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 3rd, 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 11th?
June 11th 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.
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