Now that you have seen it all

It is that time of the week again and once again we had to put up something fresh for the masses to read. By the masses I mean the 30 or so dedicated Richie online readers and a similar number to whom they pass the articles. To you, our dear regular leaders goes our word of thanks. We have started the year on a high note with good reception to the two Friday articles and the recently published mid-week piece. I guess there was a bit of wisdom in that but now I am about to ruin it. Well. Maybe not.

A couple of weeks ago, one man who takes me for some serious chap asked me as to what I thought my year 2020 was like and he was shocked when I told him that it was a wasted year. Here is what I meant. I did manage to do a few things relating to work. I added a few things to my failure resume and a few more to my success one but there wasn’t much positivity from it. Perhaps I may have judged myself harshly because my life revolves around my career but outside of that things were not good either.

To black out my 2020 pain, I turned to the book and to standup comedy. Guess what I was reading? The writings of Jeremy Clarkson. If you do not know who this guy is, this is one brilliant motoring presenter who was fired from the BBC for launching an unprovoked physical assault at a colleague because apparently there was no hot foot served on set while they were shooting an episode of a popular programme called Top Gear. At the time, the BBC had had enough of Jeremy’s behavior and not even the 1 million signature petition to reinstate him could save him. That is the man whose writings I spent my time on last year so you must understand when I say it was a wasted yet.

Apart from the books, one other useless thing I spent my time on was stand-up comedy. Now those of you who know me know pretty well that I cannot stand a comedy movie. I do not like funny characters but I surely like it when people go on stage and say funny things without having to wear the mask of a character. This is why I found the energy to download and repeatedly watch every Dave Chappelle comedy special as part of my gap filling and entertainment. I would like to tell you about one of those specials.

This one is called the Age of Spin and it was performed in the American city of Los Angeles. Apart from the weed, OJ Simpson and Kelvin Hart jokes, Dave Chappelle introduces one interesting concept that had me wondering on which side of luck our generation is. He started this joke by asking someone how old they were and when they mentioned 25, he dismissed them saying they were too young to know anything; adding that the younger generation must search on Google to know things he lived through.  He then went on to highlight how this is the age of spin when it is hard to care about anything because of the saturation of information and the way that events adverse or otherwise happen so frequently. He cited bombings all over the globe and mass shootings in the USA as something that is hard to keep track off considering how frequent they are. I found that concept interesting and lately it got me thinking about both lucky and unlucky our generation has been.

Most of the people who read these articles were born in the 80’sand 90’s and witnessed the turn of the millennium at a relatively young age. This is the generation that grew up listening to the radio and not watching satellite television. Some of you may remember Patrick Mphaka and his 5 Moba (however they spell it) program and how scary it was for a young mind. Witnessing the turn of the millennium was something big for most but is something that we do not really consider in our adult life.

Then we come to politics. While some of you may have been lucky to have been “aware” of what was going on during the Kamuzu regime, some of us started out with going to Bakili Muluzi’s rallies. That guy could stand on the podium for an hour and tell jokes about how he saw a woman’s underwear from the podium and people would still clap. He unconstitutionally tried to contest for his third term as president and we all know how that ended. Then came “the” Bingu (some have said if he was the leader we would have been in a lockdown with the police under orders to shoot to kill anyone found galivanting in the streets), his first term, landslide victory, falling out with his second in command, struggles of the third term and death while in office. We all saw that transition and what happened to the end of that term and beyond. Fast forward to 2019, there were those elections and how they were overturned to ensure that we have the current regime; that by the way promised us 1 million jobs in the first year of office. All these may seem ordinary when you don’t think much about them but growing up watching the political drama has been a marvel.

In our time, we have seen what is probably the best jump when it comes to the advancement in communications technology. When I was growing up in the suburb of Mbulumbuzi, no one in the whole area had a cellphone except for two rich gentlemen. And you know what? They had to pay a bill at MTL at the end of every month. Then came the influx of cellphones with Zain (the modern day Airtel) offering the ugly orange themed ZTE phone and TNM offering the ugly and small Tiago.  That was the local situation but globally we also saw the improvement which came with Android phones. Now droids replaced Symbian phones as the gadget for the elite and later  we saw the iPhone come to the scene. That has been good save for one thing. Smart phones are now in the hands of dumb people who do not have a better use of them other than trolling others on Twitter. That is the problem with our generation. We are used to these times in which we can be disrespectful to others without getting punched in the face for it.

Where are my sports fans at? Have you notices that our generation has the best athletes in almost every sports discipline? If we start with football, we are living in the ear of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo who are the best players of this age (I will park this). I am not a big fan of him but one has to give credit to one LeBron James as one of the all-time greats if not the greatest in basketball. Should I say something about Stephen Curry? We have seen the likes of Michael Phelps in swimming, Lance Armstrong in cycling, Ussain Bolt in sprinting, Kipchoe in marathon running, Simmone Biles in gymnastics and Lewis Hamilton in motor racing. These guys have pulled up impressive numbers and performances. I could go on to mention the likes of Rodger Federer, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal in tennis along with the Williams sisters in the same sport. Tiger Woods in golf? You know the story. Then we have Mwawi Kumwenda, the netball genius who secured her own Puma shoe deal. Gaba? Ask me his story when you are done reading this.

Perhaps some of you may not relate to the names of the sports personalities I have mentioned but you can surely relate to the coronavirus. I am pretty sure that this virus has affected each and everyone in different ways. I know a couple of readers who will be going through this article while in isolation, nursing symptoms of the Rona. This event may not be the most pleasant, but it might be the highlight of our generation and now that we have seen it all, we need to survive this. Know why? Just so we can tell our grandchildren about it. In all honesty, I cannot wait to sit down with my children’s children only to lie to them about how all of you died and how it was just me  and 15 other people left with the job of rebuilding and repopulating the country. That could be a cool story until after they come around snooping and find this text about how I planned to lie to them 60 years earlier.

Perhaps this article may not have the same energy as the chainsaw manifesto I published on Tuesday. It may not be filled with the same lessons as the first two articles of the year but here are the two things you need to take from it. First one. Big things may happen to us but sometimes we do not notice them because we never take some time to reflect on what it going on and appreciate how significant. I call upon you today to take stock of your life and learn to appreciate the good experiences and to draw lessons from the not so good ones. The second one, of course is that on the coronavirus. The reminders cannot get too loud. We have known about the preventive measures for some time but one thing I need to talk about is the issue of selective prevention. There are some who observe preventive measures in the office but cannot do the same when they go home or to the local market. There are some who ae observing the measures but are not taking time to remind people they are always in close contact with to follow suit. Your spouse, maid, sibling, workmate, that church mate or everyone to whom you are close could be the reason you get infected.  The same thing we have said to covidiots that it is not about them will apply to you who are trying to stay safe; IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU! When protecting yourself, remind others who are close to you to do the same.

Now that you have seen it all and read this article, I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Dedicated to Wongani “Spentac” Kamfutso, who until his passing on Thursday January 14^th 2021 was an ardent Richie Online reader. May His Soul Rest in Eternal Peace.