The Sunday Mail
DESPITE largely being associated with merrymaking and high disposable incomes, the time of the year we have entered is ironically the most painful one.
Painful because it gives each and every one of us a clear indication of whether or not we have achieved anything.
It is akin to the period when candidates receive their results after writing examinations, hoping for the best or to proceed to the next level. For companies, this is the time when they assess their level of profitability and change strategies if need be.
November and December is the period when domestic violence, divorce rates and suicide cases usually spike.
It is the time of the year when single ladies pose the dreaded question: “Uchandiroora rinhi? (“When are we getting married?”)
At a time when some people will be looking at the cars they bought and houses they built, a lot of people will be busy comforting themselves that they will do better next year.
“I hate year-end because in these months, one can clearly look back and see what they have accomplished against the wish lists they drew at the beginning of the year.
“If one is not careful, this is the time of the year when people run into problems by trying to force things to happen after seeing they were doing things the wrong way all year round,” one florist, Mr Tellmore Nyakabau, told this writer.
“It is a very painful period, my brother. You may then start seeing that you were spending resources on things that neither benefit you nor your family,” he said while wiping his mouth after taking a gulp of opaque beer from a calabash at a bar in Mufakose.
And he is not the only one who holds this view.
A vendor who sells tomatoes in central Harare recently said she had no option, but to forcibly take her niece to her long-time boyfriend after seeing that he was either neglecting or was too busy to make known his marriage plans.
“We saw that my niece was getting old without an elaborate marriage plan from her boyfriend and we decided to take the mountain to Mohammed. We had no reason listening to what the guy was mumbling because a year lost can never be rewound.
He was busy wasting the time of my brother’s daughter while enjoying free wifely favours from him and we decided kuti doro ngaripinde mumba maro,” she said.
Gentle reader, there is nothing as painful as the last, but desperate throw of a losing gambler. A lot of things happen towards the end of the year as people will be busy trying to cover up for whatever they failed to achieve during the course of the year.
November and December is the time of the year when creditors will be employing all sorts of tactics to collect cash from people who owe them. They even use coarse and unpolished language.
“Gore rese here mukuwasha makangoti zii? Bhadharai chikwereti, hatingapedzi gore rese tichitenderera pachinhu chimwe chete kunge shoko rerufu,” I heard a workmate being told straight in the face by a woman he borrowed outfits from.
Answering calls during this time of the year is as if you would have committed a crime. People want to make good on their annual misses and this is just the period for them to settle matters.
Others go about borrowing at the beginning of the year, promising to pay back later in the year and now is the time to pay dues.
Never take November and December for granted.
Inotambika mughetto.
