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.