Of what help is nakedness?

The village head’s compound fell dead silent. And as he always does when up in his fiery temper as his court sits, the village head stood up from his chair and cracked his walking stick against the hard and cracking ground.

He paused somewhere along his speech to sweep through the audience with his big, round rum-tainted bloodshot eyes.

When he resumed, he examined the subjects of the day’s gathering with strict displeasure at their mischief.

To cut a meandering story short, the two men in the dock had for so many times disturbed the village’s peace by staging fights over their farmyard boundaries.

The most recent one was at the navel of the village market square where, both under the influence of local brew, boxed like male lions fighting for territory.

Now it was obvious the village head was fed up.

‘Kapena ndichite kuyenda osavala kuti mumve zoti ndewu m’mudzi muno ayi?’ the village head asked?

The whole audience went silent.

‘Ndati ndichite kuvula kapena?’ He repeated, this time throwing away his walking stick and getting his hands to his belt.

It is when it dawned on the audience something needed to be done and fast.

The audience chorused a ‘no’ for an answer to the village head’s question.

Silence reigned again, with the village head still frozen with his hands to his belt.

Esteemed Republicans, for once I remembered Malawi is a nation of jesters, sometimes emotions get the better of us.  How can a show of private wares stop nutty fighters from engaging into another bull fight?

What did the audience have to do with the village head’s nakedness as far as the two fighter’s habit was concerned?

The village head and some influential figures out there must be smoking a common joint.

Look here, today the media the world over is touting how The Warm Heart of Africa has degenerated into a haven of uneducated dark-age assumptions.

The talk is about the ferocious killing and dismembering of brothers and sisters with albinism, thinking their body parts can be used as charms for turning socioeconomic fortunes around.

One can only imagine the ‘world acclaim’ we have reaped from the reported 18 killings in 2014.

Esteemed Malawians, we all have rotten egg over our face courtesy of a few rats whose little brains cannot jog their money thirsty bodies into restraint.

It is high time we acted, yes!

But like in many other times before when the nation is looking for serious approaches to defeating a beast of a problem, some half-baked joker pours from his medulla oblongata a suggestion that we take table knives to a lion hunt?

In the middle of the albino killings, one soul thinks we can drop our clothes to a thunderous uproar enough to scare the barbarians into their holes?

Good Republicans, the other day when the taps went dry for a period unimaginable and water closets in towns and cities could not host visitors, didn’t some loose mind instruct plebians to gather by the water provider’s premises to turn the lawns into toilets?

If barbaric killings can be solved by a naked parade, what funny approach will be suggested for problems a shelf lower than the killings?

Sometimes our help is nothing, but an insult. n