Who is Reading?

 

It is yet another Friday and as required we have a new piece on Richie Online. As opposed to last week, no one is holding a gun to my head as I type this. This is just to assure you that I am writing this willfully as I take a break from the other intellectually challenging tasks that I have been doing all week and will continue to do over the weekend.

When I sent what was the 240^th article on Richie Online last week, I indicated in the caption that I had written the article at  gun point. Well. Obviously that was not in its literal sense. Interestingly, however, I wrote the article at 1900 hours in response to the messages that were coming in asking about where the article was. This time it was not the married people asking but rather single ones. I cannot remember all the people who asked for the article but one of them is called Baby Elephant. I will get back to the issue of this article later.

On a rather unrelated note, I have lately found myself realizing the importance of having weekend plans. For those who may not know, my life boringly revolves around work and if anyone does not prompt me to do anything exciting I find myself alternating between watching Spanish football and coding. In all honesty, I do not like working on weekends but when one is out of alternatives, that becomes the only option. This has worsened with the Covid-19 pandemic in which we do not have much of sporting activities (I mean zokakhala pa stand ku Chiwembe not watching on TV) and outdoor activities. This weekend is however different as it has been covered with exciting activities. After doing my morning road work or hike on Saturday, I will be attending Pemphero Mphande’s What You See at Sunrise book launch at Golden Peacock Hotel and after church I will be attending Lulu’s acoustic set at HS Winehouse. Ku nyumba ya vinyoku musabwere chifukwa takwana kale handed.

Let me talk about the book launch for a second. Pemphero Mphande started talking about writing a book over a year ago. He would make long Facebook posts with stories full of suspense and talk about how he would want to put them in a book. Being the attention seeker he is, I think he gave us a minimum number of likes to give his posts if the book was to see the light of day (don’t tell him I wrote this). Months down the line, the guy announced that his book will be out on the 27^th of March and he has organed a star-studded entourage of speakers for the launch; Chiwoza Bandawe, Janelisa Musaya, Ken Lipenga, Ben Wandawanda, Prof Lupenga Mphande, Patience Namadingo and the Guest of Honor, Prof Tiyambe Zeleza. Don’t ask me why I included titles for some people while I did not for others. My article, my choice. This promises to be a good event and I decided that I should part with a good 10k which I could have used to buy 6 or so bottles of Kombeza (now that I have taken a break from imbibing the drinks you know me for). This is to support a friend but I am also doing it for the love of literature and the reading culture.

When Pemphero announced through Facebook that his book was going to be selling at K13500, other people complained that it was a little too expensive. Being the stubborn guy he is, he wrote long posts and went live on Facebook explaining why he was not going to lower the price for the book; Malawians need to value intellectual material and need to cultivate a reading culture. I will talk about the second.

The average modern day young person has no liking whatsoever for reading anything whose length goes beyond the standard length of a tweet. For any posts that you decide to pathologically elongate beyond 3 paragraphs on Facebook, you nowadays have to write the “LONG POST” warning. In the comments, others will gladly express how they could not finish reading the post with the sole barrier being the length. Our reading culture is gone and that is sadly being reflected in the quality of our writing. I will not spend time on this issue because I have ran out of pills that help me with my depression.

A lot of people have decried the decline in the reading culture in Malawi although I have a feeling that this might be a global issue. To learn about something, people would rather watch a documentary than read a book. That is not wrong in itself, but it becomes a problem when the deficiencies we have in reading reflect on the quality of writing. A friend of mine posted how he saw a job applicant describe himself as “a guy” in an application letter. Some may say that I am pushing the argument too far, but I would put it to you that a person who is well read would not make such a mistake. Some may say that writing abilities have little to do with reading and others may say that not everyone needs some superhuman writing abilities, but I would differ on that. We all need to read and for different reasons.

Back to Pemphero. The interesting thing is that after some people filed a complaint about the book being expensive, some came forward to buy it for as much as 300k in the local currency per copy. That may have been some posturing but interestingly enough others continued to pre-order at the standard price. Some companies have gone on to buy a lot of books which makes me wonder as to who is reading these books. Last year alone, three friends of mine released books. Vincent Mkochi dropped a poetry book and Chilungamo Khuwi and Steve Kateta released some self help books. I am humbled to have some proficient writers in the Richie Online readership; the likes of Chiwoza Bandawe, Dr Cornelius Huwa, the Daydreamer, The Venomous Hope (we need to bring this one back), Dr Dominic the Poet and the others who I am afraid of mentioning. Sometimes I find myself asking as to who is reading all these books if anyone is at all reading.

Here is the reason for my question. I do not believe that book sales are great owing to the decline and death of the reading culture. Most people would look at books as expensive and not have an interest to buy them and even some of the people who get to buy the books do not read them. Zimaterotu, pena. I would be interested in knowing what section of the society does buy and read these books before I release my own book.

And now I should drag the issue of the article in. I did say I was going to bring it back, right? Week in week out I write these articles and send them to a broadcast list of 123 people on WhatsApp. In my Twitter days, I would post there and I would then share the link on my Facebook account and the Richie Online Facebook page which some of you have been stubborn enough to not like to date. On a day when I do not write, I get some messages (roughly 5 or 6) asking me as to where the article is. “I thought today was a Friday”. “Kodi iwe. We are waiting for the article.” “Lero Richie Online ibwera kodi?”. They come barking as if they pay anything for these articles. Now here is the interesting bit. I once in a while go and check how many hits each article has. Some of you know that the most article on Richie Online is the one called the 21^st Century Paradox of sex which was viewed over 2300 times. Normal articles nowadays get about 50 views, a decline from the usual 150 each would get back in time when the blog was at its peak. It gets more interesting. There have been times when I have met people whose phone numbers I do not have asking me why I have not written the article for the day. Now these are obviously people who are not on my mailing list. Some have taken this initiative come to the blog at the end of every Friday to check if there is new material. I find that humbling.

That makes me wonder. Who reads these articles? Now I know there are some of you who read and comment every Friday. Some of you would come with screenshots or quotes of the article to show me that you are reading… but if the link to this gets to be sent to 123 people through WhatsApp and I get 50 hits, it means 70people from the broadcast list did not read. 40 will probably read after getting the link through WhatsApp. I could actually list them if I wanted to. Felix Gent ndi gulu lake will always do that and write their own article in the comment section. Then there are the likes of Dalitsani Madula and Daniel Sato who come and mark my grammar and spellings.  It is however, those others who read in silence who I am interested in.  Knowing people who read secretly can surely give me an insight on the demographics of people who read in this country and I need that data as I identify a target audience for a potential book.

Now… I know I may have sounded like I am complaining in this article. Well. I am but not for the lack of hits on this blog. I have talked about how I use this blog in two articles (at least from current memory). Firstly, I use it as a megaphone whenever I feel like I have something important to share but the second is more important. I use this blog as a vent; a platform which I can use to let out things that trouble my ever wandering mind. Today I used it as both. I have shed my tears for the reading culture but I have also shared with you about the book launch and how some of you are doing all you can to keep the reading culture alive by providing us with books and materials. I would like to appreciate all of you who have read to this sentence. You are the reason Richie Online is alive and I will continue to write this for you. If you feel like pestering me for an article when I do not write one, go on. I will complain about it and that will be it. Nanga titani?

Perhaps it is high time I resumed the habit of writing articles specifically tailored for loyal readers. If you are one of those secret readers, do come out. You are scaring and censoring me with your lack of comments.

Signing out, whatever you can pick up to read, please read. I have always said to my friends that the only bad reading habit is not reading. Tiyeni tizichotsa umbuli through these books.  

Who is reading these articles?

Conspiracy Friday

 

It is yet another Friday. Here is the dose for the day.

When I joined college in 2010, the world was not as open as it is now. While we had phones, smartphone were not as common. As such, the spread of information largely depended on the mainstream media. Fast forward to 2021, everyone has a smartphone in their pocket. Everyone has an android this or Apple that in their pockets and the availability of phones has made communication very easy. What that has done is also to create a pandemic of misinformation as we are continually bombarded with chain messages filled with misinformation and things we are not supposed to see.

In the thick of the elections cases last year, we found ourselves feasting on court documents which I am 90 percent sure were not for our consumption. The spread of documents on the social media became so prevalent that it was normalized and people did not know what to spread and what not to. In a certain instance, there were memos that made their way to the social media before getting to the intended source. That is the sort of world we live in in the modern day.

Back in time, one strong religious organization held a two-week series of special gatherings in which the center message was about the end times in our neighborhood. Among other things, there was a very strong message about the mark of the beast and the new world order. The preachers that came in shared a lot about the antichrist, mentioning other political and religious leaders by name in the process. It was a contentious moment which saw others leave their denominations to join church in question. There were tensions when others tried to question the teachings that were being peddled around but for me the interesting thing was that the prophecies of doom that were given never came to pass. Before you go on to criticize my faith, you need to understand that the prophecies were time bound and by this time if you had not bowed down to something or someone you would not have been able to read this because some of your body parts would have been missing and you would not have been permitted to buy the Itel S13 you are using.

Around the time in which I joined college, messages like the one we heard in those community denominational gatherings were common. There was one particular example of how the music industry was under evil influence and how we all needed to refrain from listening to secular music. There were people who spent time analyzing music videos and isolating vocals from audio tracks to convince us that some rappers were dragging us to hell. While the videos may have had a good point, some went on to give time bound prophecies of doom about the new world order or something of the sort. These are not things I can dispute as my knowledge in these things is limited. What I found surprising is that these videos went on to label other gospel musicians as occultists based on their genres, music videos and twisted versions of their lyrics.

The world is filled with conspiracies and conspiracy theories and I believe that this is an area around which we should all tread carefully. Now there is a difference between the two things but for some reason some view them as one and the same. A conspiracy is a secret plan to so something harmful while a conspiracy theory is more of an explanation around such secret plans. While conspiracies do exist, some conspiracy theories are far-fetched and based on wrong interpretations of facts and paranoia.

When I look back at the time bound prophecies of doom that were linked to theories about the new world order or something along those lines, the people who talked about them were knowledgeable. They quoted Bible verses and added their interpretation to give us exact dates on when the end would begin and names of the people who were going to catalyze it. Biblical numerology took center stage and considering the authority of the people in question, it was easy to believe and follow their teachings. Somehow, they did not materialize and the first instinct by a lot of people is to mock. I personally do not believe in mocking such people as I believe that some of these do have a strong conviction that whatever they teach is the absolute truth.

A couple of days ago the world received the news of the passing of Tanzania’s president, John Pombe Magufuli amidst the rumors of his ill health. Prior to that, there were rumors that he had been secretly flown out of Tanzania to Kenya for treatment and some had gone on fly to India for the same. We cannot be too sure as to whether the rumors were true but after the death we have seen conspiracy theorists pushing theories that Magufuli’s death was at the hands of the “whites” who did not like the way he governed Tanzania and his foreign policy. Some have added on that his death was part of spiritual warfare owing to his firm stance that he resisted worldly measures of preventing the negative effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Result? There are chain messages going around the social media with the message that Magufuli’s food was poisoned with the Astra-Zeneca vaccine which then made his blood clot leading to his demise. Again, I am not knowledgeable enough to agree or to disagree but some of these things that are being spread around are far fetched and inaccurate because if all of them were right, we would not have had different versions of the same story.

If you are to ask me, 2010 was a better year. We had our TNM Tiagos and those Airtel ZTE phones with orange backlights. In those days when the best phones around were the likes of Nokia N95, no one bothered to send a chain message full of lies because it was not practical. You either had to hold a crusade in a village for two weeks or to print a million tracts with your message to get your message across. Nowadays all you need to do is to record a video clip and post it on your family group and within hours the message will have travelled halfway across the globe. That is the bad combination of things we have now; conspiracy theories and the means of spreading them. What we have now is a generation of an elite “pan-Africanist” young adults who are overly cautious about everything western based on things we read either in the social or misinformed mainstream media. The “woke” generation dismisses everyone who questions their conspiracy theories as brainwashed and colonized to an extent that we do not know what the truth is anymore.

What then, shall we do in this world which is so filled with conspiracies, conspiracy theories and misinformation? What shall we believe in? Which authorities shall we side with? These are tough questions to answer but they are very important to ask.

Perhaps we have a starting point in Socrates’ triple filer of information. Socrates advocated for testing information for truthfulness, goodness, and necessity before sharing. In other words, if you cannot verify that something is true, if it is not good and if it is not necessary then perhaps you should resist the temptation of carrying a megaphone and spreading it to the world. Only then can we curb misinformation.

Coming to the question of whether we should get the Astra-Zeneca jab, here is what I have to say. While it is a personal choice to make, I would encourage you to get vaccinated as I do not believe that it is a way of eliminating the African population. Knowing what I know now,  I have a gut feeling that if someone wanted to eliminate us a vaccine would not be in the top 5 of the tools. My opinion, eti?

I will leave this without a conclusion knowing how divisive the opinions shared herein are. I did now want to write this, anyway. I was only forced to do it because some of you threated to make my blood clot if I didn’t. Knowing your abilities, conspiracies and conspiracy theories, I have decided to give you a Conspiracy Friday.

Signing out.

 

On the Two Sides of Money

 It is another Friday and as per tradition Richie Online has provided us all with something to read. In the chaos of last week’s Friday, we at Richie Online could not find anyone to put together a piece. We apologize.

For this post, out first stop will be the social media. Malawi has some popular social media characters whose posts in the form of text, videos and pictures are widely shared by many. One of such is the Pemphero Mphande guy; from whose Facebook page I wrote a Clinical Psychology thesis on this blog a couple of weeks ago. Then there is the social network I failed to adapt to, Twitter. On that social network there is something called Twitter Malawi. It is not a formal community like a Facebook group but within Twitter Malawi there are some elite members whose voice sounds louder than others. Those who are members can relate to this.

There is one interesting member of Twitter Malawi whose video posts have crossed Twitter borders and made it to WhatsApp. Usually it is the TikTok videos that have that tendency, but these ones have been deemed funny enough and sharable. By the time they get to this point in the article, the members of Twitter Malawi on the Richie Online readership list will have figured out that I am talking about a guy who calls himself Macheza.

In one video, Macheza begins with putting emphasis on how most of us have only one problem. He spends so much time putting that emphasis on how we complain about many other things when what we have is basically one problem. On he goes to say that the fact of the matter is that all our problems can be summarized and bundled into one. The problem? Lack of money. Ndalama tilibe. So what will we do with this knowledge? Today we qualify this statement and talk about how most of out problems can be rolled into the one big umbrella issue of not having money.

A friend of mine who graduated from Mzuzu University once told me of a field trip they had to some remote parts of Northern Malawi; which is also called Nyika Republic by some of use who are very divisive. I cannot recall the exact details of the visit and what they were on about but if my memory serves me right, it was something to do with the environment. The students had to go into villages and ask the locals the challenges that they were encountering in one on one interviews and focused group discussions. Do you want to guess the answer that came out the most? Go for it. You were wrong if your answer was not “ukavu”. Poverty. One would wonder as to what level of poverty one would have to be in for them to give poverty as an answer to an unrelated question.

Most of you who have the slightest knowledge of football know Cristiano Ronaldo who outside of the football pitch is known for his money and looks. I will talk about the latter because in earlier pictures Ronaldo did not look as handsome. As he progressed in his career in professional football, the money started kicking in and with it the looks. The same could be said about Malawi’s men of the collar and in particular the charismatic televangelists and Pentecostal preachers who combine ministry and business. One can easily see the physical transformation that follows the fattening of the bank account and I think it would not be a far-fetched assertion if we were to say that there no ugly people in this world. All we have are broke people whose looks are in the phase of awaiting financial transformation.

Then there is the issue of attitude. Lack of money is associated with a certain attitude and I learnt about this in a very funny way. Some of you may not know this but at some point early this year I was “a bit jobless”. Having squandered my money on “tiyeni” escapades and not had a paycheck for that month, life was challenging and making ends meet was a challenge. At some point, however, I found myself in need of a cab and I called my usual cab driver. When he showed up, we did business as usual save for the unusual diversion and quick stop that I made. While I understood that this taxi was a distance based one, I found myself waiting for my usual change from the usual amount. When the cab guy tried to reason, I found myself giving him some “attitudes” only for him to hit me with a curveball that flattened my mood and had me reflecting. “Tikudziwa maluziwa avuta ndipo munthu akakhala mmaluzi amangokwiya zilizonse. Muchira.” He understood that I was broke and that broke people have negative attitudes. And you know what? I think he had a good point. If you are honest enough, I think you can relate to that too.

Have you noticed that when you do not have money you think that people who have it are evil? If you are in denial, let me remind you of that friend who went to service his car (isanaonongeketu) when you had nothing in your pocket. How about that uncle of yours who paid for DSTV Premium subscription when you had no pocket money. Extreme examples? They may be but they are classics. In most cases, we find ourselves thinking negative of other people for living life to their standards just because we are not able to live up to ours. I am just not sure if other people are supposed to stop eating meat just because we want to have enough matemba and ndalama tilibe. Or should we average out meal standards just because we are all children of Adam and Eve? Mwinatu.

Closely related to the issue of attitude is perception. Lack of money affects the way we perceive things. Some of us who have grown up in families that are not so well to do may relate to the fact that we are a generation that grew up thinking that entertainment is a waste of money. Maybe I am pushing this too far. Even some basic things were deemed unnecessarily expensive when we were growing up. Example? When you transitioned to having electricity from living in a house with none…. Did your parents allow you to cook beans using electricity? Did they allow you to cook using electricity at all? In know of neighborhoods with shared electricity bills in which the rule is to not use electricity for cooking because it is perceived as a waste of money. Reason? Ukavu. People have no money. Paid TV? Internet? Unnecessary luxuries. Mpaka DSTV Premium? 40 GB internet bundle? Waste of money. That is what lack of money does to you. Now think of that friend who drives that German car that is so expensive to service and has a high fuel consumption. It is that lack of money that is giving you that perception.

Worth noting is the fact that lack of money does not just affect us at individual level. This issue also extends to societal and family level. Let me give an example of the TNM Super League. Many of you may not follow it but if I were to ask you to mention 5 players for a prize or at gun point you could give me 7 names. On the other hand, out players are not so well to do as compared to their counterparts within the sub-Saharan African region to an extent that a player who emigrates to the neighboring Mozambique is regarded as one that has changed his fortunes. The football governing body created a mockery of our players by taking photos of them withdrawing 40K monthly Covid-19 relief funds from the ATMs for the social media. While I am not undermining the effort, I am wondering what a player in the South African division would think of such an amount but that is the situation at home because ndalama tilibe. One friend once asked on whether it was possible to monetize football in our country through a Facebook post. I did not have the bundle (read as money) for replying to his post but if you know Victor Nyirenda tell him that it is impossible because tilibe ndalama.

You know the Malawi netball team. I am talking of the team that has been representing us on the world stage by being a top 5 or 10 team globally. While the few lucky ones from the team have landed opportunities that have seen them play overseas, the ones playing in the local league are a typical case of kutchuka ulere because we do not have money. Our sports industry is not as good because of the general poverty in our country and so is the music industry and the rest of the entertainment industry. Most of our athletes and artists do not have admirable lifestyles because of their earnings despite the fame.

It wouldn’t be me, Dr Richard Kamwezi, if I were to write this whole thing without dragging Covid-19 into it. Pepani. On Friday the country got its first consignment of the AstraZeneca vaccine for Covid-19. Yesterday we saw the VIPs of this country including el-presidente and his second in command getting their jabs on the first day of the rollout. In other countries, people have reached a point of getting the second dose while others are already evaluating the effects of rolling out the vaccination campaigns. Do you know why it took so long for our country of 19 million people to get the first 400 000 doses of the vaccine? Ndalama tilibe. We were waiting for the donors to sort us out and usually that takes time. Our friends in South Africa have a bit of money and they preordered the vaccine just like some of you have preordered the Flaws album by Phyzix. Our whole Covid-19 response was botched because money kept disappearing into pockets of people who were trying to sort out their own need and want for money. School children have been at home because their teachers boycotted work looking for risk allowances. Again, that is money. I would have talked about how these things inflate the wage bill and how our dependence on donors keeps our wage bill capped, but I would rather leave that to my economist friend, Fred Maguru. Nkhani ndiyoti kusowa kwa ndalama kept our children out of school for some time.

What then, shall we do? We need to find money. From the insights shared, we can all agree with Macheza that our issues as people and a nation can easily be summed into the lack of money. Lack of money is the reason some of us will not go on that fun trip we badly want this weekend and the reason our church is in a dilapidated state. Lack of money is the reason I will have to go to the office for me to get access to the internet for posting this and it is the reason that some people will ask for a PDF copy of the article when I send the link. Who am I to blame them? Tonse tilibe ndalama. I digressed. This part is about solutions. Or at least it is supposed to be.

We need to work hard, gentlemen and ladies. Let us get promoted in those workplaces and get that pay rise. If you can spare some money, start that business, and get that extra source of income. Venture into farming if your schedule allows you to and go on to start taking orders. It all starts small and multiple sources are better than one. Team up with those good family members and start a big business. Ndalama zikufunika because we cannot afford taking out our brokenness induced anger on innocent children. And support a brother’s hustle too. If he is at work, do not call his salary a bribe just because you are running a successful business and do not mock her for posting the taking orders thing just because you have a stable salary.

Can we all get working and get that money? We need to normalize having a Victoria Falls holiday and sending our children to “proper schools”. Maybe when you all have enough money you will start paying for these articles and we can have some Richie Online merchandise out. For now, tilibe ndalama.

By now, you either feel insulted or inspired. Zanu!

Happy weekend, friends.