trek to four maize cobs the next day. There’s no underlying ideology to distinguishing utterances of a Congress youth to innuendos of a DDP cadet. It is the reason we have countless registered political parties including my own PETRA which will resurface in January after a four and half years of hibernation. Friday Jumbe owns New Republican Party, aimanso. Perhaps we needed that 50+1 bill to have a winner guaranteed by a majority of votes and forge strong alliances, not headlines like “Cassim Chilumpha’s Assembly for Democracy and Development (ADD) negotiating a cordiale with bed-gate mastermind Khumbo Kachali’s Freedom Party. Well these two spent forces were once vice presidents, we should always remember.

And the current vice president has been omitted from the latest list of cabinet ministers in the Wednesday’s reshuffle by Mutharika. A lot of whining is already underway and every monger with access to media platform is expressing his or her views on what they’re calling ‘constitutional crisis.’ The Malawi Law Society has described the cabinet as illegal because it does not recognize the membership of the vice president while the state house is saying it does not need to mention the vice president’s membership as it is by default, as if they will invite him to any meeting. The usual loudmouths of the civil societies, however, have written the UN for it to sack Mutharika from his role as He-for-she Champion, whatever it is, because he has reduced the number of female ministers from respectable 4 to 3 in a 21-member squad of DPP loyalists. The newly refurbished Ministry of Homeland Security has also left tongues waging ranging from the new name to the characters in its office. It is now led by Nicholas Dausi, the same guy who failed to explain what 4G is while enjoying his previous job as ICT minister, and crucially he is deputized by the enigmatic Charles Mchacha. Anna Kachikho from Phalombe was sacked while UDF President who sometimes plies his political trader under the banner of Agenda for Change has retained his portfolio as the overall boss of this blog’s landlord.

Like all reshuffles nearer to elections, Mutharika is surely thinking about a winning team, and roping in Mchacha is a way of surrounding himself with the most trusted lieutenants so that he is not stubbed in the back when he looks the other way. We can only speculate as to what the combination of Dausi and Mchacha will bring to the table in regard to their control of the already corrupt Malawi Police Service. Are they going to dissuade police intimidation of supporters of other parties when the heat becomes hell fire? Let’s hope our fears are mere nightmares. All in all, the cabinet shows the president’s political homeland is insecure. The holes of his maladministration need people who can deep their hands in dirty to fix. He will need people renowned with foul mouths to exert pressure on his enemies and saintly uplift the DPP to paradise. It will be war in the run up to elections, and merely changing the name of ministry will not help its cause. What do I think of the UTM? Well just look at its leadership and what they stand for. The likes of Kaliati can join forces with the devil if their lives depend on it. As is the trend among all parties, UTM attracted a host of disgruntled politicians whose only agenda was to continue stealing from Malawians. With Chilima at the helm perhaps they have solace of preaching change but for how long? We will never run away from thieves plundering our resources.

Enjoy your weekend folks.

One on English: a Letter from the Daydreamer

Dear Richie,

I hope you are alive. Like every other Friday, I was anticipating your usual text announcing that you have published another article. Quite a feat for a medical doctor, I must say. Some of us whose bread is 'won' in related fields our pens are becoming dusty. Not that we do not have ideas to write about, but this 'bread winning' game is taking most of our precious time, leaving us completely battered that the pen is too heavy to lift. From past experience, I could tell it's either that your sorry gadget was misbehaving, or today's 'doctoring' could not let you have time to tell us one of those random thoughts playing gendaball in your mind (there is a new game in town, gendaball, invented by Malawians. I am hoping maybe this one we can be world number one, after all it's our own creation. But we'll talk about that another day).

If I didn't know you that personally, I could have thought wagoba mafulasi after getting your MSCE results. I could have understood you, most people are very frustrated right now. For the first time since I started following these things, there is no one who has scored 6 points. The examination administration gurus have told us that, in summary, this is as a result of poor performance in English.

Personally, this is no surprise to me. We keep claiming that English is not the measure of one's intelligence. Now look at the MSCE situation. No one has 6 straight points because no one scored a 1 in each and every subject including English. Those who did, the highest they got was probably a 2. At least it has shown that it is a measure of something, probably not necessarily intelligence.

For a long time, I have been observing the trends the Queen's language is going through. I suppose you have heard about, or even chanced one or two people who did not go beyond the old time's Standard 6. If you compare those people and how a Form 4 student of these days writes or speaks English, you would really appreciate how much the graph has tipped.

These days you find even a graduate who can barely speak two consecutive sentences in English without scampering for extra vocabulary. Many of us sound like that guy who calls himself Mr Broken English. I find it a lame excuse when people say English is not a measure of one's intelligence. Whether it is a measure or not, it is not reason enough to run away from learning it properly and mastering it.
In my line of duty, I often become a fly on the wall in different gatherings. Just this week I found myself in a very high profile gathering where one of the participants was also lamenting about deteriorating levels of English. This lady, a former academician herself, was challenging fellow academicians to take deliberate efforts in ensuring that the teaching and learning of English is resuscitated.

This got me thinking: who is to blame? Student? Teachers? Policy makers? I feel everyone, even myself, should take a fair share of the blame. Thanks to the world's advancement in various technologies, students these days are so obsessed with games, social networks, and such other stuff. Gone are the days when students could boast amongst themselves about how many novels they have read. These days you would rarely find students who have time for novels that are not part of their academic prescription. Students prefer to use their free time, which is usually any time they are not in class, to waste time on Facebook and Whatsapp or in various cubicles they have turned into music studios. If not, then they are in one of these shacks showing Ackila movies, treating themselves with the now popular Chichewa translated movies.

Language acquisition, my language specialists tell me, doesn’t only dependent on what you learn in class. In class we get the grammar and all that technical stuff about language, but it is through hearing and reading that we get to learn most of the vocabulary and usage. I do not think the Facebooks and Whatsapps of this day are helping matters. I mean, with the heavy usage of contractions and emojis, and of course message forwarding, we are fast losing the grammar and vocabulary. In the end we are all speaking like Mr Broken English. Even when we attempt to text in English it is so flabbergasting.
I can also blame the teachers for not being as vigilant as they need to be. There are schools that take special initiatives to promote spoken and written English. I would be mean if I can’t commend their efforts. But then there are some teachers that when you listen to them speak or read the English they have written, you wonder what kind of English would their student speak or write. You remember that letter supposedly from a headmaster of a secondary school that made rounds on various social networks? You remember that school which boasted of teaching a British syllabus yet their poster was a defilement of the language of the Britons? These are just tips of the iceberg, but some of these teachers themselves struggle to find appropriate verbs and adjectives.

And for the policy makers. I wonder which devil commands them to be changing syllabi like they are changing diapers of a baby with diarrhoea. If you have been observant enough, you’ll find that some of the elements they put into or remove from the syllabus do not deserve to be inserted or removed. Maybe am just a layman, but these other things do not require rocket science expertise to understand. Of course, I would commend them for coming up initiatives such as the National Reading Programme which seeks to promote reading culture among students.

In all this kulubwalubwa the point I am trying to make is that as we are putting more effort in other subjects, we should surely think about English. You see, Richie, from Standard 5 to whatever education level we get to, the language of instruction is English. We can’t run away from it, we are Anglophone. Our official language is said to be English (though Chichewa and Tumbuka are also mentioned sometimes). The situation is so bad that even journalists, those we thought could be custodians of proper English, are busy besmirching it on radio, television, and sometimes even in the papers. At the rate we are going, we will soon be embarrassing ourselves like that footballer on some foreign television channel several months ago. We can do better, and we surely need to do better. And maybe not too good as our dear Minister of Information whose interview he did with BBC in English had a voice over in English too!

Koma kodi ukwatira liti? Ukuwachedwetsa ana ku sukulutu! Komanso achina ABJ Junior akufunikira amnzawo oti adzicheza nawo.

Kindest regards,

The Daydreamer.

The Statue

It is yet another Richie Online Friday and once again we get to be treated to an article. There was a lot to pick from for today’s article with the whole lot of events surrounding the movement of the day and the prophetic ministries which I didn’t have a chance to talk about. And yes, there is the issue of our FC Barcelona which is in Cameroon in a bid to book a place in next year’s African Cup of Nations and the issues of football administration. There is the issue of weddings and relationships (for some reason I always have something to write about around this topic) and the chat I had with my grandmother (I will probably drop this sometimes later) earlier today. For every good reason, however, I decided to drop one about the construction project that is going on near the Queens Elizabeth Central Hospital roundabout; the statue of Mahatma Gandhi.

According to official sources, the government of India has offered us some non-conditional funding for the construction of a convention center and whatever else. The same government has seen it fit to erect a statue of Gandhi at one of the most visible places in the commercial capital of Blantyre and I am told that this has no connection to the other two construction projects I have mentioned. As it stands, construction is underway and from what I saw while passing by the place (couldn’t take a picture because my phone has no camera worth a picture for the site of the great Gandhi), the site is almost ready for the erection of the status.

While the work is in construction,  some keypad warriors have expressed their unhappiness about the project on the social media. Facebook and Whatsapp have been awash with posts of how people did not want the statue of the Gandhi in Blantyre or anywhere else in the country. Reasons? Gandhi was a racist who called Africans kaffirs. Gandhi did not contribute anything to the country and is, thus, not significant enough to have a statue erected in the country. Fair enough, right? One good friend of mine went to one of the local TV stations and openly opposed the construction on TV. Adding to that, the Instagram generation of protestors took a step further from usual Facebook complaints and wrote a petition to the government, calling for a stop to the construction of the Gandhi.

The coming of the petition brought in some mixed reactions. For the first time in my life I found myself receiving a prompt to sign the online petition from the most unlikely of friends. The debate raged on in a couple of Whatsapp forums and while some supported the petition, some felt like no one had sufficient interest to protest against the erection of the Gandhi in town. The reasoning of the latter was simple. This was an Indian statue being funded by Indian money. It was not going to disturb anyone or consume anything from a Malawian. After all, they argued, we already have a road named after the same legendary Indian whose statue we want to mount…. In the same city!
Having signed the petition, I was eager to see what the response from the responsible government arm would be. My wait for the response was not long as the Chief Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs dropped one on the eleventh of the month. Dzulo. I do remember reading the whole thing to the end and not finding any convincing counter arguments but in my recollection, there was a mention of the good bilateral relationship that is there between the government of India and that of Malawi and how India has been helping Malawi with all sorts of financial and technical support. Very good. There was also a mention of the non-conditional projects that the government of India was about to give to Malawians and how the statue was a harmless addition to the road named after Gandhi, a thing to which no one protested. Hoza Friday, Mr Secretary (this one is surely Mr Secretary, whatever his biological gender is).
Perhaps it can only be fair to give a balanced examination of the arguments or to attempt to do so. Gandhi was a racist? This has come up a lot and people have used evidence from some South African articles to demonstrate that this man supported the apartheid regime that oppressed black people while advocating for some “middle class” treatment for his fellow countrymen. And there is the issue of the K word. I am just wondering if this argument holds water in our setting considering the distance between Blantyre and Tshwane and that that sort of support for the regime may not have affected us directly. African solidarity, some may say, but come on! These are the South Africans. I would write this argument off.

On the other hand, I agree with the point that Gandhi has no significance in the country and deserves no such honor of having a statue at such a hotspot or indeed anywhere. Dzombe limenero ine sindikutenga nawo. The site at which we are having this Gandhi would surely look better with a John Chilembwe, Orton Chirwa or Kamuzu Banda statue. These ones surely contributed something to the country and they need this sort of recognition.
Talking of the good relationship between India and Malawi, I think that whole thing was said out of context. What people are questioning here was not the issue of whether we have a good relationship with the subcontinent but rather the rationale behind erecting the statue of a foreign activist on our soil. While some may argue with the fact that we made peace with the fact that a road was named after Gandhi in the city, I would take the argument as invalid considering that more than half of the Richie Online readers (and the general public really) do not know the stretch of road that was named after Gandhi. I doubt they care too. There are roads are roads after some controversial characters like Mugabe, Haile Selasie and Glyn Jones, anyway. No one cares because those ones are just some bumby stretches of road we all love to drive by. We rarely think about whose grandfather the roads were named after.

At some point, the tallest building in the city of Chicago was owned by a Japanese firm. One of the natives once pointed out that the building was an insult to the natives. That was probably a far-fetched feeling but should the Gandhi be erected, I will feel like this city has been insulted along the same lines. We have many national hills and I somehow do not get why the statue a foreign hero should find space in the heart of our city.

This is probably the most biased and subjective articles. I will give it that. If you share the view and think that I have been too polarized about this narrative, zanu zimenezo.

Let's leave the people to put up the statue. We can decide whether we will live with it after we see  it. Maybe having a Gandhi statue in town is not much of a bad idea.

Happy weekend!

My Mother, My Doctor

It is a Friday, once again and once again we are fed with an article from the Richie Online bowl. Throughout the course of the week, I have been thinking about drafting something about the event of the week, the Lake of Stars festival. The thoughts were disturbed by the significant political events in the country. Compelling as those were, they were superseded by issues to do with my own health.

I woke up on a Thursday morning with a headache and general body pains. Nsanawu umachita kutsina zosowetsa mtendere zija and that was in addition to the sore throat and runny nose I had. I forced myself out of bed to take a shower in a bid to gather some strength and start to punch holes through my to-do list. Everything started well and I managed to do almost all the things I had on my list. In the late afternoon, however things changed for the worse. I increasingly grew weak and I could hardly do anything beyond lifting the bottle of water that was on the bedside. I got worried that I might be having malaria.

The thought of the possibility of malaria was not a far-fetched one. Mandala, the area I live in is plagued by the worst mosquitoes I have ever seen. To keep them at bay, I use an insecticide treated net (often retiring early to bed to seek refuge in it) and either an insecticide coil or spray. The interesting thing, however, is that I still wake up with some bad skin reactions from mosquito bites. Having had a fair dose of the mosquito bites, I thought that might as well have been malaria and that led into a chain reaction of thoughts of memories and thoughts about my previous malaria and pseudo-malaria attacks.

In the days before I moved out of my parents’ home, illnesses like the one I had on this particular Thursday used to be dealt with a dose of Novidar SP straight from the shop. That was the first resort before turning to the hospital. Do not get me wrong. In our family we go to the hospital a lot, but even before that, my mum always made sure that we had used the means at our disposal to sort things out.

When I advanced into the clinical years at the College of Medicine, I began to disagree with my mum’s methods. Being “educated” had made me realize that not every fever could be attributed to malaria and we would get into heated debates when it came to such illnesses. On one occasion, I had a fever and upon going to the hospital I tested negative for malaria. I was given some antibiotics with the presumption that I had a bacterial infection. My mum was not impressed and she insisted that I get some antimalarial medication on top of the antibiotics I received. I protested and I stuck to the antibiotics. Two days later, I was well up and running.

The situation would repeat itself a couple of years later after my graduation from the College of Medicine. By this time, I had happily moved out and was living comfortably in some guest wing on the opposite side of the city. I had woken up well only to start feeling funny on one fateful Saturday. It was probably nothing, I thought. Towards the end of the day, things were not too good and I had to miss one of my favorite activities; choir practice for the coming Sunday. Long story short, the illness progressed and I missed work on the next Monday. When I went to seek medical attention, I was tested for malaria and the test came out negative. Another course of strong antibiotics was given and I was on my way home. When I called my mum to tell her I wasn’t feeling well, we reignited the debate on how I needed to get antimalarial medication. Owing it to the past experience, I strongly opposed the view. Antibiotics were the remedy for me and after a day on them I was able to drag myself to work to sort out my fellow patients on Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital’s Ward 4A.

The funny thing was that after knocking off on this particular day things got worse. It was more of a rebound attack of fever and general body pains. I was forced to go back to the hospital for a repeat malaria test. Bingo! Malaria positive. By the time I was getting home to start the antimalarials, things were so bad I felt like I was on my way to meet my maker. Out of parental instincts, my dad came in to see me and he immediately decided that I go home for closer observation. A bumpy ride later, I found myself worse and requiring admission at Mlambe Mission Hospital..

Recounting the last experience, I find myself wondering as to which one I should trust more; my medical doctor instincts or the parental instincts. Her Excellency had figured out that I had malaria even before the famous Malaria Rapid Diagnostic Test could tell. I was left trusting this test while harboring the parasites which were slowly dragging me towards my end but somehow this wonderful woman sensed what was going on from the opposite end of town.

I remembered the time when we got into a conversation about getting over the counter medications for my nieces. At this particular point, I was telling her that it was not a good practice to keep getting medications from the shops for the little ones with the better option being going to the hospital and getting a thorough checkup. That was to be the last time I ever said that because I was silenced with some strong words. “Inutu munapulumukira zomwezi. Pano mwaphunzira ndiye mukufuna muyambe kuchuluka nzeru?” She won, and since then I have let her do her thing. When I am in my parental home, I will just resign to my place of being the last born child my parents have, I decided. Izi za udokotala tidzipangira moyendamu and I don’t give any health related advice without being asked to.

Perhaps there is something special about parents and their children’s health, I keep thinking. I can’t help but wonder who I will trust the next time I get a negative malaria test; the test kit or my mother, my doctor.

Moral of the narrative? Osamapanga makani ndi makolo.

Demonstrations; but for what?

It is a wonderful sunny day in Blantyre and there can never be a better day for writing and reading. Contrary to the other Fridays when I wake up with many ideas punching each other for space on the blog, I woke up with absolutely no idea of what I was going to feed to my readers today. That changed when I opened my Whatsapp, which has of late been a good source of article worthy posts and discussions. So… What did we see on Whatsapp today? A picture of people demonstrating against the DPP led government in Zomba, of course.

Prior to the sight of this picture, I came across a Facebook post indicating people’s intentions to demonstrate against the government. I am not too sure as to the reasons that were cited as the trigger to the demonstrations as the post was just about the schedule and the routes people were to take on the way to deliver the petitions to the respective places of delivery in the country’s major cities (if we are allowed to call them that). The organizers? Civil societies, of course. My recent religious following of MBC news tells me that these were organized by a civil society called Human Rights Defenders Coalition or something that sounds like that. I am told that in the light of the demonstrations, our listening government extended an invitation to a round table discussion to the CSO in question. We are not too sure about how constructive the invitation was but it did not get a nod from what top government gurus want to make us believe. Interesting, not so?

When the picture of the demonstrators was shared on some professional forum, others gave a thumb up (emoji) and commended the bravery of those who took it to the streets; highlighting the importance of doing something about the challenges we face as Malawians. One critical member, however, posed a question which hardly attracted any convincing answers: To what and whose benefit do these demonstrations work? If this was a Facebook post, I would have left it right there and asked people to comment. This, however, is Richie Online so I will continue and share a bit of sense on what I think actually goes on.

To begin with, the demonstrations we have had in the recent past have had no palpable positive impact on the issues in question. People have organized and staged demonstrations in a bid to fix the governance and economic issues in the country but the only changes we have seen were the vandalism of property, loss of lives and a chronic worsening of the issues “concerned citizens” demonstrate against. In my own view, if demonstrations have proven anything in our setting then it is just that demonstrations do not work when it comes to bringing positive change when it comes to government related issues. My opinion, eti? My belief that demonstrations hardly (if they) work amplifies the question of whose benefit they work to, considering the number of demonstrations we have had following the sad events of that 20th of July.
The first answer to this question would just be that there might be a number of people who are process oriented (as opposed to outcome oriented) who just want to do something about the status quo without projecting the potential effect of their actions or lack of thereof. Organizers of demonstrations may simply organize the activities and lead demonstrations while they know that nothing will happen or without foreknowledge that their grievances will fall on deaf ears.

Considering the former situation, people may use flaws in the governance system and demonstrations just to make noise and seek attention or they may be doing it for their own interest and in a bid to advance their own agenda. On the other hand, some may have too much faith in which case they may think that delivering a petition while wearing a red t-shirt to the office of some city council may stop nepotism and plunder of government resources by some gurus. I personally do not subscribe to that thought process.

On another note, a certain DPP enthusiast offered an alternative explanation on Facebook. In his post, he explained how the organizers of the demonstrations received money from some funders for organizing the demonstrations. He also explained how honoring the invitation to the discussions by the government would mean cancelling the demonstrations and thus returning the money that was sourced for the demonstrations. In the blue blooded man’s words, the money had already been divided among the organizers who had already used it thus cancelling the demonstrations was not an option. Solution? Not showing up for the round table discussion and going on with the demonstrations, of course.

While some might question the view that some CSOs cash in on the demonstrations, I personally believe that it is not a far-fetched idea. People with interests in our governance systems may be willing to advance their own agenda through the organizations who in turn get significant amounts of money for organizing some ill-conceived demonstrations with no tangible perceived benefits. While this may not be true for all organizations and civil rights activists, it is surely more than true for a few bad apples out here.

Going back to the question of what benefit and to whose benefit demonstrations work, I am convinced that the question was asked in a bid to tell us that the demonstrations were useless and that some people were blindly demonstrating without the knowledge that they might have been advancing someone else’s agenda. I am interested in knowing the impact of the latest demonstrations (which had the leader of opposition in attendance). On the other hand, I feel like we need to look to other effective alternatives of sorting out the governance and economic woes.

Demonstrations have failed miserably. If you are really convinced that it is the blue coating that is messing the governance and economy for you, then you surely have an alternative come next year. Otherwise, work hard and make your own money while pretending that everything else is moving smoothly out there.

The Evolution of the In-law

Greetings. I really can’t say this is much of an awesome Friday. Prior to writing this article, I was barricaded on some cubicle in some office space in an area I think is the hottest place on the planet earth; trying to make ends meet. Paja ndalama ili pa minga. Either way.  I managed to survive the day and think of getting fingers on the keypad for this article.

Business for today? Yeah. Let’s get on with it. Today we will talk about an important person called an in-law. Mlamu.

The general idea of man-woman (or boy-girl relationships, now that we are factoring your immaturity and everything else) is that it is generally a two-human show. Culture, however, decided to add a spice to the mix and the in-law was invented. What that basically means is that I need to have some kind of relationship and defined limits of interaction with the siblings of the person I end up dating (or marrying) or the one who marries my siblings (the latter sounds more relatable for me). Interesting, right? Probably. What I find more interesting, however, is the evolution of the in law and how the definitions of the thing have over time deviated from the original.

I have not had much time to study the interactions between in laws in the western context so I am not too sure as to what people do with their in laws that side. My observation from life in the village where I grew up and from local literature (fictional or otherwise) made me realize that an in-law is that one person with who you are sort of mandated to be connected with to a certain extent. Although there is a difference between patrilineal and matrilineal tribes on the same, both cultures generally emphasize on keeping a distance between in-laws. That is for a good reason, I guess. Here is a person who has married your sibling or to whose sibling you are married. You need to be open enough so that you can discuss issues to do with the welfare of the families but at the same time you have to be closed up enough to avoid talking about things the other is not supposed to hear. There is also an interesting difference  between the interaction depending on whether the in-law is of the same gender.

The traditional sense of the in-law generally used to apply to the setting of marriage. Over time, we have seen it trickle down to serious relationships and now to casual relationships. Along the same lines, the concept has also metastasized from blood relationships where it was originally confined to strong friendships. Now that is what we call the evolution of the in-law and if you thought these facts are useless, you need to think again. Ndikukamba makamaka kwa amene musanakwatire inu.

Let us put things in the relationships context. In the early days, there used to be some sort of fear for the person you were dating or hoping for. Amatha kukukupa khofi ndithu regardless of the age difference. We (by we I mean boys) used to avoid the paths they used frequently, the pitches they played their football on and the video showrooms they went to. Over time, however, that has changed a lot. People approach their in-laws with friendly gestures without fear and it is not a strange thing to see social media and physical interactions between azilamu. I observed and experienced a fair share of all this and I am of the idea that the dilution of the traditional connotations of chilamu is the way to go; as long as the people in question are the relatives of the spouse. That brings us to the second element of the evolution. That being said, there is need for distance especially when the in-law is from the opposite “species”. Kuopa ngozi.

As I already pointed out, the concept of the in-law used to be bound by blood and marriage. Over years, people have loosened the definition of the word to accommodate friends of a spouse. The interesting thing about this is that it has brought in a different dimension to relationships. While  we may think that this is a loose use of the concept of "in-lawship", zilamu izizi are usually functional and they significantly contribute to the relationship; positively or otherwise.

Those of you who are in relationships can agree with me that you have a couple of friends on your  spouse crawling all over your Whatsapp and Instagram; taking screenshots and reposting things at will. At times, they can be very helpful as they can provide information that can help you plan things and throw in pleasant surprises. Eeetu. We all need that someone we can ask shoe sizes and favorite things from in the early days. These ones also prove to be the best mediators whenever there are conflicts. Well. Sometimes.

All I have said seems to be good. So why are we bothering with this article? Here is the reason. While the modern version of the in-law might be good and constructive, the evil version of the same might end your happiness or even your life.

In the modern day where people have multiple concurrent relationships your in law can either be your protector or the catalyst for your end. While some would reason with their sister or brother and guide them away from the promiscuous tendencies, some will be the ones that will shield their own while giving you the image that you are the only one in play. Some of you might be guilty of this sin of calling each one of your friend’s six spouses “alamu athu”. Mukapsa. And then there are these in laws that always come as a gang. When your guy is coming over for dinner he always brings a pack of 3 other wolves who are gunning for your mgaiwa. When you want to take your girl out, there are always those side-kicks of hers who want to come along and chop your money. Azilamu mupole moto. Sometimes we should let people be and not let them suffer in the name of chilamu; when we in fact know that our buddy is not serious with the person in question. Ndanena ndanena.

Having said that, I think the whole idea of having functional in-laws is good whether you apply it in the loose or strict sense. I particularly love it when me and my cousins interact with the men who married our sisters over beverages. The level of respect and the distance between us is just in nicely balanced proportions. I might be guilty of entertaining azilamu opanda tsogolo but that is the life we should all try to deviate from. Pena azichimwene ndi azichemwali tend to put us in difficult situations. I also like how some in-laws like to orchestrate and fuel non-existent relationships and try to rescue relationships when they are at the verge of collapsing. The in-law has evolved over time and has the capability of being either useful or harmful. Bikheyafu.

Lastly, mlamu ndi mtolo wa nzimbe. Whatever that means.

Religion and Reaction

It is another wonderful Friday,  isn't  it?  Well. I think it is.

While it remains sad that last week we did not have an article,  I must admit that I was relieved to note that no single soul enquired about the thing.  That was nice.  No guilt whatsoever. Prior to that missed article,  however I had promised to give my readers something about the comments by some blue zealots.  Yeah.  That thing about the age of the Pope and more importantly the reaction it triggered.

If you haven't been living under some sort of huge rock or in the stone age,  you might have heard the audio or watched the video clips of some DPP official (Deputy Director of Youth,  I think) who in his defence for Prof Mutharika's fresh bid for presidency amidst  calls for him to step down due to old age, decided to compare the Malawi  leader to the leader  of the Catholic church. His argument was that the Pope is very old and in fact older than APM,  thus warranting the president another mandate. His age is optimal,  in other words. To spice the remarks up,  they good man even went on to call out one senior party official who is a Catholic before voicing out his views.

The week following the rally saw the audio and video clips of the speech become the subject of discussion in the social media,  and more so on my favorite Whatsapp. Being a Catholic faithful  myself,  I got to see them reaction as it unfolded  in the various church Whatsapp  groups and status updates of fellow staunch Catholics who were outraged by the fact that a politician called out to their leader. Fair point,  right? Maybe not.

An interesting angle to the discussion came up when the same issue was debated on a rather neutral forum.  This is one professional forum  where discussions on politics and religion are tolerated thus the story found a niche for discussion. While most sympathized and sided with the Catholics on the issue and condemned the blue zealot in question, a small sect pointed out that the whole issue had been blown out of proportion and that people needed to swallow a chill pill and get the issue over with. Some even pointed out that people (including the offended Catholics ) needed to stop playing double standards over issues as they had earlier joined the bandwagon in trivializing the issue  of the "dancing Dorica" a couple of weeks earlier.

The dancing Dorica. This was a Mighty BeForward Wanderers supporter who came to the stadium dressed in the full suit of the Seventh  Day Adventist women's  guild kit for a game.  The issue triggered some reaction  from the SDA faithful but others jumped to the defence of the guy saying that Adventists needed to swallow a chill pill over the matter.  Some even produced a picture of an Argentine supporter who showed  up to the stadium in a papal attire, a thing that went without incident. I will leave you to decide whether that was a relatable comparison.

Back on the Whatsapp  group,  I found myself miserably failing to resist the urge to comment. My view?  Both issues (ya Dorika  komanso  ya a papa) were greatly overreacted to. Ana a Ekelezia  ndi Mipesa all needed chill pills.

My first (and probably only) argument is that these people needed to know who they were dealing with.  I think that would have  probably helped with the situation.  With due respect  to the fact that religion is a sensitive issue,  we should have considered the fact that the very people who we accused of trivializing  our religious regalia and leaders do not share the perceived seriousness of religion.  Perhaps that could be the only explanation especially  in the dancing Dorcas scenario.  As for the political slur, all of us who have seen the DPP rise from the ground up know what sort of party it is; full of zealots who are ready to do and say anything to please their political masters and gain favors from above. Such people would do anything from insulting political opponents to responding to prayers and taking a swipe at a religious leader wasn't  something that was too far out of reach. We all could have used a little application of this knowledge.

The other thing we should have thought before reacting is that of whether the reaction was proportion to the damaged caused; if there was any. I am not too sure about how highly the Dorcas "kit" is regarded among Adventist  faithfuls but one thing I have learnt from the papal age saga  is how far Catholics are willing to go to defend the image of their leader. On the other hand,  I found myself asking people how they thought the Holy Father would have reacted if the news had gotten him first  hand. I  personally  do not think that he would have written long articles explaining how wrong it is to compare his age to that of a secular leader who is seeking reelection.  I might be wrong but I think the Pontif would have let this one slide and prepared yet another unrelated homily for delivery through that famous window  of his facing the St Peter's Square. My point is just that I thinkpeople were mounting a serious defence  for something that didn't  need any defending whatsoever.

Having said what  I said about the reaction,  I have to point out that people  need to draw lines between religion and everything else considering the sensitivity that surrounds religion. We might joke about some things without offending each other but issues to do with religion seem to haven't some heightened  effect when it comes to offending people. Perhaps it's  time our politicians learnt which lines to cross and which ones to tread along.  Here is one politician who went on the podium and gave strong opinions  without knowledge  of how papal succession goes and how they control for age in the same.

 Along the same lines,  football issues should remain football issues and replica jerseys which are the most suitable attire for football should be the thing of choice when it comes to football events. Zinazi zingatiyambitsire civil war.

By the way... There was a special program  on the Catholic broadcaster, Radio Maria in response to the whole thing of the age "insult" directed at the Pope.  There were a lot of issues raised but the one I loved was that politicians need to know what to comment on and what not to avoid shooting themselves  in the foot. Whether we needed a special program for the issue is another  issue that is subject to debate.

All in all, let us all learn to tame our tongues and excitement  while mastering the art of keeping our reactions in check.

The Philosophies of an Unemployed Graduate

Another Friday!

It feels good to come back to the keypad to write something having received some good feedback from the previous write. We all love some positive comments, do we not?

On with today’s cry for help…

If you are the sort of person who hardly takes anything seriously like me, this is probably the best time to be a Malawian. People who sleep, eat and dream politics are in full elections mode  as we are counting months to the tripartite elections. Good stuff.

You do not need to be a keen follower for you to notice that there is some serious tension in the political atmosphere. With the country’s number two pulling crowds in all the regions and preaching the message of change, his boss could not help it but counter-argue some of his hottest points. I could have talked about the high-speed trains here but I guess people have already spent much time on schooling each other (and their president) on that one. The one that I will talk about here is that of the “1 million jobs”.

In case you are one human who lives under some rock with no connection to the outside world, our vice president who also happens to be a presidential aspirant has promised to create 1 million jobs for the youth who are languishing in unemployment. His boss, who is the current president, however has dismissed the whole thing as being overly ambitious and impossible. Ma biggy kutsutsanatu, eti?

To be honest, I am not too sure as to who to believe between the two people. On the VP’s part, he has gone on to defend himself and say that if there are people who do not know how to create jobs by the seven figures margin, they should sit on the stands and watch him do it. If you think of it, he might have a good point. After all, there are a lot of potential areas of job creation in this country and those could easily be exploited. On the other hand, looking at the magnitude of the task at hand and the timeline, I am inclined to believe that APM might just be right. I mean… Ndi 1 million tikukambayitu apa. Anyways. I might just be a pessimist in this. I should probably keep my mouth shut and pen in the pocket on this one.

Having heard about this promise of a million jobs, I found myself in a chat where me and a bunch of friends were analyzing the plausibility of creating such a number of jobs. One clever guy pointed out that the fact that we have issues with electricity, housing and road networks means that there is an almost infinite job market in Malawi. That brought in a big question from me and my fellow unemployed chap who were in this chat with the clever white collar employee; What kind of jobs are these? Are they jobs for people who spent a good four to six years in the corridors of some university or are they for a person with the biggest muscle in town? I qualify in both ends, anyway but that is beside the point; point being that the quality of the jobs also matters.

Having finished my clinical internships at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, I have had a taste of unemployment and realized how much of a frustration it can be to be unemployed when you have your papers gathering dust at home. That is the main reason I raised the issue of the quality of jobs that young people in this country need.

Once in a while, I find myself chatting with friends most of whom are graduates. In such casual chats, it is not a very unusual thing for me to pose a question of whether the life they are living is the one they dreamt of five years prior to the present day. The question attracts a diverse range of answers but the interesting thing is that most admit that they are not yet living the good life they fantasized years back. Slow progress or something of the sort.  Most of these people point out the lack of a smooth transition from college education to the industry as the reason they do not get into the dream life as quickly as they want to.

In the utopian world we live as innocent children, the normal human life (education/career) cycle entails that one launches himself from primary school into some decent secondary school before nicely proceeding to college and then landing on some government or private sector job. Nice and easy. No difficulties whatsoever. In the wake of the modern day, however, the stumbling blocks that lie along the way are just too many. Securing a place in a good secondary school is not much of an easy job and the capacity of the public universities is just too low. When you finally get out of the university with your degree, jobs are hard to come by even in the education and health sectors where having a job used to be a guarantee upon the completion of tertiary training. Pretty much not the case in the modern day.

We previously had one genius guest writer who told us that the way to navigate around job hunting is to be like a tree. He is yet to finish the two parts of the tripartite series and hopefully when he does we will all be like trees and nicely employed.

Perhaps we could also turn to the gospel of entrepreneurship that has been spreading like a wildfire over the years. I have seen it work for a good number of guys and I think it is worth a shot. If my memory serves me right, there is one minister who took this gospel a step further. When he was asked to preside over a nursing students’ graduation, he went on to challenge the graduands that they needed to take their eyes of the government as the provider of employment and explore entrepreneurship. These were nurses he was talking to and if you do not know nurses are in short supply in this country. Anyway. He might have been right from other perspectives that I cannot relate with.

Perhaps the best way of handling unemployment is the act of constantly making oneself better while continually exploring all the options on the shelf. Read. Learn. Volunteer.  For people of faith, this is one thing you “take to the LORD in prayer”. In line with the elections, we might as well vote for the person who is promising a lot of jobs and bank on the hope that he will deliver when he gets elected.

The Conversation

What an awesome Friday! It happened again last week. I ended up sleeping the whole day and the whole night thus failing to write something for the reader. You are probably used to the inconsistencies by now.

This morning I woke up worried about the possibility of the extinction of one of the things I love the most; a decent conversation; so I thought we might as well start a conversation about it.

It is a well-known fact that human interaction is essential for survival, pleasure and development at personal, community and global level. This is why there is so much effort put into such things as communication technologies with the same improving by the day. While we would expect these things to improve human interaction and connection to improve with these advances, however, there has been a constant decline in the same with human interaction getting more superficial, meaningless and unnecessarily complicated. Well. At least according to me.

You might have noticed that nowadays conversations about important issues have gotten extremely complicated because people usually take offences in situations where offences shouldn’t be taken. To some, being described as a short person is enough of a reason for throwing a tantrum which makes the use of adjectives for describing people an issue for some of us with limited vocabulary. We are not even allowed to talk about some things for the fear of sounding racist, sexist, extremist or derogatory and if things continue to be this way we might end up  being mute from not speaking; out of the fear of saying the wrong that. Now that is just wrong because it demeans the whole essence of plurality. I mean; what is the point of having 7 billion people freely roaming around if you can’t interact with a few hundred freely? Perhaps the only thing that we people forget is that offences are not given, but are rather taken just as one Trevor Noah likes to emphasize.

In the wake of the social media age, I found myself being excited about Facebook in my early college days. The moment I joined, I quickly got to make a lot of friends and within weeks I had over a half of a thousand Facebook friends. Then came the groups. I used to spend a good fraction of my time of the day reading what people had to say on different political, religious and dating forums on Facebook and the peak of it all came in the build up to the 2014 elections. Groups that were supposedly created with the aim of advancing national interests were awash with political campaign posts polite and derogatory alike. Fast forward to 2018 I am a graduate who happens to have expanded his circle and is lingering in Whatsapp groups along with far more educated and senior people in society. The year prior to elections is offering the same hype as that of 2014 (and more) and the presence of more convenient apps for sharing news and propaganda was ideally supposed to make such discussions exciting. Guess what? It is not. People are getting intolerant by the day and they get to vex at the most benign of contrary opinions. Outside of political discussions, things are not so different, With people getting so soft and easily triggered, conversation, a thing that was supposed to flourish is now facing the danger of extinction.

If you could not relate with that because you have not interacted with people who go poaching for someone who can offend them, here is another angle to it. In relationships and marriage, people are supposed to have good and honest conversations as they embark on the journey of constantly building up their relationships. Rather interestingly, the art (or science) of having a conversation in a relationship or in marriage is becoming a rare thing on its own. I know that there are people who are reading this and thinking of playing the “look at who is talking card” but my fair share of dating life (which lasted well over two years; and I have it on my CV) is that good communication leads to a good relationship. In relations to the article we wrote on post-mortem Friday about relationships failing because of sex and lack of preparation, here is the other thing that is fuelling the fracas. Perhaps people are subscribing to the Chris Rock’s Tambourine (if you haven’t watched this, you should) philosophy that relationships should hinge on having lots of sex and going places, in which case good conversations and deep emotional connection are playing very little. We have relationships in which the only thing partners talk about is how the other is doing, what they have eaten, how much the other needs and their weekends will go; with no interest whatsoever in the inner well-being of the partner. I find that too superficial for my liking and not worth my time. Attention seeker? Baby? Maybe. But as people build up towards relationships and marriage, it is necessary that the conversations go beyond high definition pictures and pizza.

Then there is this thing of communication in the family; parents and children and between siblings. It is funny how limitations of tradition hinder conversations between parents and children and in between siblings. On one crazy night (probably too stressed up and under influence) I remember calling my mum and asking her why she hadn’t called me in over a month and where she thought I was. What the whole situation taught me is that there is need for constant communication between parents and their children, however grown. The fact that I noticed a gap in this thing made me realize that there is a possibility that there are a whole bunch of sons and daughters who are not having good chats with parents. I do not have a whole lot of parents on my readers list but when you guys get there or if you are there, you better be the parents our generation never had; those who can be a safe haven for their own children and those who can have a decent chat with them.

We could add the dimension of conversations between religious leaders and their judgmental tendencies towards followers and how we need to get rid of that (moni azibusa nonse) but that would push the article beyond the recommended word limit. All in all, we need to have good conversations in every setting. Ever realized that prayer is some form of conversation too, anthu opemphera inu? Even God wants a good chat with His own. Having said that, I will say this again. We all need good conversations in which we can call a spade by its name without triggers. In relationships, conversations need to aim at building deep connection between spouses by going beyond the basics.

By the way… Who of you people stays in Zomba? Let us meet at the Botanic Gardens for the reception of the wedding of one of Richie Online’s religious followers, Sir Peter Yakobe.

Have a lovely weekend.

Post-mortem Friday

Woza Friday!

Apologies for last week. I actually have no explanation or excuse for not posting something on that day. Perhaps people should start paying for articles on Airtel Money or TNM Mpamba to keep me motivated. Either way. Pepani. It won’t happen again. I hope.

Having interacted with a lot of people over the past two days, I was bombarded with a lot of ideas on what to write about on this particular day. Two of them, however, struck me and when it came to drafting this article, I quickly turned to the two conversations and jumped on the keypad.

If you are not in a happy relationship, you probably have noticed that there is some sort of war or blame game on why the longevity of many relationships is not that impressive and why many people are not happy in their relationships. Men blame it on women and women point their blaming fingers to men. Well. One good lady friend of mine had an answer to that and it came in the form of a picture status on WhatsApp. The picture status was an anonymous quote which stipulated that so long as men do not open up to their women about the demons they are struggling with; love is going to remain a temporary emotion. Those are not the exact words but that was the message. Iyiyi tiisiye kaye pomwepa for now.

Earlier today, when I posted flyers of tomorrow’s events (three engagements and a wedding), I got under a heavy barrage of judgmental questions on when I was going to stop posting about friends’ weddings and do my own. My response to one of those who were asking the “not-so-clever” question (at Richie Online we try to avoid the word stupid when we are not talking politics) was a simple reflection of the question to the one who posed it. To back myself up, I used the fact that he is in a relationship and I am not, which makes that particular human a better candidate to answer the question than I am. The response? “That one is not marriage material and I will soon be single.”

You now know where this is going, don’t you?

The “not marriage material” response to my question triggered memories of the initial conversation. When I had seen the post about love being a temporary emotion, I engaged the young lady and asked her whether she thought that was what was wrong with modern day relationships. We spiraled into a long post-mortem on zibwenzi zanu zinatha zija. That is what I want to share now. Relax and take notes, because this article is the Richie Online version of that post-mortem.

Rather related to the “not marriage material” response was the fact that people do not take much time to get to know each other before falling head first in love (or whatever that is, probably not love). We have a generation that has gotten into the habit of getting into what I call accelerated relationships. You meet a person today, get their number, text them all night for three days in a row and then arrange for a meeting. In this modern setting, someone can transform from a total stranger to bae in 9.2 days (on average). The 10^th day? Sex. People are getting to become other people’s baes without going through the process of becoming. In the end what happens is that people end up parting (not sure whether this qualifies as a breakup) on the promise that they discovered that their partner had some attributes that were not good. Avoidable, right? Yes and no.

One could argue that giving things a bit of time could solve this issue while some would say that people are good at hiding their character. Muona kuti mupanga bwanji. Izizi mupanga conclude nokha.

Did I mention sex in the other paragraph? Yeah. That is the other thing that is leading to some of these untimely deaths of relationships. Here is the thing. Sex is a very complex thing; so complex so that in one of his lectures, one Dr Chiwoza Bandawe once told our class that sex is very emotional, spiritual, psychological and political. Having reflected upon that line over the years, I have gotten to appreciate the fact that the main point behind it is that whatever sexual activity one does affects pretty much every aspect of their life… for a long time. This is probably why most cultures and spiritual grouping advocate for the confinement of sex in marital union. It’s probably less damaging that way.

The simple psychology of sex (according to one Chris Rock) is that whenever a man and a woman meet and click, they almost always have the ultimate go of getting at it. That is Chris Rock. If we are to assume  that he is right, process that is considered normal is that of getting to know each other, dating and getting into a matrimonial union before doing it; then… Ultimate goal achieved. In the later day, however, people get to the ultimate goal on day 10 after knowing each other on day zero. In line with the psychology, people get satisfied and have no reason for fighting on through their disagreements and differences. Boom! Breakup. The other funny thing about sex is that it is easy to refrain from it when you haven’t tasted the fruit. What happens in the end is that we create a downward spiral in which when one relationship ends because of sex, we go into another without that fear of replicating the situation. Here is where the concept of matrimonial union becomes interesting. If you get there without tasting the fruit, whatever happens after you do it doesn't matter much because you are confined to that unbreakable union. At least on paper.  

There you go. I just broke it down for you.

It really got to me when I got to realize that some people think that the modern day relationship problem lies in the fact that men do not open up about the demons they struggle with. I would like to believe that it is not only men who have skeletons in their closets, although I would say that in my own experiences and observations it is men, more than women, who have this problem. The issue is just that it gets hard to open up when you anticipate a reaction that is not favorable. I, for example have my own issues, and if I am to open up, I would want to open up to a mature person who would help me up, other than one who would judge me thus throwing me deep in my issues and making me lose hope for a positive change. Perhaps we all have to learn to listen if others are to open up to us. Mwina dzikoli can change for the better, abale ndi alongo.

At the end of it all, the point of this is that we need to get to know our spouses better at every stage of the journey before proceeding to the next one. The other point? Intimacy should come after commitment. Izi za wadya balalikani izi is damaging our society.

Ndanena ndanena!