Notes From The Gutter

A country running on rumour!

This country is one funny pot where people walk and think with their tongues.

You can watch them wander about life like excited ions, pouncing at gossip like a starving lion jumping at a tired gazelle.

I don’t blame the people that much though. Perhaps they mostly have nothing better to do. You see, even bright sons and daughters are rotting at home.

They keep their heads up, in case there is good news—their job application receiving a ‘favourable response.’ But this is a lottery they never win. News always gets bad.

Unemployed graduates spend the day at shebeens, scorching their livers with obscenely high voltage rum.

When life is this hard, it becomes a dog eat dog world. People lose their dignity and social values fail.

So, when ‘news’ broke that a Man of God had turned into a snake in Lilongwe’s Area 25, what came next was no big surprise.

Half our Ntandire ghetto dumped pots on the boil and rushed to see things ‘with their own eyes.’

My neighbour caught wind of the ‘scandal’ from his bathroom and if it were not for the stern scold of his wife, he would even have dashed straight to Area 25 in his bathing towel!

Hours later, our neighbourhood had a hundred versions of the same incident. Today, almost a week later, truth remains it was all a hoax.

Our nation is too busy peddling rumour. We are dominos so eager to push gossip forward.

I once tried to help a friend off the rumour mill, but he justified how even the whole news of a leader’s death started as a gossip.

It is an old problem we have. Remember, scores of our celebrities have ever been ‘killed and buried’ by gossip before. Now, we have graduated to Pastors.

Run for cover! n

 

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