In the Midst of the Chaos….

Dear reader. Long time!

Today happens to be a not so wonderful Friday. The weather happens to be on the opposite side of cold and the situation with Blantyre Water Board is not helping much for many. Still, we have to thank the higher power for life and the gift of an article which we haven’t had in the past two weeks.

I am inclined to start giving excuses for not giving my readers some food for Fridays. Partly, it is because I like to explain myself when I have not done what was expected of me (even if I have to explain to myself). The other reason is just that I do not have much to write about and I am looking forward to using the excuses to get to the minimum length of the article.

Two weeks ago, I found me surprising myself by attending some classes at the college God loved the most. This was one thing I never saw myself doing when I joined the College of Medicine back in 2010 as I thought that my life would remain confined to the hospital with little to do with whatever people learn at Chancellor College. There I was. I was on a desk learning new skills in the Department of Mathematics and by the end of the week I found myself graduating with a certificate in something not medical. The ceremony was graced by the some Dean of Faculty and I honestly thought it was blown out of proportion. Instead of lighting up my spirits as it would have done on a normal day (I have been told that ndine okonda zinthu), I found the whole thing to be a time waster as I had to sit through it instead of solving some urgent issues at work online.

After everything, I found myself sitting in the Senior Common Room, making calls and sending e-mails for a good part of the afternoon. I left the place at dusk and had no energy to continue building an article from the two paragraphs I had written. Basitu. Just like that and there was nothing  to read. This was just school and work. I am wondering as to what will happen when we add a wife later this year and a copy next year. This blog will probably die.

Having been away for most of the previous week, I got back to work to a lot of things. Despite all that, I had a very good week. When Friday came, I found myself drafting an article on the current political hibber jabber in the country. Two A4 pages down the line, I found myself leaving my desk and packing my bags. Destination? To meet some real estate agent. Ma agent a manyumba awa. A couple of minibuses and a long walk later, I found myself giving someone a bunch of notes for pointing to a house and assuring me that it was going to be vacant by the end of the month. The guy probably did that with a couple of others and a week down the line, I still do not have a house I can move into at the end of the month. When I went back home and looked at the article I had drafted earlier, I quickly realized that I had stepped on toes of some really powerful people by taking serious swipes at pretty much every major political party with the worst blows going to the ruling party. I wasn’t in the mood of getting myself killed then, so I decided not to post it (it is somewhere in my laptop, though). Write another one? Not after losing my energy and cash dealing with an agent. Voila! Two weeks, no article.

Rather not unexpectedly, it has been a couple of weeks with too much activity. With just a couple of months to the elections, the country’s electoral body officially opened up the campaign period. Alliances have been birthed and manifestos launched with political stunts coming out of pretty much nowhere. Election debates continue to generate mixed and politically tainted opinions as we build up towards the presidential debates.  Various sections of society (including our own Society of Medical Doctors to which I proudly belong) are mobilizing resources to help those in need after the devastating floods. Internationally, Britain’s exit from the European Union is headlining the international news.

As a person who loves the social media and following current affairs, I have always found myself patronizing or watching debates and discussions to do with what is going on in the country. While going through my Facebook news feed and trashing partisan posts, I found an interesting post by some blue-blooded cadet who had posted the link to the UTM website. He had crafted the post with some fancy English and being the lazy guy I am, I was dumped all the efforts to understand the message behind the message and jumped on the link. On the site, I quickly noticed one thing; there was a timer counting down to the UTM government. I found that interesting and weird at the same time and I found myself taking a screenshot of the timer for my WhatsApp status post.

With a contact list full of people who think, speak and eat politics, the post was not short of comments. Others commented on how it was childish for a political party to have such a thing on their website. Others (and these ones I agreed with) talked of how much disappointment a loss in the election would cause for the party. While the political comments were flowing, however, one human gave a rather unusual comment. Flashing out a screenshot of something I posted on the 27^th December in 2018, he asked me to keep my own goals and countdowns at the back of my mind. The screenshot was a list of three probably unrealistic things that I said I wanted to do in 2019 at the time. If you are curious, the list contained three simple things; losing weight, quitting alcohol and getting married by the end of 2019.

The fact that someone sent this screenshot for the second time this year reminded me as to how we are approaching the end of the first quarter of the year. Three months into the year, I am beginning to realize how much I have been not been focusing on my personal goals despite following every presidential nomination paper presentation and big rally. I have come to the realization that I haven’t yet accomplished things I was supposed to accomplish by February and yet I have distinction level knowledge on how the whole BREXIT process is. What a baddie I have been! If it was way back, I would have taken solace in the fact that a lot of my friends are travelling in the same class of the train as me, but that makes me worried.

I do not have a web of clever lessons today but all I have to say is that in the midst of the noise and chaos in the country and wherever, we need to take time and examine our own progress based on our own goals. We need to work on time bound goals with the realization that politics, weddings, football, work and movies will always be there. Some of these things do not contribute to our personal development, anyway. That being said, I am not saying that we should not patronize the Presidential debate, the Zander Zakuza show or the Charity Shield matches. Let us entertain ourselves with whatever applies, but in the midst of the noise of all that, let us remember to keep our own souls and progress in mind.

Happy weekend.