Summing 2020 Up

 

With Richie

It is the last Friday of the year and we just had to close it up with an article. I had thought so much about what to write on this particular day and I struggled to come up with something befitting. Then I told myself that it was not important to stress about what to write so I just went on the keyboard and let my fingers do the thinking.

I somehow started my year in December 2019 because by the time it was New Year’s Day I had already figured out what I was going to be doing in for each and every month until… well October or so. Somehow, I thought I had everything figured out and I ignored Prophet TB Joshua’s prophecy which I had stumbled upon some time in December. There was going to be some disease, said he. Bushiri had said it was going to be a great year, anyway, so when I gave the whole thing a thought, I reckoned I will be fine. Little did I know that the disease TB talked about was going to affect my all expenses paid trips overseas; and that I would eventually catch it.

This year was full of activity for the average social media loving  Malawian. We kicked off the year anticipating the constitutional court judgement on the elections case but that hype was soon overtaken by that snake. I will not go into details on that to avoid offending people but we all know what happened although the details were sketchy. Come February 3^rd, the much anticipated judgement was delivered by the judges who in my view were not too kind. Then we got geared for the election and before we could move a muscle to start campaigning the coronavirus showed up on our doorsteps. Remember that confusion in Covid-19 management by the previous government? I remember it too. And what about those models that said you and your grandmother were going to die by June 11^th? June 11^th passed and you are still here reading Richie Online articles and that is why you need to ignore everything and nod in agreement to what Bushiri said; It was a great year.

Since we were all indoors preventing the Rona, we learnt a lot of things. Offices closed and people learnt to have conversations online. Skype was soon replaced by Zoom and Microsoft Teams for many who still wanted to be working online. Some civil servants literally just sat at home from March to September, getting salaries without earning them by working. And what of us desk researchers and people who do such sorts of work? Well. We continued to work hard. And when they called us back to the office we told them to sod off so we have not gone back ever since. And health workers? Well. There was too much work so we worked in overdrive. This year I found myself doubling as a doctor of sorts and the researcher I am. Exciting times under very wrong circumstances. Long story short, we have learnt who is an essential worker and who is not and superiors have learnt that it is not every day that you need to see Richard’s face in the office. We have Covid-19 to thank for that.

On the same note of staying home, the social media blew up this year. And guess what we were doing on it? Posting memes. So many people have turned into meme lords and meme ladies this year than there were back then. The conversion rate from regular human to a meme human has been so high this year I had to mute half my contacts on WhatsApp to avoid seeing the same memes a hundred times. One of the phones I used this year even had some clever mechanism for identifying memes from my gallery and it would prompt me to delete them. That is how far people went with memes this year. Remember the time when the only memes we used to get were those ones from 9GAG? Well. You don’t. Probably because you did not know memes before they were cool. All in all, as someone said, the year was generally not good because we lost some important people. There was a virus which we will tell our grand children wiped half the population of the earth, but the memes were good and they kept us through. Then we had all those popular statements that came out each at a time. Kuikana m’botolo, tiyeni and all that jazz. They had you hyped up, didn’t they? They also probably kept most of the men sane when football was banned due to the Rona.

I learned an important lesson about commercializing art from Malawian artists. I have not been a fan of Captain Bae for some time but I must say that I was impressed with his work this year. More so because he was able to put out some music and make some money out of it. Many artists did the same and we saw artists signing some endorsement deals that facelifted their bank accounts. This is why you may have to buy weekend papers to read some random thoughts that you ideally read for free on Richie Online. I am not sure how that is going to go because already some of you complain about data bundles which you use to click the link to this blog. You will understand the value of these articles when your grandparents use the edited versions of the thing for their English Literature classes.

Talking of Richie Online, this has been a relatively dormant year for the blog. A combined 3 heads managed to produce only 24 articles prior to this one. The readership was not great either because people apparently decided that Richie Online articles were no longer interesting. We averaged 30 views per article from roughly about 120 last year. Did we die? Nope. Richie Online is and will still be around because of the Boghoyos and Naphiris who come out of their internet-deprived caves and ask for all the articles they missed while they were away in Neverland. And those of you who were masks and comment mean things as anonymous people. I find it annoying but your actions are the kerosene that keeps the blog flying. Come 2021, we want to unmask the Venomous Hope; the guy who has been writing mean things about everyone including me on this space. I think we could use a look of what his face looks like although I think he might be bald-headed from all the ranting that comes out of him. Perhaps we should also make some Richie Online umbrellas, t shirts, keyholders and car stickers.  

This article will not be complete if I do not mention the good examples that we saw from some distinguished people over the course of the year. The constitutional court judges come to mind on this one but once they directed that we have a fresh election, it was the task of the newly appointed electoral body to deliver the goods. We all know what they did. Sons and daughters of Malawi have done well in sports. You may know about Gaba, Tabitha Chawinga and Mwawi Kumwenda but some of you may not know about the exploits of John Maduka who is managing Celtics, a DSTV premiership outfit. I am not too sure what the actors were up to, though but I must say musicians were also on point. Did you know that Gwamba sponsored upcoming artists with recording and music videos? Such selflessness is being commended from us at Richie Online.

Shall we talk about hiking? I think we should. People have been up and down mountains this year. It has been worse in Blantyre where people decided that hiking was not enough for keeping fit. Know what they started? Of course you do. People started to go to Milare for a run to Madziabango and back. I mean… I have done some crazy things for fitness this year. I at some point walked from Bumbwe to Thunga and back. If you don’t know the intensity of it, that was 18 kilometers of walking. But I have not been hiking. Well. At least I have not been doing the mainstream hiking. I have done Michiru in my lonesome and I hiked Mpingwe on some Tuesday morning with a crazy guy called Vinny. I mean… Who hikes on an effing Tuesday? All I have come to discover is that people hike for different reasons. Love of nature. Fitness. Fun. Looking for suitors. No reason at all. And other reasons you can think of.

There have been many good articles on Richie Online this year. I know so because after writing the articles and forgetting them I always go back and read them. I was looking at one that people should take from this year into 2020 and one immediately came to mind. It is not the most viewed but it definitely defined what the highs and lows of my year were as I had seen them from the beginning of the year. Take some time to read an article called Balance. I think it is a good one and that if you are not high on Christmas you may agree with me.

It is Christmas day and I like the fact that this year people did not hit us with the “Christmas is a pagan celebration” hibber jabber. Let us commemorate the birth of Jesus in  an orderly manner as we wait for 2021. Since Bushiri has not said it yet, 2021 will be a great year. Ndanena ndanena.

Happy festivities, dear reader.

 

 

 

Of Transactional Romance

 

It is yet another Friday. Ideally, I would not have written this post, but I have written it for two reasons. The first one is that I would like to prove one of my friends wrong. When I said I would want to finish my work before writing an article, he said it would not be done. I just wanted to prove someone wrong. The other reason I wanted to write this is that since I have decided not to take part in this Friday, I may soon run out of things to do. I thought, I might as well spend some half to 3 quarters of an hour drafting this. Plus I have something to say.

As I am typing, I am writing, I am watching an episode of an animation series called the Boondocks. In the scene I am watching is a conversation between two young boys who are discussing the issue of going on a date. The other one is suggesting that just because people men take women out for dates and pay for the food, then the women who get paid for are what could be whores. The other tries to correct him by saying that technically when you pay for the food and drinks, you don’t pay the lady but you are paying the restaurant. Guess the response? I am still paying so she is a whore. I have watched this episode before and by the end of it the story is that these kids’ grandfather gets ripped off by a stripper who was being run by some man. Interesting stuff. You should watch the series if you haven’t already. I have it at Naperi 449.

We have kicked off with a conversation by some two fictional children but we need to face it that there was something that all of us could learn or relate with from their conversation. Here we go.

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in a bar sipping some Indian Tonic when some two guys came and sat next to me. Because I was all alone and had nothing extra to do, I was playing with my phone while eavesdropping to their conversation. I mean, it is not illegal yet, right? Now.. These are not fictional people. They are real ones and from Zingwangwa according to their chat. In the prime of their chat, they were sharing notes about their multiple sexual partners and how they were managing them. Interesting chat that was. From the stories, one of them was married and one was in what you people like to call a serious relationship. One of them was talking of how he had blocked the girl with whom he had a one night stand. His reason was that she had kept calling and was a threat to his relationship. The other one went on to highlight the importance of keeping phone numbers or other contact details out of sexual relationships. Crazy stuff. According to him, once you have sexual relations with a girl, they turn you into a cash mill. He went on to say that nowadays most relationships are hinged on money and the more girls you have the more exit routes your money will have.

While I did not see the little fictional kids (Riley and Huey), I saw something that was similar. The lesson I learnt from that is that there is a certain proportion of men who think that the majority of women depend on men for survival in town. Whether that is true or not depends on how you look at it, but we can agree here that there are a lot of people who are living off their relationships…. And it is not only the female side, by the way. Some men also live off their women in one way or the other. Should we be calling each other out for that? Maybe. Maybe not.

In the later day society where there are blurred lines between being strangers, being friends and being in a relationship, the sort of thing could be an issue. People meet at a party today, decide to get intimate the same night and then exchange numbers later. I am talking about normal people and not the ones you see in short dresses around Henderson Street in Blantyre or at Bwandiro in Lilongwe. I have heard stories of people who have had such one-night stands. At that moment, no payment was demanded from them but later they started paying for nails and weaves to an extent that when the valuation was conducted they felt like they were getting a raw deal. Next thing? They got intimate again and then it became a habit and subsequently a relationship. Or arrangement. Or entanglement. Or whatever you call it. I have heard of these before and I am not so sure if the reverse happens in a similar fashion; like a lady paying for sneakers, hair cuts and a Palystation 5 following a one-night stand. All we know, here at Richie Online, is that we also have guys living off ladies. How it starts, we are not sure.

Perhaps we should not limit this to sexual relations because there are some friendships that only exist because of the money one party has to offer. These things people call squads are sometimes just settings in which others become cash mills. As for us who partake in not-so-sweet drinks, there is this concept of a buyer; the sort of guy who always buys the drinks for the other(s). Many of those are not liked for who they are but rather how many crates or 750 milliliter bottles they bring to the table.  Perhaps we are in the last days in which Paul in his second letter to Timothy prophesied. “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money…”(2 Timothy 3:2). I was focusing on the loving money part.

I will switch it back to the issue of male-female relations. Last year I found myself chatting with someone who wanted to know if I was dating yet. When I gave a negative answer he gave me a concerned face. Upon probing, he told me that moving on all the girls that were going to fall into my circle would be doing it because of my status and not really for who I am. While I thought he had a point, I also realized that this was a very hasty generalization. While some may fall for the cane chairs and GOTV that I have on my living room, some would date me because I am the Richie of Richie Online and nothing else. At the end of the day, I should acknowledge to say that it is hard to pick out who is who, but it is unreasonable to give up love just because you are not sure that people are coming for your wallet.

This article will not be complete if I do not talk of the people called blessers. This is a loose term that is being used to describe someone who has offered monetary gifts or assistance but in its true sense it means that person (mostly pot-bellied man or VW driver) who gives money in exchange for sexual favors. Here are two or three scenarios. Have you ever seen that young lady who gets a meagre pay but still always manages to get the best Brazillian hair, nails and make-up. Well. In case you think that this is a bad sterotype, I understand that there are many women and girls who are independent but for some, there usually is a blesser who is involved and usually it is some old man who is looking for a young lady. Do not be fooled, however, to think that being a blesser is restricted to the 50-year-old millionaire. Some of you, Richie Online readers are blessers. Ever wondered how these students in the hostels are surviving town? There are students from Poly Management, BIU, MIT and many other colleges who reside around Chitawira, Naperi and Zingwangwa. We meet them in the clubs and they tell us they are just having fun. We exchange numbers and soon they come running to us with that “I need a favor” signature call. We help but soon things escalate and we end up jumping in bed with them. That is the next generation of blessers. Young people who are just setting out in their careers are being trained to be blessers too and they seem to be doing it well.

There we are then. We are in the era of transactional romance and bromance.

Caspper Nyovest is in town and I am pretty sure about a third of the patrons’ tickets have been bought by blessers of some sort. That is the Age of Transactional romance and bromance where people will love each other not based on who they are but on what they have to offer.

Have a lovely weekend.