The Streets are Paved with Gold
My eyes see a flash of gold. In my mind I equate this glistening color with wealth, although in truth money, cash, ndalama, comes in many colours, shapes and sizes. Money, money, money!
Coins are pressed into my palms, some cold and hard and shiny, others warm and worn. Notes can be crisp and new or else crumpled and dirty, the lingering fragrance of the hands, pockets and wallets of the many different people that they have temporarily belonged to remaining like a scented legacy.
Some people want money for its own sake: It lies in bags and banks doing nothing, helping no-one. Others desire material goods, shiny ntchende benz and mansions. It’s funny how all white people have money, their shoprite bags bursting at the seams! Other people don’t have enough. Money changes hands, changes lives, changes worlds. I want it to change my world! I have never aspired to be wealthy. All I want to do is to do more than simply exist.
To fulfill this hope I pace the streets, the roads in my ragged clothes, my bare feet calloused and sore, my eyes wide I beg, “bwana I am hungry please help”.
At night I think of those that hurl abuse at me or kindly counsel me. Their words are always the same; “you have no future unless you go to school” they say. How can they be so cruel? I desire more than this futile existence. All that I hope for is to become rich enough to finish my secondary school.
My ears explode with a roaring noise, a smashing noise, my body feels the impact, twisted golden metal and the silver of broken glass. How did my hopes come to this? These streets are not full of gold but of broken hopes.
OUTLAW TRIBAL GROUPINGS!
12 years ago
We look at the poor and we think we know their story, we know just how they can better themselves. Yes there are those who because of resignation or low ambitions or something choose not to make any effort but indeed it is quiet a battle of will, effort, self-belief and opportunity to start from Zero to something.
ReplyDeleteAnd as your story ends, many times the tragic stories end needlessly tragic. No recourse.
In the Development circles of Malawi there is a concern that the gap btwn the poor and the rich is widening and is now being institutionalized thru education.
The quality of education in public schools has fallen, the rich and educated have the resources or opportunities (work loans/advances) to send their progeny to better schools ensuring they have a leg up even towards college.
In the end their children end up employed or with access to financing for business bcoz they have securable assets while the poor's kids stay on the lower rungs from generation to generation.
This is social injustice. We are like King David, robbing the poor man of his one sheep to feed our visitor while our fat sheep bleat themselves to deafness in their sheep pen/fold!
I hope this is what you are talkin about not some analogy I have missed
A well-phrased piece of writing all the more powerful because it is true. Money creates and money destroys--corrupts. You draw attention to the "White" people. But there are Malawians, so-called Christians, who show a love of money rather love what money can do for others.
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