From my Memories: Frozy

Greetings.

It feels good to get back to writing ways after a week of absence. The circumstances that kept me from swinging the pen have been dealt with and I am back now. My only worry is that this article may not have the patronage it needs as I will not be able to share it on usual platform namely WhatsApp. Again, I have dealt with the reasons I am not on WhatsApp currently and my absence on the popular social network is just a matter of choice. It is good to take breaks from some social platforms, however inconvenient that may be.

I happened to be looking at my social feed earlier today. For some reason, Facebook has decided to give us an opportunity to revisit our memories from way back by recycling our posts. Probably one of the nicest features and one of the reasons I still find FB relevant to date.

So… What did I see? You are probably cooling down with a Fanta or Thumbs Up as you are reading this but you might remember the time that one drink took the market by storm. Yeah. Frozy. It was in 2016 when the drink made its debut on the market and quickly dislodged the traditional soft drinks as the best-selling drink. The reasons were simple, really. “Fulo” was an affordable drink which made it relatable to many. Who doesn’t like a cheap drink? And then there was the packaging. A nice 500 ml plastic bottle which could easily be reused to package a good dose of thobwa. The distribution? Well. It was as easy and straightforward as it could get. People could easily import it from Mozambique through whichever border and supply to vendors at their local trading center. Just like that and people from all walks of life were able to enjoy a nice drink from or neighbor in different flavors.

For some time, I had been skeptical to take the drink. My first time with it came when I met one Joe Wire (also known as Dr Joseph Mkandawire or Bambo Mkandawire) who was visiting a lonely soul in Lunzu. This was the time when we were transitioning from being medical students to being doctors. Long boring “holiday”, that was. Joe, for some reason was feeling hot after a long walk in the October sun and he couldn’t resist the urge to buy the two of us “Frozy wa green”. If my memory serves me right, he did not finish his drink and he ended up giving half of it to a kid who was passing by. For security reasons, I will not mention what happened to mine. Long story short, I managed to have a taste of the drink.

I was talking about what I saw on my Facebook memories feed this morning. Pepani, but I just had to introduce the issue before talking about the memories. I will continue digressing so that the memories can tie it all together. Shortly after the introduction of this Mozambican drink on the market, there were calls by the Malawi Bureau of Standards to ban it. Issues? Incorrect labelling and unsafe quantities of citric acid in the drink. Sounds familiar, right? Same here. Following the ban, MBS instructed all wholesalers and retailers to declare the amount of the drink in their custody for collection and proper disposal. Having known the trail from the manufacturer to the user, I doubted there were any people who made such declarations and that there was a single bottle of Frozy that was disposed through the bureau.

Following the ban, many took it to the social media to express their anger; the first group towards the ban of the drinks and the second towards the first group. The reason this came out for me is that there were three people from three different professions that commented on the drinks issue. Everyone drinks, anyway.

I will start with the programmer (or systems developer, as he may like to identify himself). He argued that the whole ban was a joke. In his view, MBS is not accredited on the international scene and had no say on such a thing as a Mozambican drink. Whether that line of reasoning was right or not should be left for another day, but to add some humor to it, he went on to say that what the bureau had done was more like an ugly guy calling an ugly girl ugly. Whatever that means. Hypocrisy, maybe.

Then came the other two who were in support of the ban, first the journalist (who I am told is on his way to the bar (judiciary thing, eti?) He came in and drummed support for the bureau of standards arguing that the guys are the ones who have been protecting us from substandard foods all along; and that if they said there was something wrong with the drink, then there was something wrong. He went on to say that if we needed some soft drinks, we could go on and buy the Fanta we had all been drinking for the past few “centuries”. To finish off, he called on MBS to ban Manica and Impala alcohol brands from Mozambique. We cannot be sure as to whether he was sober when drafting the post or whether he would own it to date, but he wrote what he wrote and somehow it made sense. We can argue as to whether MBS really protect us this evening when ESCOM loan us back the power we deserve.

The most relevant person to comment on this happened to be a nutritionist and ironically it happened to be the shortest of them all. In his two sentences, he talked of how MBS was only there to protect the lives of Malawians. He concluded by lamenting on how Malawians failed to grasp a thing or two about something as simple as food standards.

Despite some noises (there were no demonstrations and petitions, then), the ban remained sustained and the drink was taken off the market. People made video clips that showed them mourning the demise of Frozy, but that was all. Carlsberg Malawi raised the prices of soft drinks but with no competing Mozambicans sales remained relatively stable. It was later in February, 2017 that the ban on the drink was lifted, probably following adjustments to the labelling and citric acid content. The drink, however, did not bounce back with the same momentum it had initially come with on the market initially. That was probably due to the love of citric acid and other harmful chemicals in beverages by the local Malawians.

From my memories, I brought you a story of the politics and safety surrounding food and other products on the Malawian market. If you follow the activities of the bureau, you could also talk about the issue of selective application of regulations. I will not talk about that but this sort of relates to the last article on facts and opinions. It also related to the many times that I have used this pulpit to preach standards. Eeetu. Probably the most lesson deficient article in recent memory, but it has its own relevance. Looking at a couple of online articles I have learnt a few things on business, regulation, politics and safety. I cannot share those but I will leave it to you to figure them out.

Have a lovely weekend and for the few of you that will get this article through whichever means, do share it with others.

From the stone age (where there is no WhatsApp), I bring you dear reader… Frozy!

Of Opinions and Facts

It is another wonderful Friday and once again I had to put something together. I have to be honest with you that I had to force myself to put this together because of the surrounding negative energy. It is kind of hard to think of writing something positive when some things are not moving the direction you want them to move and when people are butchering each other in the streets. Nevertheless, I will use the remaining of my energy to shine a light on the darkness that is engulfing our country.

The papers and online news outlets are awash with news that members of parliament have passed the national budget that is pegged at around MK1.7 trillion. There were congratulatory messages extended to the members of parliament for passing the budget. I had my reservations when I heard the whole issue of the passing of the budget. In my view, this was just another effortless activity in which more than half the people who were involved rubberstamped a document, implications of which they do not understand.

A day before the passing of the budget, I had passed by my friend’s desk at work and found him looking through the health budget. When I stopped by, he started highlighting sections of the health budget statement that he considered dodgy; the military hospital, referral hospital in Balaka, purchase of ambulances, the completion of Phalombe district hospital and a few other votes. At the end of the day, I found myself patting me in the back for having not opened the budget statement which remains gathering dust in some folder in my computer; awaiting some general cleaning day when it will be deleted along with other documents that will be considered obsolete at the time.

Back to the issue of the passing of the national budget, I found myself wondering later last night, as to whether it was normal for me to have such resentment towards the passing of the budget. I mean, it is the national budget and that is what will fund state activities. It shouldn’t be held up that much and if anything, we should all be happy when it passes because only then will my parents who happen to be civil servants get paid. I found myself lacking the euphoria or neutrality that should come with the passing of the budget as I generally think that the debating of such a statement is cosmetic and hardly keeps the budget proposed by the authorities responsible in check.

Then there was the issue of the police officer who died in the line of duty while controlling rioting crowds at Msundwe in Lilongwe. Now this was an issue of people who closed the roads off, supposedly in a bid to block DPP supporters from going to the rally by HE at Kamuzu institute of sports. Worth mentioning is that on top of that, the Msundwe brigade as they are also called started to ask for money from passing motorists, creating panic. This is when the police stepped in to disperse the “demonstrators”.

When the pictures of the gruesomely murdered policeman, comments started to fly around in the social media. That was to be expected, anyway. We like to comment on things as they happen. The general observation, however was that every comment that came seems to be colored with less of humanity and more of political colors; or so some people thought.

The first to comment were those who thought that murdering police officers was not a good thing and we need to tone down and cut down the violence. It was the logical thing to say and life is sacred, after all. I was absorbed in the same thoughts, wondering what this police officer had done despite wearing his uniform and discharging his official duty, to earn him the gruesome death when I read some comments on comments. For some reason, others thought condemning the violence amounted to being a blue-eyed cadet. You did not condemn violence when it happened Blantyre, they said with little to no evidence of the same. You beat us when we were demonstrating and we are revenging, they added. This was said as if the commentators were the police who had beaten them (not sure under which banner they were speaking).

The people who were speaking against the condemnation of violence started arguments of their own. The backed themselves saying that they had been provoked in their backyard and they had the right to retaliate. From the comments, the people seemed to be pro-opposition and HRDC.

Over the past few days, we have seen different political leaders from the civil society and political parties condemns the violence that was orchestrated by what has been dubbed as the Msundwe brigade. The president spoke against it and his sentiments were echoed by the two major opposition parties, the MCP and the UTM. The organization that has been leading the anti-Jane Ansah demonstrations, the HRDC also came out to condemn the violence and rightly so.

Naturally, some might think that the president condemned the violence because it was his children, ana adadi that were attacked (might be true considering the silence that was from the ruling party when a reverse feat happened) but the fact that opposition and civil society added their voice to this should speak a lot to anyone who has a few ounces of brain left in them; or so I think. The issue that violence is no way of sorting differences is not one we should be debating on. What I am wondering is why we have sunk so low to let tribal and party lines divide us to an extent that we cannot think about the sanctity of human life. Perhaps one thing we might have forgotten is that the police officer who was injured was a father, brother, husband and son to someone. He had a life and dependents whose lives will never be the same, thanks to the loss of his.

I understand that I might have had an extreme opinion on the passing of the budget in the same way that people have theirs on the violence that is in the country. In some of the articles I wrote, I tried as much as I could to remain neutral over certain issues like the fees hike in public universities. In those times, people used to come to me after reading, just to ask me to pick a side. I would always chicken out and tell them that I was neutral. Lately, I have learnt that being neutral is an abstract and almost non-existent concept. Most times when I said I was neutral I was just trying to keep my views to myself for different reasons. On the other hand, opinions need to be guided by reason and a bit of facts to avoid extremism that condones things like violence.

In as far as we live in this country and on this rock, we will always have differing opinions. We should, however keep our thoughts in check and respect the affiliations and opinions of others. What we have seen over the past few months is political and tribal intolerance of the highest order and if this is left unchecked we might be in for worse.

There have been questions on who the root cause of whatever is happening is. Some would point to the opposition for not accepting the results. Others would point to Jane Ansah for mishandling the elections and refusing to resign following the post-election fracas. And then there are those who would point to the president for not providing the much needed leadership out of this mess and not extending an olive branch. Perhaps that was why one Major Prophet Shepherd Bushiri called for calm and acceptance of the outcome of the court case. Akukudziwani kuti mulibe khalidwe anthu ake inu and you will let your opinion of what should have happened in court come at the expense of national peace.

All in all, we are entitled to opinions but we should try to keep them in check.

Been a rough week and I am glad we are going into the weekend. I am told there is something happening at Jacaranda Cultural Centre and that that the Black Missionaries are performing at Namacha Village. Perhaps those will be good places to empty the negative energy after work and church.

Have a lovely weekend. And if you have time do visit the author over the weekend. Nane ndimafuna kuyenderedwa. Zikomo.

The Journey Thus Far

Milestone Friday! Well. We can call it that because when I pasted the link wherever you got it from, I was, for the 200^th time sharing a link to the content of this blog. I obviously did not author with some crazy humans like the Venomous Hope coming onto my podium and accusing me of being a weed smoker. And then there was that time I punched the blog open and allowed an influx of opinions on the termination of pregnancy bill. All in all, the blog has seen a lot of articles from different writers who have flowed with and propelled the vision.

I, last week mentioned that the blog started out as a pulpit but due to metamorphosis of sorts it ended up as a bleeding towel for wiping different sorts of opinions oozing from my punctured brain. What developed from that swollen brain was a blog with different articles on health, sports, music, life, rumors, politics and my favorite topic of romance and relationships which people have dubbed “the Richie Online Love Curriculum”.

I have on a couple of times attempted to make a vote on what people’s favorite article was on Richie Online. Those attempts have been met with a rather rude voter apathy but from the few who managed to voice out, people fell in love with the Chronicles of a Traveler. That came in as a surprise as this was just a tired man’s reflection of the poverty he had seen travelling across the southern and central Malawi in the name of helping World Vision International in their monitoring and evaluation efforts. This would later come to prove one Nkhwachi Mhango’s point. In his opinion (and I might have mentioned this before), my articles come out interesting when I am writing more of what is on my mind than commenting on the topical issues around. Fair point, I think.

I have had varied audiences on Richie Online depending on the way of advertising. You have to understand that this blog started out in 2012, three years before WhatsApp became a thing (or before I joined WhatsApp). By then, the best way of throwing the wisdom to the masses was through Facebook. Tagging was a thing then, but before the confidence kicked in, I could not just tag forty plus people in a post with the Richie Online link on it. Perhaps the other thought was just that others couldn’t understand the content. Then there came WhatsApp and it came with the feature of a broadcast list. I got trigger happy and immediately added 200 of the 1000 plus contacts on the Richie Online broadcast; shortly before being told off by a few. Somehow, others managed to ask me on how they could get on the list and the readership stabilized at around two hundred. A few lost phones and contacts later, I found myself committed to only half that number, but here we are.

On the dashboard or admin panel of the blogger website where I post the articles, I am privileged to see data on when I had the most views and which article had the most views or comments. From a quick peep, Richie Online enjoyed the most readership in 2017 with articles getting an average of 250 views compared to the later day 60 to 70. The interesting thing I noted is that the least viewed article is one titled the Intolerability of Intolerance with only 12 views! What a waste of good wisdom by the readership. The most viewed article, however, with a whooping 1400+ views is none other than the 21st Century Paradox of Sex. Now that says about you readers and who you have in your circles. I might get back to that later.

Through the years of writing on this blog, I have tried to be neutral about pretty much everything. What I have learnt while at it is that neutrality and impartiality are somehow abstract concepts and it is very hard to be neutral. This has been demonstrated by the “attacks” I have made on the ruling elite which led to warning from well-wishers within the readership and the backing of the same which led to heavily critical responses from the likes of Joram Nyirongo (one unreasonable guy who writes a column called Mufupika’s Calabash in the Sunday Times). His point? I was being too soft on el presidente, hence I am blue blooded.

If you were to ask me as to what I have been doing with this blog, what I would tell you is that I have been blowing off steam. On the other hand, when I was not venting out anger and stepping on people’s toes what I was doing was to share some opinions on what I thought life ought to be lived like. Now this was not me prescribing a certain set of rules for everyone to go by like I was doing with hydrochlorothiazide pills in my doctor days. It was me dishing out facts and throwing out my opinions from the facts hence the motto of this blog, fact-based opinions. Ndi inayake basi.

The fact that this blog has been a therapeutic tool cannot be overemphasized. Following the loss of one person I was very close to, I dropped an article and the few people who had been following what had been going on quickly picked up the grief in the article and told me they hoped writing about the ordeal helped with my healing. It did. Perhaps, however, what these people did not recognize is how much of my troubled life was reflected in all the articles that came in the Richie Online Love Curriculum and Valentine’s Day Supplements. One human somehow caught me after his perusal of what is one of my personal favorites on the blog; relationship politics. While others came to me to ask if I was writing with reference to the events happening in their lives, this guy messaged me wondering why I had put my whole life story into such an article. Such is the beauty of having this blog; it just has this ability to have a unique sort of bidirectional conversation.

Away from all those things I have been doing, the blog has been a good awareness and advocacy platform. Guest writers like Counsel Alex Kamangila, activist and “loud mouth” Pemphero Mphande, Gray Stuff, the Venomous Hope, Tadala Rambiki, Harry Chikasamba, Edward “TNO” Chikhwenda and many others tackled and shed light on issues in a way never done before; a way I couldn’t have done better. A big thank you everyone who put a pen to paper and gave something to the Richie Online community. It feels good to sit back on some Frida

I would like to finish by expressing gratitude to all of the faithful readers. Every time I write, I know that there is a whole host of people who will go through the article without fail. Further to that, I know that every time I do not write there would be a gang of people asking me as to why there is no food on the Richie Online Friday table. Once the article has been shared, there are those fault finders who always come out pointing the grammatical errors in the article and there are those who share an article of their own relating to a similar subject. Your input has been instrumental in keeping the blog alive. And then there are some of you who share my articles on your statuses with the burning fire emoji. There wouldn’t have been a better way of expressing your support and appreciation for the effort that goes into this. Musainire alawansi tikamaliza apa.

We have reached a 200 and I do not think I will stop this thing anytime soon. I will continue spitting whatever gets to wander in this troubled brain, stepping on toes whenever necessary. Unsolicited life tips will continue coming and I will continue to target people whose traits I do not like... in a diplomatic way hopefully. I will have more crazy guest writers coming in and the controversial topics will keep coming. Know why? I feel like I owe it to you, the people who made me push to a 200.

And… can we do a Richie Online chat tonight? Kukhala makombola.

If you are interested, mail me. I will send you the coordinates.

Thanks for being part of Richie Online.

And the other thing.... Can you stop calling me Richie Online when we meet in the streets? Zikomo