PLANNING FOR 2015 The other day I sat down to analyze my spending. Honestly, it would shock you - if you ever stopped to check - how much you spend on, say, phone credit in a single year. (And all through it you said you were broke.) But I have this reputation, you see. So, I was doubly shocked to see the figures. Yes, yes, I do it for fun, write down everything I spend, that is. And, that day, my little black book told me: in 2014, I gave a quarter of my income away. So, I sat up straight and thought – No way! Because, my brother, it will be January soon. And it’s already looking like we won’t get through it without raiding Savings. It’s in this sort of state that a man starts to remember his debtors. Or the coins he tossed away in the season of flushness. You can only imagine; how I thumbed through those records, furiously wondering - Where did all that money go? Found ‘The Church’ at the top of the pile. Not so? Usually that way with us, church-goers. Coming in second (so close, in fact, practically joint first) the category I like to tag, ‘Total Strangers And Vague Acquaintances’. Yes. You know them. These 1k here, 2k there, ‘Oga, your boy neva drink wota’ types. I tell you, our people are not at all bashful. Meet a man today, and tomorrow he’s telling you his wife put to bed; his mother has cataracts; his father, hemorrhoids; his brother in unlawful police detention; and he, himself, without a job since graduation. And, at the end he will add, with just the right dose of self-deprecation, ‘But I will manage anything’. So – innards sufficiently twisted in perverse guilt for another man’s troubles – you give ‘anything’, to as many as you can, till you have nothing, and have to sit through the malicious gossip of the rest, the ones who will swear to ninth heaven, ‘That man is a miser!’ Don’t take it to heart. I don’t. And wouldn’t even have minded – giving it all to Church and strangers – but for the categories at the bottom. Can you imagine? Close friends; the ones you soaked garri in school with, who travelled halfway across the country to be bestman at your wedding, paid the price in years and tears, will exhaust every other option before even considering coming to you. And, even then, would begin with, ‘Dike, I am so, so sorry to have to ask, but please…’ These were the ones at the bottom! Sharing the spot with – imagine it – my people, flesh and blood; the ones who would take with trembling hands, and a gratitude they would struggle long afterwards to express. These were the ones I had put last! Kai! I know; but - is that not how Life is? Is that now how we smile warmly for semi-strangers, obsessed with what they think of us, and reserve unintelligible grunts for the people at home, for there we insist we must be ‘ourselves’, eh? Is that not how, every day, we give 8 of our best and brightest hours to organizations that will replace us in a heartbeat, come back too tired to love or parent the ones who have no replacement for us, eh? Is that not how we relegate to ‘whenever I have time’ the very ones who will wait up, yes, who will stay till it is dug and covered, then linger even more over our graves in mourning, long after the others have all moved on? Brother, is that not how Life is? Well…this is not Love. I tell you. Neither is it Virtue. This…is foolishness. And for that, Lord, I ask for forgiveness. Yagazie.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 19:22:53 +0000
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