The 250th

 Today is not a Friday but we will have our weekly piece today. Transits and weddings happened yesterday and laptops decided to misbehave forcing us to get this piece today. Apologies. 

This is not your typical article, though. This is the 250th article on this blog. That tells you how much of a journey this has been. Richie Online has evolved and grown. 249 articles ago, I did not imagine that we would get here. 

I have on multiple occasions mentioned how you, dear readers have kept this blog alive. In as much as the highs and lows of my own life and the stupid things that happen in this country are the things that keep me writing, I mostly do it because I have an audience. If not for the 50 or so people who read these articles every week and the three or so annoying ones who pester me for the articles when I have not written them, this blog would have died a natural death. To you, awesome readers, I say keep reading and commenting. I will charge you with one extra task, though. Start sharing the articles for reasons I will go into later into the article if I do not get carried away. 

The other group of people I must thank for the survival of the blog is that of guest writers. Before writing this piece, I took the liberty of checking how many of the 249 articles I had written myself. I had thought that there would be no more than 20 articles written by this team of amazing guest writers but looking through, 35 of the 250 articles on Richie Online have not been written by me. The most appearing of these guest writers is the person who we only know as the Venomous Hope. This guy who happens to be a genius with the pain and his subtle attacks on me has given us 15 pieces on this blog. A special mention to Counsel Kamangila and Gray “The Daydreamer” Mulinga who have given us 3 interesting articles each. Walter Moyo joined the bandwagon and gave us two articles including that one about his encounter with a stripper in Las Vegas. Taonapo zinthu pamudzi pano. 

I would not have done this on any other day but since this is a celebratory article, I will mention the rest of the people who have taken time to provide content for the blog. At some point, Nandi Nyirenda, Chikondi Mwale, Louis Kaitano and Morgan Kamanga used this platform to voice their views on the termination of pregnancy bill. Harry Chikasamba had one entry in his promised 3 article series on career and job hunts. Chikondi Sato, Zaziwe and Tadala Rambiki came in with what I think were rants about something that was not going on well as did some who wanted to be known as the Richie Online Resident Politician and the Idiot from Ndirande. Edward “TNO” Chikwenda once gave us an article dedicated to students that had just been selected into public universities at some point. Even the famous manager, Pemphero Mphande took it to Richie Online and his piece was one against discrimination of people living with HIV/AIDS. This blog has had it all but more is coming. 

While I appreciate the people, who have contributed their ideas to this blog in the form of articles, I would like to bring the spotlight to the people who have not.  The Richie Online readers list has a lot of excellent writers who I hope will share pieces of their brilliant minds at some point and I cannot help but mention their names. Coach Dr Cornelius Huwa. This platform needs your wisdom. I would want to hear something from the minds of Peter Yakobe, Pilirani Banda and Ken Mlomba. I could add the likes of Ralph Mvona, Yohane Gadama, Pauline Mlogeni, Dalitsani Madula, Dominic Moyo and Vincent Mkochi to this list. Innocent Kalulu and Father Frank Mwinganyama. You and a lot more others owe us articles. 

One of the things that makes my Fridays is getting reactions from Richie Online articles. Every time I send out that link I get different sorts of reactions from grammar police and proponents and opponents of the opinions propagated. Some have said that some of the articles I write will get me killed and for the longest time I did not believe them. In my view, the Richie Online readership was limited to my friends and their friends at best. What I had forgotten was that things have the potential of going viral and getting read by some interesting eyes. I learnt my lesson the interesting way when I got a reaction from a state house insider after I had written my reaction to antigovernment demonstrations then. The reaction? A text message which expressed agreement with the points I raised about misguided activism and baren demonstrations which organizers failed to call off even in the face of being offered an audience with State House officials. That one came from one presidential advisor and at that point I had realized that he had also been reading all the other anti-gaffment posts I had been writing. Long story short, these posts could have gone anywhere and maybe having kuchikamwa (a loud mouth) may be dangerous is at all such things are. 

Since the inception, Richie Online has had what we call a baseline audience. At any point there is a group of people that constantly reads and while that number may have halved between 2018 and now, there are some articles that always punch above the ceiling. The interesting bit its all those have something to do with either sex or relationships. I would like to believe that this is not a coincidence. On the other hand, other readers have lamented on how these articles are not sufficiently disseminated. Their argument? Not many may have what it takes to go to the link on the blog. I am not too sure that we need to actively expand the readership but in case the suggestion is the right one, I would like to ask you to pick your favorite article from this blog and send it to 5 people. Then you should go on and like the Richie Online blog page on Facebook and we will all live happily ever after. 

Having talked about the reactions from the posts, I will end by talking about the impression I have created. While the grammar police come to attack misplaced pronouns on every post and the good writers bring suggestions on how my articles could sound better, some have gone on to praise the craft of the pen that is displayed here. I have created an impression that I am a good writer and that view has tricked people into bringing their documents for proofreading and editing. Here is the interesting bit; every time I write my own business documents I have to pass them through at least two people before they can be sent to their destination. That, to me means that I am no good writer, but having gone through such processes I have learnt a thing or two about business writing. Here it is then. We at Richie Online will be introducing a writing clinic for business documents because we believe that most documents need to pass through an extra of eyes before you send them to people who matter. The reason for doing this is that we at Richie Online believe that there is an actual need for the service. Stay tuned. 

Richie Online has been a beautiful journey and I hope you and the 5 people you will send your favorite article to will be here to read the 1000th article. It is coming.