An Invitation to a Writing Party

It is another Friday. In the Catholic church, we like to describe days after landmark days or according to seasons, so we could safely say that this is the first Friday after Valentine’s Day ( or Men’s Conference or the All-Star weekend) depending on your likings, interests and sense of humor. Bottom line is that this is a Friday and as per tradition, we are here feeding on some opinions from the Richie Online HQ in Naperi.

Month number two of the year is getting to an end. I came into the year without bothering to draft any blueprint to guide me of how I would spend my time in the year. The effect to this, I had surmised, would be that I would be having episodes of idleness and moments when I could not feel like the year was taking forever to end. Things turned out to be the exact opposite.

You might agree with me that this year has been a bit of a nuisance and it has always been filled with events that have kept Malawians, who I have learnt are gullible and trigger-happy keyboard warriors on the social media very busy for almost every day. Think of it this way. This year gave us the conclusion to the constitutional court case whose end we all highly anticipated. Then there was the issue of the potential homicide case of the young lady in Lilongwe which turned everyone on Facebook and WhatsApp into an expert in detective work and forensic pathology. We continued marching against Jane Ansah and her MEC.

When the constitutional court ruling came, the country exploded into a frenzy. It looks, to me, like there are a lot of people who were not too happy with the results of the presidential elections. After we had sobered up, we began discussing the implications of the ruling and that was where we got busy learning and unlearning the complicated nature of partisan politics. To add to that, the respondents in the case decided to appeal and get stay orders. Tic toc. Then there was the Public Appointments Committee of the August House which came in with it’s inquiry on the competence of the electoral commission. You must have enjoyed the proceedings on the radio. Just as we were about to get bored, the ruling party came in with it’s own demonstrations, demanding justice. Now those ones kept us busy for all the reasons, most of them wrong. I will not get into that though.

If you begin to think about it, the days in this year have just been flying by. People even went on to joke that this year’s January did not have that much of a sting when compared with the other years because it was so fast-paced we didn’t realize we were broke.

I earlier talked about how I did not write any sort of scribbling to guide my time expenditure in this year of 2020 and how I thought the decision would leave me idle and bored. Turns out not. It has been a year full of things popping out of nowhere and just as I was thinking that relinquishing some responsibilities would make things better, more things popped up to clutter my desk. If you are to ask me, a 2020 day lasts about 22 hour and 15 minutes and a week lasting 6 days flat. Each and every time it gets to Friday, I always find myself wondering why the job of finding content for this blog has come a bit too early in the week and I have realized that I am hardly keeping up. When I look at the next few months to check if things will get any better, all I am getting is an assurance that it will get worse. This is why I have this proposition. I will rent out this blog to some who have fact-based opinions to share.

We have, previously seen articles from the likes of the Venomous Hope, Pemphero Mphande, Alexious Kamangila, TD Rambiki and many others. If you thought those were the only humans who could write in the Richie Online community, well, you might need to think again because there are plenty of those. I am pretty sure that people will come up and fill these spaces with articles while I am away. Eeetu. Inuyo mudzitilemberako apa. Osamangowerenga. If you can read, you can write.

Some of you might be wondering why I have gotten to the point of thinking of dropping writing on a platform I have touted as my number one tool for venting the hot gases in the enclosure of my skull. Well. I might have found a girlfriend to whom I am talking nowadays. Or maybe I won’t need to vent in the next few months. The big reason, however, would be that I have with time learnt that whenever you have something important to do, you need to lay off a few less important things to make time for the one that matters. I can hear you calling me Captain Obvious, but that is alright.

In my early years of college, I learnt an important lesson from an example that I cannot believe that I am using. I am sure that you know a thing or two about supplementary examinations. At some gossipers came to me to tell me the demographics of the people they had seen on campus, preparing for supplementary examinations. The campus, obviously had some religious diversity, but even without belonging to a particular denomination, one would notice that there were heavyweights in each of the denomination groupings. What this human concluded, then was that the people who were the most dedicated to church things dominated he supplementary examination demographic. Followed by those who used to spend entire weekends and a majority of their weekdays in the bar and at Kabila tavern. I would like to think that it was a coincidence because other azitsogoleri used to do pretty well.

On one Friday, I was walking about on campus when I bumped into this human who was a dedicated church-goer and charismatic preacher. Well. On top of going to a traditional church, the guy was a leading member of the youth wing of one of the popular ministries at the time. Now this was the meeting day for his traditional congregation on the campus and there was an activity going on at his ministry. I asked him why he was not in any of the gatherings and he told me that he was going to study for examinations that were on in a few days. He added that he wanted to make use of the Friday night because he had yet another school to go to for a preaching over the weekend. Closer to home, there were guys who despite being in senior medical school classes (which qualifies you to give the ndimakhala bize excuse to almost everything) were teaching Sunday School classes at St Montfort CI church. Somehow they managed to get through without much difficulty.

Now I am not saying that church activities were associated with supplementary examinations. I would say the same about alcohol. I do not think that I was that dedicated at church when I had my taste of supplementary examinations. I would just like to point out that I have learnt from the school preacherman and the Sunday school teachers. There are times that you have to multitask and there are times that you have to leave one thing and focus on the other. Prioritization of tasks is one skill worth harnessing and I hope all of you master it.

Perhaps this is time for me to take a break from Richie Online. We will see.

Let me, then, call upon all of you to bring on your articles in the seven or so weeks that I will be away. Rules are simple. 1400 words max, or two A4 pages. Font size 11 and face Callibri.

Nafe timve nawo kuti mmutu mwanumo mumayenda chani.

Have a nice weekend.