Brokness: Definition. #1.When you’ve got nothing in your wallet but echoes. #2. One of two circumstances in which anorexia becomes acceptable, the second being when you have a violently greedy housemate; then the anorexia is a survival measure.
Dan Barongo will sue my ass one day
January is the official month of brokness. Everybody knows this. One of the reasons that adults are so determined to have a great time in December is that they know what’s coming. I don’t think there’s a way of surviving the wave of poverty that sweeps the nation during the first month of every year. Even if you save in anticipation of this horribleness, the money will find ways of wriggling out of your careful grip and you will be dirt broke.
I hadn’t expected to be poor last month. According to my careful calculations, moneys were supposed to hit my account on the fifth of January. This gave me the liberty to CUT THROUGH what money I had like a scissor through butter, a knife through a grasshopper, a sickle through morning grass. I raided every shop that I knew for selling pretty things and discovered others. In summary, I exploded my finances all over Uganda, and all was good in my life. Happiness abounded.
This was the state of things until page 5 of 366 came and passed with no notable change in my depleted account. “Huh.”, I said. 7th came along and I kwasa kwasad myself to the bank teller, happy about the funds that were going to grace my life. To my dismay, there was nothing.
On the 10th, I walked into my bank with a tough look on my face, a look that said, “If there’s money in the bank, so help it God” but alas, there was none. It was when I phoned the “traitorous fools” to shout at them for standing between me and my right to spend that I was informed that my money had in fact arrived, several weeks earlier.
I walked away from the bank cackling with the hysteria of the financially doomed, just cracking up, trying not to be thrown into the road by the force of my raucous laughter, helplessness and a very comic variety of despair. It hit me- what had happened to that money. I had unknowingly quaffed it. I had exchanged it for fleeting enjoyment and now hunger had come to collect.
On gmail, I said to my BFF, “Kampire, I may as well be dead.” “Because you’re broke?” she asked. “Yea. Maybe I should start killing people for money again. Alternatively, I could go to random restaurants and relieve strangers of their meals with a sharp knife”. She didn’t discourage me.
To my workmate, I said, “Remember how in the morning you said you’d do anything for me to do both yours and my work for the day? How about you give me some money?” Him: LOL. No.
And finally, like every helpless tween on the planet, I said to my father, “Hi daddy. You know I love you, especially the way you’re always so willing to give your children support when they need it. The Bible says fathers give their children loaves of bread when they ask for things to eat, and not stones. I’d really like some bread shaped like 50 bob notes, thanks; which is how I survived death by stupidity.
I come to February skinny and contrite, with strong resolutions and a story.
APENYO 