"Please keep the hose Clear"

There are incidents worldwide of fire exits being blocked with stacks of supplies in work places and entertainment joints alike. Closer to home there have been stories of bakery owners locking up their staff over night so no ingredients are stolen.

This picture shows goods stacked up against a fire hose reel in a popular shop despite there being a sign that clearly reads PLEASE KEEP THE HOSE CLEAR.

Are the incidents we have heard of and seen not enough of a lesson??

Talk about hating your Mother-in-Law

A few years ago while I was teaching computer programming there was a young lady in my class. To protect the very guilty lets call her Thoko K. Now Thoko K had not paid up her fees so my boos and I decided on a Wednesday to tell her not to come to class until she had settled her bill. The next morning Thoko K and her dad turned up. Mr K told my boss and I that he had a few pressing commitments including a sick mother-in-law. To be specific he said “apongozi anga akudwala ndipo mosakayikakonse amwalira lero. Nde ndiyenera kukonzanso za maliro nde chonde chonde musamuthamangitse Thoko” (My mother-in-law is sick and by all means she will die today. So I will have to take care of all funeral expenses so please don’t bar Thoko from attending classes). I should say I was shocked and shaken. I very nearly gave him my hand so he could read my palm and tell me of my fate too!

Anyway that Thursday passed without incident. Friday came and went and Thoko was in class the whole day. Come Monday morning, Thoko came to class as jovial as ever. No sign whatsoever her grandma ‘had died recently’. It was only after lunch that Thoko got a message her grandma had finally succumbed to death.

Am not sure if Mr K was just very bad at predicting death or whether he had a great disliking of his mother-in-law, it was just quite chilling the way he put it!

Parties mum on running mates - who cares?

Have you noticed how if there is not any political news worth writing about (although lately it has not been worth reading anyway) the newspapers just write about how all the political parties in the country are mum on who will be the presidential running mates in May 2009! I mean really, even if we cared would it not be too early to start being told who those people would be. The US goes to the polls in four months time and we don't know the running mates yet. South Africa goes the polls a month ahead of us and I have not seen any fuss about who will partner JZ or Hellen Zille or any of the other party leaders. They are really making a fuss for nothing.

Tell us about the stock market next time there is nothing to write home about, it may just get us interesting in buying papers once again.

Creative ways of saying things

The other day at Multichoice I overheard a conversation

Person 1: Hi, what were you coming to do here?
Person 2: The channels on my decoder disappeared so I was coming to sort it out (machannel anathawa)

i.e. he had not paid and was going to settle his bill!

Another one I heard while on a ATM queue

Person 1: Hey you, you are taking long at the ATM. Are you fixing it or what?
Person 2: The ATM is giving problems

i.e. The account is depleted and there is no cash to dispense!

On Muluzi and Chilumpha

On the day the United Democratic Front held it's convention, it's chairman Bakili Muluzi granted an interview to the BBC. When asked why he would like to return as Malawi's president he said because Bingu wa Mutharika had dumped the party after he was elected president and as such he needed to return the UDF to power! This type of reasoning to me is not only gravely flawed but also defied all logic. Mr Muluzi needs to be reminded that people do not ascend to power to simply punish others or for the sake of being a ruling party. They are placed in positions of authority to serve the people and going by Muluzi's past record, that is not likely to feature high on his agenda. I am not one who listens to speeches made by politicians from either side of the political divide but when I have heard a minute or two of Muluzi's speeches they have carried very little substance and his messages are frequently unintelligent. We have seen what politics based on greed and retribution are doing to Zimbabwe. Malawians need not make that mistake here.

As for Cassim Chilumpha I would think the best thing to do would be to make a graceful exit from politics now. If yesterdays results are anything to go by, Chilumpha has no support base within the UDF - he polled 38 votes for the post of chairman out of around 2,000. Commentators predicted this outcome because of his behaviour of shunning party activities and not being in touch with the grassroots. President Mutharika also 'accepted his constructive resignation' for the same kind of attitude. I also recall that in one of the last cabinets of Bakili Muluzi, Chilumpha didn't attend the swearing in ceremony when he was named minister and never took up his post and we never really knew why. He 'constructively showed Muluzi his middle finger'. He treated Muluzi the way you and I treat those vendors who stuff cheap arse watches and pirated Nigerian DVD's in our car windows in the parking lot . And to top all this, he has a treason case looming over him. Kaka, exit this game. Things don't seem to be on your side! The message is clear you are more of a political liability than anything else.

Zimbabwe: Whose problem is it?

Zimbabwe has got a problem, a very big one for that matter. But whose problem is it really? Thabo Mbeki has told the rest of the world to butt out and let Africans resolve the problems in an African way. So it's not a world problem but an African one? But wait, at the SADC meeting in Lusaka the head of states said it was a Zimbabwean problem that would be resolved by Zimbabweans. So it's a Zimbabwean problem now? But Morgan Tsvangirai has been lobbying regional leaders to help resolve the problem. So it would seem it's not a Zimbabwean problem after all! It's a problem that seem to lack ownership.

However this big problem belongs to needs to claim responsibility for it and sort it out, pronto! We have brown nosed Mugabe enough and the problem even more! It's time to grab this bull by it's horns once and for all. Enough is enough. Timve zina abale!

Just tell your story!

I recently attended a social gathering and met up with a friend of mine, lets call him Peter. After a few minutes Peter’s friend came along and joined us. He started talking to Peter about an issue that I was unfamiliar with, some work related issue. Not wanting to interfere in their otherwise private matter I mentally turned off and looked the other way. To my surprise Peter’s friend elbowed me and asked “isn’t that so?”. Before I could ask isn’t what so, he continued with his story and once again elbowed me “sichoncho mdala?”. Dude, I have no idea what you are talking about and even if I did, why do you need me to ‘certify’ every sentence of your story!

You always tend to come across such people once in while who keep interrupting their story with ‘ukundimvetsetsa’ or ‘wamvetsa bwinobwino pamenepo’ or something of that nature. Then occasionally you get someone who is telling an outrageously silly and nonsensical story and everybody refuses to believe him. He then pulls out his cell phone and volunteers to call someone else to ‘certify’ his story. Hey dude, even if you called ten people, I still won’t believe your story in a hundred years. Give us a break and just tell your story. I’ll be the judge of whether it’s a real story or just one of those tales told at a gathering of herd boys besides the night time bon fire!