2019 Lessons

It is the last Friday of 2019 and we had to cap it off with an article despite being late for it. It has been a busy day and local man could hardly get the time for it. Well. Here he is at 20:46 hours, writing about the year thus gone while cooling himself with a cold one.

A couple of days ago, one human posted a WhatsApp status update prompting us to share what 2019 taught us. For some reason, I went on to write “parte after parte” after the popular song, titled Party after Party. My response was ignored for a very good reason, but the rude response didn’t mean I did not learn anything this year. In fact, I learnt one very important thing; moyo siophweka. If I am to put it in simple English, life is not straightforward.

Those of you know me in an up close and personal, you would know that I am that one person who like to get everything I want the way I want. Not getting it implies frustrations on my end and this year had been punctuated by little frustrations with little victories to dampen them out. All in all, I would say that this was a very good year because beyond my own little achievements I have seen my friends rise to the point where they are getting better livelihoods. Getting better jobs, getting married, having children, getting post-graduate admissions, graduating with all sorts of papers, quitting (and starting for others) alcohol and everything else that can be celebrated.

I will share a little recap of the year for me as that could give me a very good ground for setting pace for the article. This year I changed houses twice. I will let you think of whether that was good or not. At the end of this year, I have made a decision I never would have imagined a couple of years back; I will be hanging up the stethoscope for good to nosedive into the jungle of research. This, however is something that has just popped out. For those of you who follow these scribblings, you will know of the article in which I mentioned that on a day like this, last year I posted the three things that I would want to do in 2019; quit alcohol, lose weight and get married. If you have been following what I wrote in the first paragraph, you could note that I have miserably failed on the first one; with an explanation. I feel a bit fat from all the Christmas eating, but I think that can be sorted after the festivities. Let us take a minute to discuss the more important issue of getting married, though.

Of course I did not mean that I wanted to get married in its literal sense when I made that post. You do not start a year and get married before it ends, in my view, unless otherwise. I will leave you to imagine the “otherwise” part. The bare minimum I wanted was to get someone I can marry in 2023. I have come to realize that I have miserably failed in that because with a few days remaining in the year, there are days that pass without me getting a phone call or the important “I wanted to check on you” text from a potential suitor. I was about to start complaining about this but I was silenced by people who have since pointed out that I am not very good with communicating my feelings with others and so I might remain single for the next five years if I do not put a whole lot of effort in my social endeavors. That brings us to the first class I had along the moyo siophweka lines.

Communication is not as straightforward as some of us might think. You might think you are sending a perfect message that will be perfectly decoded in the same way you packaged it in your frontal cortex. For some reason, that same message may be perceived in its perfect opposite sense at the point of reception. I have had struggles with this issue both as a sender and recipient of communications this year. At some point, I found myself looking at some people as “not-so-friendly” humans only to understand what their raised voices meant well… but months later. I have sent hostile messages to people, showing them the exit door from my life only to see them coming back with an irresistible smile. Then there is the painful part; trying to be chocolate nice to people only to be perceived as someone who doesn’t care.

Then there is the issue of interpersonal relationships. The complexity of the interaction between two people is already interesting. Add a third on to the mix, it reaches gargantuan proportions. Some of you might relate to this thing that you have friends that leave when your other friends leave. That is why we have this whole term; anzawo a anzathu. Friends of our friends. I am not saying that you need to make friends with all the friends of your friends, but they do not need to be enemies. This year of ruin, 2019, left me in a situation where I ended up being out of favor with some of my friends for siding with others and this messed up some of my most important relationships. At the end of the day, you tend to wonder whether you could have done something differently, but life has to go on, anyway.

Under the same issue of interpersonal relationships is the issue of personal expectations from friends. I have seen people go out of their waters to help me when I least expected it and when I thought I did not deserve it. I have also seen people not come through on what I expected from them despite a serial lowering of my personal expectations from people. Great expectations create frustrated men, they said. You have to believe that to a greater extent. Nkhani ija ndiyoona. I am pretty sure I have been on both ends of the spectrum on this one too; been on the side of not meeting expectations for some and been on the overkill for others. I guess such is life.

There is this other issue of managing finances> I am not too sure how others manage to work this out but somehow this seems to be something that is very difficult to juggle. Others have written that the natural instinct of a human is to increase spending once income increases. It gets to be surprising that someone who knows this and is supposedly equipped with the mind tools to counter the same would happen to be struggling. I seriously need tips on this from those of you who have mastered the art of financial management. Books are welcome.

Having said all that, the lesson that life is not as straightforward as we would want it to be will go a long way in helping me plan my accidents and expect surprises from all angles of life. Having sat down to reflect on all this, I have come to the conclusion that I will leave the new decade to manage itself with its twists, curls and turns. No fancy plans about  life other than the regular things. It is about going to work, church and repeating; fitting the gym and the pub in the mix wherever necessary. Friends? Well. Let’s see who will be there and who will not. And of course, who we will be there for and who not. No deliberate efforts to cut out people. I mean, it might be a new year and new decade but I don’t think there will be much of a change in everything else. Nonetheless, those of you who would like to make “calendar-based” changes for the better, are welcome to do so.

Chronicles of a Loaner

A wonderful Friday.

It has been some time since I came on this platform to write about something. Part of it might be because I lost the motivation and drive for writing. That is a story for another day but I will tell you what motivated me to write this time.

Apart from the fact that I am a victim of people who take my little money in the name of borrowing, with no intention whatsoever of giving it back, I wanted to write because of two people who unintentionally played the guilt card on me. Akuti for being silent on the blog. One of these humans happens to be a known keen follower who has a bad habit of replying with the letter “x” (apparently that is shorthand for “thanks”, she tells me). She jumped on me all guns blazing last night asking me why I have been silent before following it up with that it would take for me to get back to my keypad warrior ways. Turns out that the answer was “nothing” but I am back here, anyway.

When I was gallivanting later in the night I met this wonderful human being who I learnt was a keen follower of what happens on Richie Online. Now, I happen to meet secret followers once in a while but this one was a bit of a surprise. Turns out he checks out the blog each and every Friday as he doesn’t get the links from me. I actually did not have his number until last night. Now that one chat with Phil was enough to make me retire from retirement and talk about all of you who get other people’s money without having the decency of paying back.

In 2019, many consider Facebook as an obsolete social media site with a preference to Twitter for banters, Instagram for pictures and WhatsApp for chats. Nevertheless, Facebook has remained popular for some of us because of one thing; groups. Prior to the 2014 general elections, a group called My Malawi My Views rose to popularity. It died a natural death after some time and it was succeeded by a number of groups which did not blow up like it did. In recent days, however, we saw a group called Stress Free Malawi come to the limelight. Now, if you are on Facebook and you like a good laugh, this is one group to check out. There will be those ones who will not joke without offending someone but hey, it is fun on the most part. Stress Free Malawi has endured a test of time but lately we have seen a utilitarian group that has the potential of displacing it as the most popular Facebook group in the land; Bwalo Loitanitsira Ngongole.

You may not be there but I think from the name you get the idea. If someone owes you something and they are not paying back, you post them there and tell them to pay back. I am wondering whether the group will be achieving its primary objective of helping people to recover their monies. At best, I think it is just a naming and shaming group and at worst I think it is pretty much the same.

The Malawi social media circus has its own heavyweights. If you go to Facebook, for example, you have people whose opinions are highly regarded. Talk of the Kelvin Sulugwes, the Thandie wa Pulimuheyas and the Henry Kachajes, these are people who have a huge following with lots of comments and shares to their posts. And then there is the Twitter Malawi community which has its own popular humans. One person of interest in this whole thing of this forum for calling out people who owe us money is one Nyamalikiti Nthiwatiwa. If you follow local poetry, this is the man behind the popular dziko liri mmanja mwa agalu poem. He is also an adept director of ceremonies and writer. On the inception of the group, Nyamalikiti wrote a long post on why he agreed with the whole thing of calling out names of people who have no remorse when they owe others money. He argued that the fact that people lend out money to friends does not actually mean that they have it in excess but rather that they care. If we do not give back, he said, we end up jeopardizing the plans that others have with their money. He concluded with saying that calling out to such people is necessary. Well. That was a strong opinion spiced with facts.

In the course of the year, I have had people come to me to ask for some soft loans in the same way I have asked for the same from friends when things got tough. It is supposed to be simple. You get a few thousand kwachas from a friend and once you get back on your feet financially, you repay. For some reason, this has been a problem with a lot of people (even with me once, although I actually told the person I was not going to give back her 30k easily). People would actually get your money, give you a day when they are going to give back, then not return it. Some would have the courtesy of giving you an excuse but others would just go silent.

The excuses? I did not get the payment I was expecting. I had another emergency. Tikuonanibe, and the list goes on. I understand that there are times that people find it hard to return money because they are in financial trouble but on the other hand what I have learnt is that there are some people who just don’t have the umunthu for this. Examples. Some guy pops up in your WhatsApp asking for some 100k and says he is going to return it at the end of the month. It is the fifth month of the year and the sixth and seventh go without him returning the money. And what does he do in the eighth month? Ask you for another 50k which he supposedly plans to return along with the 100 at the end of that month. I understand some of you can relate with this kind of experience. It was not surprising, then that someone came up with a saying that in Africa, when you borrow your friend money, you end up losing both the money and friendship. I have a few friends who are Pentecostal ministers and I have seen them write warnings about “kuwabwereka ndalama abale a mu mpingo”. To them, it is a bit safer to loan out money to a “non-believer”.

Despite the bad experiences I have had with people who are keeping ti ma 5 pin tanga, I have had some good experiences with people who owe me money too. Talk of this family that somehow ended up owing me a lot. They ended up giving me assurances that they will give me as soon as they are able to get it. Knowing how much of a financial struggle they were in, I decided to keep away from pushing for the money. Guess what happens? Each and every time they find a little something they give me a call and ask me to pass by to collect. At the rate they are going, it is going to take a year and ten installments, but I will at least get my money back. This is the kind of umunthu that we need to have from 2019 moving on.

So… People are not giving back what they owe. What have I resolved, then? Simple solutions. For those who took mteleshede and never gave back, they will never get any loans from me. They do come back, anyway and even when I have some to spare, I don’t feel the drive to help. Unfortunately, these other people have hurt me and I will have to bleed on others… if you know what I mean. I also fall for the temptation of not giving back, so I will restrain myself from borrowing. Kupewa maudanitu. Perhaps I should make use of the group and call out the annoying people who are not showing any signs of willingness to give back my money.

All this being said, we all fall into financial hurdles and we need help from others. Timabwereka ndithu. We all do it. Let us have it in us to give back what we owe others. Tisamadane chifukwa cha ngongole, hetini? Not giving back money you owe someone, to me, amounts to stealing. On that note, amene ndikusungira zake tionane kuseriku.

By the way... What does the word "wangongole" mean? Is it the one who gives out or the one who receives? Also... I confuse the words borrow and lend a lot. If I messed them up in this article, my excuse will be that I did not study the English language as extensively as I would have wanted to in college. Komabe mwamva.