Balance

It is another Friday. If you are reading this, you are probably one of those people who find Friday joy in reading these articles. You are probably also one person who hates me for my inconsistencies in bringing the same. Well, here I am. Disturbing your judgement day countdown by bringing an article. You need this distraction, anyway.

There are things I have been wanting to write about only to get nods of disapproval from the Richie Online Censorship Board which consists of people who are paranoid that I will write about them. I am hoping that I will rise above their invalid opinions to bring you what lies within the deepest of my mind. Anyway, let us get to the business of the day.

Last year, I made a radical decision to quit my job as a Study Coordinator for an internship in Geocomputation and Spatial Epidemiology or that sort of thing. The idea was that I was going to leave the things I was going to do for survival for things I would be doing for love. Steering my career into the right direction, I called it. In my mind, I understood I was taking a pay cut but to me that did not matter as long as I had my focus on the end game.

A couple of weeks into January, people found me on my desk at work, smiling like an idiot while staring at my computer screen. To their surprise, my phone was nowhere in sight as such a smile would usually come from a text from a compliant lover (or a bank alert kwa anthu okanika ngati ife). I later explained that the code I was writing had been nicely working and producing the results I was looking for. For that day and the next week or so I ended up leaving the office well after 2000 hours for the love of the work I was doing and the hunger to learn more. For the first time I experienced the reality of the goodness of doing something you truly love.

Then came payday. The money that had come into the account was so little when compared to what I was getting previously. So little so that they might have as well just given it to me via Airtel Money as opposed to going through the hustle of giving me through my sacred National Bank account. In other words, the little amount did not match the plans I had. When I think about it now (now that I am broke and wise again), I think it was not so little. In fact, it might be way better than what a lot of folks are getting around town. All I needed was to adjust to the new condition, and I did not do that very well.

The headaches I had trying to figure out how I was going to survive town reminded me of the chat I had with one housemate of mine at some point. At that point, neck-deep into our clinical internships, we could not see a future outside clinical practice. As such, we were busy looking into specialties that we could venture into by considering two factors; job satisfaction and (more importantly) the returns. After lots of considerations, he settled for Ophthalmology while I fell for Orthopedic surgery. Well. The young man is working at some private hospital in the dusty capital while I am here, writing code while rocking a Valencia jersey in the office. Life does not always turn out how we plan it. That, however, is not the point I wanted to drive home. What I wanted to talk about was how polarized our discussions were when we were choosing the specialties. While I emphasized on job satisfaction, my good friend had his eye on the money and the free time a specialty would offer for him to do other things that would bring more money. Looking at it now, I understand the importance of his assertions. I might get the job satisfaction I want but the smile I get from getting my code working, I realize, is not in any way helpful in footing my electricity bill. I will get back to this later.

A bunch of weeks ago, I met a friend called Victor. This particular chap, who happens to be an expatriate working for one of the charity organizations in town succeeded his greeting with a question on why he had not seen me at the lunch hour mass I used to never miss prior to December 2019. With the Izeki syndrome, the response was a more diplomatic version of “ndimakhala bize”. His question, though, got me thinking about my spiritual life and how best I can work it out to the best it can be and it got me to some action points. I am not sure if there are any atheists who feast on these articles but as a spiritual being sometimes you do get to have moments of spiritual dryness. You feel incomplete and things do not work as nicely as you would want them to and usually the cure to that happens through divine intervention; without getting too technical about it. One needs to constantly feed their spiritual life because once that dryness comes in it affects pretty much everything else in life. More importantly productivity. We are not yet in the second month of the year but I have had a spell of this dryness already which made me do some soul searching on how best I could be managing this element of life. Answers are coming, and tikhala bwino.

Yesterday, I posted a warning shot on Facebook. Not a usual warning about flooding or anything of the sort, but a heads up about a chat I will convene to discuss the issue of excitement. In my view,  excitement is something that needs a great deal of control. Unfortunately, control of excitement is not something that a lot of us pay attention to. Instead of commenting on the issue at hand, however, people diverted the whole thing and suggested an alternative topic; my wedding. Now, that is a long shot because I am single with no hope of catching or getting caught anytime soon. A bunch of hours after the unrelated comments came on my Facebook post, someone decided to create a WhatsApp group. From the topic, I was getting married to someone on the 13^th of March or some date around that. They even looked around for a good picture to make the group icon and the group, as per the creator was for the bridal party. After hours of chatting, the admin removed everyone at midnight and exited the group.

You might be wondering as to what my point is from the whole narrative. Well. I will tell you what. Despite me being a 26-year old toddler, there are some who are of the opinion that I am way past my sell by date for marriage. I do not agree with that, for some reason but the good thing about me is that I treat opinions as they are. What I partly agree with is the assertion that I need a girlfriend because the chimp-like life I am living now is not healthy. But again, this all goes down to a conditional agreement. I only agree to this when it is a Sunday afternoon and my DSTV is disconnected. The loneliness that comes with such an afternoon sort of makes me agree that I need someone who can commit to talking to me or keeping me company; but again, as some of you would agree, that is no good reason for dragging someone into this mess called my life. Well. Another deficiency.

Let us tie it all together then. From where I stand, it seems like there are a number of deficiencies in major areas of life. Social life is in shambles, my account is injured and spiritual life is running in recovery mode. So, what do I do? Complain? No. I will not complain but try to fix it, and while I am at it, I will try to make notes for others to live better, and here is one for today. From my deficiencies, I bring you the definition of life and good living. A good life is not just about smiling ear to ear about your finances when your spiritual and love life is not working out. It is not just about celebrating your career when your morality is not higher up there. I will try my best not to use examples from the ConCourt case but there was good example on how to balance different aspects of life. That is the keyword. Balance. One needs to balance and juggle different aspects of life in a way that makes them complement each other.

One experience I forgot to share.

One of my good friends, armed with a two-month marriage experience sat me down to ask me why I am not one of those people in town called “bae”. When I gave him my excuses, he gave me that whole thing I just explained about letting things complement each other. He precisely told me to first discover myself and what my goals are; then define the spiritual habits, financial plans, relationship goals and career plans that I need to take me there. And all those, according to him, need to be complementary to one another. Amalawi anzanga, that was the wisdom I got.

And so…

From the deficiencies of my life, I bring you the definition of a good life and it is one word. Balance.

A nice weekend and happy judgement day to you all.

On Professionalism

It is another wonderful Friday and once again we get to feast on a literal piece from this forum. I will, as usual begin with an explanation. In the last article, I had prompted you to prompt me to write about the things I learnt from being in a bridal party. It turns out, however that two people were not too happy about me writing about my experience. So, what did they do? They ended up threatening me not to write about it, so here we are. And for you, Dr Ujeni, the intention was (or is) not that of writing about you. Anyway. On to the business of the day.

Some of you might know a human called Jeremy Clarkson. He rose to fame over his role in the BBC TV show, Top Gear. What I did not know until recently is that while he was still hosting and writing scripts for Top Gear he was also writing a column in the Sunday Times (a UK tabloid, osati izi mumakhala Mufupika’s Calabash by Joram Nyirongo). In that column, he wrote a lot of columns but the one that caught my attention was one in which he talked about the mistakes that people make in workplaces. He talked about a guy who used to operate machines. For that person, if there was a little mistake somebody down the line could end up with missing limbs or dead. He talked of how doctors deal with something as delicate as life whereas the biggest mistake he could make could just get him some disciplinary action and a little fine. In his conclusion, he implored on everyone who had something we could call a job to ensure that they avoided mistakes.

If you have worked for some time, I am sure you have at some point made a mistake that has affected your work in one way or the other. I have made my own too; both in my doctor days and in my office days. A surgical procedure that I performed while I was half asleep because I had been overworked the previous night went wrong and the patient ended up staying longer than planned in the hospital. In my office job days, I have authorized, said, delayed and done things I was not supposed to. If you have been paying attention, you will now discover that while some mistakes are avoidable, some situations leave you with no choice other than one that makes you dive into a situation that makes you prone to making a mistake. With the diversity in work environments and jobs, some mistakes are bound to affect people more than others and while some mistakes can be hard to prevent, there are others we could prevent by employing a little professionalism.

Having started out my work life in the mainstream medical profession where I was on the bedside with patients, it was not rare for me to hear of people making mistakes. As I highlighted, there was a point at which I made my own for various reasons. There was a time that a certain document from the Medical Council came to my perusal. It was dictating that there were some medical personnel that were being suspended for reasons ranging from making patients pay to going to work under the influence of alkanols. Considering the delicate nature of human life, I feel like the suspensions were warranted and the punishments could have been stiffer. If you think of it, however, a little umunthu and professionalism could have saved the whole situation.

The medical profession is not the only field in which we have witnessed lapses in professionalism. I will shift to the media and take you back to the coverage of the 2019 elections whose fever we are yet to recover from. One reporter, in a Malawi Electoral Commission presser took us all by surprise when he commented on the looks of the electoral body’s chairperson. As if that was not enough, he went on comment on her earrings. The social media exploded and was split with comments. Gullible Malawians fell for the story which someone cooked to say that the man from Capital FM was commenting on the earrings because they were not the ordinary type but ones that had an embedded listening device. Later what we got was an apology from the reporter and issue was laid to rest along with the memes it generated. Fast forward to 2020 we have our state broadcaster allowing the airing of news that brands a human rights NGO a terrorist organization. There was a writer who thought it wise to call HRDC a terrorist organization and when the editor in the news department saw it, he gave it a nod and gave it to one experienced anchor with a good voice to confidently read it to us all. Perhaps this might not be a big issue because of the alarm-fatigue we have towards our state broadcaster. They have given us a lot of talking points in the past to the extent that whenever there is something wrong going on with their radio and television broadcast we don’t really see it as something strange.

Then there is this thing that is happening in pretty much every system from banking, civil service, non-governmental organizations and pretty much every other entity including the much-discussed medical profession; leaking of materials that are not for public consumption. There was a time when the whole nation was shocked by the release of the whole salary structure of one of the banks in the country. You might remember the time someone leaked an audio of a conversation between two big political gurus calling their rivals all sorts of names. Then we have the numerous leaked memos and reports from top offices that we have all shared and perused despite the fact that they were not intended for us. The problem with these leaked materials is that some of them, by nature are very sensitive.

Recent days have seen us take a look at the autopsy report for the young lady who recently died under what people thought were suspicious circumstances. Now, this is an autopsy report that is key to an investigation. It is supposed to be some private and legal document what was supposed to be presented to the relevant authorities to aid in the investigation of the case in question. Somehow, at 23:59 on the 15^th of January, 2020 the document ended up in my phone when someone posted it in a social group I am on. Six hours later, I saw the same document being posted on a professional forum before it became a trending document, being posted even in football groups.

Here we are, then. There is a lapse of professionalism in many fields and if I haven’t mentioned yours it does not mean that you are okay in there. Beyond the fields, it is worth noting that individuals are the ones who are involved in unprofessional acts. Misuse of work resources and time, laziness, being unpresentable, abuse of power, leaking confidential information and documents and many other things you can think of. Perhaps we should all go through self-examination and think of ways in which we could improve our work flow and fields in general by acting a bit more professionally.

Fourteen Years Down the Line; a Tale from Mzedi

Hello, dear reader.

A Happy New Year and a Happy New Decade to you. It is yet another Friday on which we get to have a piece our eyes and most importantly brains can feast on. Let us take this back to last week because for all we know this was supposed to be the second if not the third article for this year. Well. Things happened but here we are.

Over the holidays, I had been feasting on movies until New Year’s Day, only to find that my laptop could not boot (or get to switch on, in English) upon returning to work on the second day of the year. The problem persisted until Friday despite some Daudi Suleimanis looking at my ailing machine. Solution? Type an article on my phone. I tried that, but after an A4 page long text and forgetting to save, I lost half of the article I had titled “The Living Thing Called Vibe”. It might have been a blessing in disguise because I am beginning to think that some of the facts I wanted to share in the article may not be accurate and I could use some more time to research on “vibe”. I will remember to write that article, come December 25, 2020, the last Friday of the year.

Coming into this week, I was compelled to write about the lessons I learnt being a groomsman at a wedding of my good friends and Richie Online readers, Chilungamo  and Sheena. I will reserve that for some other day, because for some reason I ended up remembering that today marks fourteen years since I joined Saint Patrick’s Secondary School, Mzedi as a Form 1 student. I have been reflecting on the day and I ended up realizing that there are some stories and lessons I could share. So… There we are. I owe the community two articles; already knee deep in debt this early in the year.

About the day I started my secondary life… Tuesday the 10^th of January, 2006 was the day of one of my biggest transitions. I could call it the first of the many transitional days I have had and I am yet to have. I remember leaving home in Mbulumbuzi on my dad’s motorbike and heading down the winding road that slopes down to Mzedi. On occasion, my dad would throw a banter on how I was going to be beaten up as a form one student. I guess that was his way of preparing me for what lay ahead given the school’s history of teasing and bullying.

I arrived at the school some time after “3:30” pm. We went to the administration block where were welcomed by the then Boarding Master, Mr Saza Mwamlima. The paperwork was sorted and it was time for me to join the fold of “anyonyo”, the name given to the newbies at the school. After getting some K200 pocket money from my dad, the Boarding Master instructed one of the then Form 3 students to escort me to the hostels where he decided that I should join Dorm 12. There I was; lost in the forest of new faces. Within moments, I learnt that Tuesdays were sports days and that after knocking off people used to participate in different sports activities after classes. Being the guy who had passed his primary school leaving certificate examinations at a rural primary school based in Kapeya village, I failed to relate to the likes of volleyball and basketball. Desperate for a network, I moved over to the football pitch where I found people playing football on a ground that could have used some slashing. Little did I know that it would be my job to clear that pitch in a number of days.

In my journey to the pitch, I was in the company of one good friend of mine with whom I shared a class from standard five. I was to share four more years with him in the B stream at Mzedi. The pitch is where I got to realize what kind of camp I had been working hard in primary school to get myself into.

On arrival, some form four guy in tinted spectacles called three of us who obviously looked to be form one students. He asked us a few questions and when we failed he asked us when we had arrived at the school. My friends had been there since the previous Sunday but they were failing to catch on with the customs of the place. I was release on the premise that I was the new one and I hardly had time to learn the culture. The torture of the day continued at dinner with people coming to ask for your name and where you came from more times that you could tolerate, people coming to eat from your plate and others coming to get part of your nsima so they could use throw it at an opponent. People used to make a spot out of kugendana ndi nsima ndithu. Then came the time for studies between 7:30 and 9:00 pm and sleeping time. When I was trying to catch some sleep, some human decided that it was better if I were to get startled by the sound of the firework he set up under my bed instead. This was the first day of the many I had at Mzedi. Got in there clueless of what I wanted to become in life, got ambitions of becoming a computer programmer in the course of being there, ended up being in medical school and working in the hospital and now I find myself slowly reuniting with my secondary school dreams. It has been a journey and reflecting on it has given me some lessons.

You might notice that I missed two days of school and ended up going on a Tuesday afternoon when my friends had arrived on a Sunday. Reason? Parents were still looking for the K7000 or so for the school fees. That tells me how far I have come but reflecting upon this and one homily that our parish priest gave on Holy Family day, I found myself thinking about preparation for children’s education. Reflecting on how my parents struggled to get us through secondary school, when they had three children in national secondary schools, it has hit me that I need to have my children’s education in mind from an early stage and so should you. Again, this just gives a general lesson on preparedness for things that are inevitable. We go to college and get out looking for jobs. At the stage me and most of my peers are, we are looking for post-graduate education and we want to be setting up families. 

Preparation matters in all that and we cannot be living as if we have no idea lest we have not-so-surprising things catching us unaware. Get on that medical scheme, build those networks, get some life cover and do whatever you can because you need to prepare for what is coming. We know that December salaries come early and that the festive season eats up our monies, but guess what? Year in, year out people complain about General January and the school fees week. Perhaps it is time we replaced the complaints with preparation.

Going to the school, my dad warned me of the brutality I was going to possibly face. If you were wondering if it happened, well it did. All in all, a few slaps and laundry sessions for senior students later, we were done with form one. We proceeded amidst different challenges and ended up finishing school and getting some college education. I am happy with my little achievements but I am glad when I see my friends excelling in their jobs, businesses and in the academia. When I go back to Mzedi, I tell stories of how we had water issues and how the kitchen operated on firewood, cooking for over 300 students when we had no electricity for over a month (nkhunizo timakanyamula ndife). Nothing comes easy in this life and building up on the life at Mzedi I was able to get through medical school, clinical internships and a period of unemployment afterwards.

I could share more reflections but some of them would be unrelatable to most. Being in Form One at Mzedi in 2006 was not the easiest thing but we managed to get through it. The place was to later bring a mixture of both fond and sad memories and the fact that I was there still defines some of the most important networks I have today. It is 14 years after that day I joined “the prison” (then without a fence) but I remember it like it was yesterday and I am glad I endured. 

We ate VP, walked along the Jovinus Highway, roamed around Matuta Village to dance to their mganda, enjoyed distorting the national anthem to our liking (you should hear how students still sing it to date; and don't try to join in), gave some foodstuffs some obscene names, enjoyed singing in the choir at Mzedi parish, cheered and played for Mzedi Select (later named Max Bullets, a Super League team), kuba gwafa and a whole endless list of things. After fourteen years, here we are, all responsible and whatever. We can only thank God, parents, teachers, Mr Kabudula (the chef, then) and Mayi an Mishe (used to bring some delicacies which we ate when tired of the beans and mkwani) for the roads well traveled. 

Have a lovely weekend.

Oh. Mundikumbutse ndikulembereni za bridal party on Wednesday.