Satan was not fair with Malawians last year, says President Bingu wa Mutharika. This presidential way of admitting failure assumes humanity expects wonderful works from the Devil.
Where did the bad one get the power to mess with availability of fuel, electricity, water, forex and drinks in our God-fearing land? Search me!
I am only grateful that the rising cost of booze has reduced the number of thuggish beer beggars and short-time sex deals at my Satan-hit pub. Guzzlers no longer fight like rabid dogs or vomit as if they are suffering from acute volcanic syndrome.
When the cost of beer rises beyond reach, even headless fun-seekers learn to utilise their zero-deficit minibudgets on booze. This austerity involves cutting back on short-time sexual deals and kanyenya. As for this Zikathankalima, I may also consider striking off bread, sugar and teabags. While my wife Caroline and our Ulunji are coming to terms with Satan’s system, storyteller Chimutu is trying hard to find a new boss to buy him beer.
Meanwhile, I pray that the price of condoms does not go up as well. We cannot afford new infections at a time public hospitals are beset by bustling queues for life-prolonging drugs?
If Satan is really taking over, then some self-righteous office-holder is losing control. Don’t ask me who.
Below is a thought provoking letter from a fellow drunken Malawian living abroad.
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Dear Zikathankalima,
I hear the dry-spell is over. Don’t be Satan’s workshop. Return to your farms immediately. I don’t want to hear you blaming Satan when hunger hits your households. There is no sweet without sweat. In life, you reap what you sow.
Don’t surrender your destiny to Satan. It’s long time we have been accusing Satan of things we do with all our hearts, mind and might.
As a child, I blamed Satan for tempting me to steal relish and coins from my parents’ sacred spaces. When I was old enough to escort my parents to town, I blamed Satan for coaxing me into shoplifting. In primary school, I confessed being under his influence just to persuade the head teacher to stop reading my “kiss-to-kiss’ love letter in front of jeering Standard One pupils. Later, I was caught having sex with the intended recipient of the leaked cable and I claimed Satan had not left me yet.
I was high on cheap distils one night and forces of darkness showed me a takeaway. The next morning, I found myself lying adjacent to a grandma. There was no condom in sight. Not even under the bed, in the shoes, beneath the pillow and in the bin. Only in my pocket. There an intact packet rested, telling nothing but the cruel truth. That same day, I went for a blood test. You cannot blame a possessed young man, can you?
In my adulthood, Satan seduced me to married women. I even dated mom’s friend whose husband was a bartender at some nightclub. Like Satan, she provoked me. One day, she invited me into her bedroom, saying her man had just left for his noble duties. As soon as I hammered my pants down, the man reappeared reportedly because he had forgotten to carry his life-prolonging drugs.
Wasn’t I entangling myself in a perilous sexual web? What if I get the virus? Didn’t Satan take me too far? These questions rung in my mind as I hid under the bed, where Satan ordered me to remain calm.
Scorning the Devil, I dumped the woman for her daughter. With the tender lass, we places and did condomless things until my holy parts were swollen and itchy. Later, she told me she got the disease from her mother’s boyfriend.
I need to go testing, in case it is time to join the growing queue for life-prolonging drugs.
It’s 2012. I am a grown up. I can no longer blame Satan for my errors in thinking. It never ceases to shock me when politicians, thieves and fornicators defame the evil one for their failure to do right things all the time.
The problem with blaming Satan is that he keeps quiet until we are proven guilty. If only he had a right to be heard, the “it wasn’t me” jazz would not be a hit in high places.
Yours truly,
Callertune Chimimba.
