These are tough times. Even the sun and the rain cannot decide what they want: who should go first and who should wait.
One minute it is scorching hot, and the next it is pouring, filling up swamps and bringing down wall fences. But life has to go on. It has to be lived. Depreciating shilling or not, high fuel prices or not, we have to keep going.
There are seasons and times. Good times and hard times. That is just the way life is. I also know that some people’s lives are one long difficult episode, and the good times only come to their children or children’s children or, in the very unfortunate cases, the children’s children’s neighbours. But I hope you have at least one happy and good season in your time here on earth.
Financial difficulty is not the end of life. I have been there, done that, still doing it, and I still believe hardships are just for passing through, picking up the lessons therein, not for camping under and dwelling on. So abeg, put a polite end to the pity party, get your butt out of bed and go look for some more disappointments to learn from. Think of all the failures and mistakes as tuition fees in the school of life.
So, now that we have accepted our reality, what are we going to do about it? Continue crying about the expensive cost of life? Try to live the same exact way we did when ‘diri wo’ was our response to everything?
The other day, the minister said people crying about the price of fuel should stop making unnecessary movements. Only go where you must. It is also not compulsory to drive everywhere you go, banange. Imagine, you can actually walk to some places, take a taxi or just stay online. I promise no one will kidnap you from the streets. Even kidnappers have other things to do.
Some meetings can be online. I know you hate having to remind people to turn off their microphones every five seconds during online meetings, but that does not cost Shs7,000 per litre.
Also, employers, why are you insisting that people show up to physical work locations when they can work half the week at home and still get the work done? This is what caring for your people really means. We appreciate the motivational quotes about teamwork sent to us every morning, but please, meet us where we are hurting the most.
Allow people to work ko from home. Even the road constructors work from home most of the time. How else do you explain why they dig up roads, decorate them with ‘men at work’ signage and then disappear for days on end, not bothered at all that they are causing the mother of all traffic jams?
In the spirit of cutting down expenses because there is just no way to pay for everything, when the TV subscription ended, we did not renew. We found other ways to entertain ourselves. And because they are also looking for money, the TV people have been bombarding us with customer care calls reminding us to subscribe.
Dear Customer Care, I do not have money; that is why I have not renewed the subscription. No, I do not need a reminder of the list of channels. I know all the channel names and programme line-up by name. I just do not have money to pay. Not yet.
So, maybe even these customer care follow-up calls should change. Change the script. These are different times. Get creative. Who knows, maybe if you impress us with your creativity, we will buy a TV subscription instead of tomatoes.
Meanwhile, you who is still a slave to social pressure, keeping up with the Joneses, keeping up appearances, call it what you want; I see you. And when you eventually cross the threshold where social pressure ain’t got nothing on you, we will still see you and celebrate you. In the meantime, ‘buli omu agumye munne.’