These days one is either too cold or too broke. One can’t take a single girl out anymore because one is always broke. This leads to many nights of solitude. Which girl do you know who is going to agree to spend the night with you without having been taken out? Not Gaborone girls. Pre-recession winters are long and cruel. Life itself has become one big sickening blot. What else is there to live for if your job also doesn’t pay you well? The Recession has finished us.
That said, those of us who come from far off villages don’t really get the story with The Recession. People in Gaborone keep telling us The Recession means the value of things have gone up like never before. Sure, anyone can say that sort of thing, but who sent The Recession here? You see, as far as I’m concerned, the values of things shot up the day President Masire left office. Before that, life was perfect and we didn’t have many things to complain about. A man had his money and girls and kept them! Hell, El-Nino didn’t even start until the Mogae years. I’m not saying Mogae started El-Nino, but kill me for telling the truth; we all know things really started going helter-skelter during the Mogae years.
I don’t have a problem with Mogae. Not at all. In fact, sometimes I wish I had been in a friendship threesome with him and his late old buddy, Mochinto! Unlike some people, I will openly admit that I like girls. We all know Mogae and Mochinto had a lot of fun with girls. I envy that. My only gripe with him is over a famous claim he made in his recent autobiography where he tells everyone how he buried rich white kids left and right when he was a student in England back in the dark ages. What were little rich white kids doing in school letting a poor African from God-knows-where come and beat them in every subject? I’ve never believed this story. These are stories often told by Batswana who make it in life, who turn around and take everyone for a fool. Well, not me!
The Masire years were good because we drank a lot of beer. Everyone could afford his can of beer back then. Those of you old enough to remember, know how cheap beer was in our days. We had the sweet Tiffany’s and Crossbow! Everyone who was old enough to drink beer during the Masire years will remember that these two beverages were beers of choice for us teens. You couldn’t just wake up trying to learn alcohol and start drinking Carling Black Label. You had to practise with Tiffany’s and Crossbow; those who didn’t have legendary tales that will follow them to the grave because they once ignored this advice.
Many of these people are all grown up and work in big offices now. You wouldn’t know if you didn’t ask. But these are people who, at one point or another back then, pooped on themselves or cried themselves near death after being thoroughly clobbered by Black Label. They thought they were smarter than everybody you see. Black Label is not a beer for children, I will tell you that much. Don’t ask me what they put in that beer; like you, I’m only a consumer of beer, not a brewer!
That said, there are not many people who can tell you what creature The Recession is! All we know is that life is miserable. Explanations of people from Gaborone alone cannot assuage our suffering. We are forever broke and there is something about life that is permanently stale; sickening boredom. You can’t afford a can of beer today or go to the bar all night like we did during the Masire years. Today you have a President who woke up one day, hit his head on something and decided to close bars and hike beer prices!
The Recession did not start until Masire left office. If you don’t know that, you are either too young or didn’t stay long in school! I hear the smart among you trying to telling us how The Recession came from America. As far as I’m concerned, The Recession started anywhere between when Mogae came into office and when he, Mogae, made the current president his deputy. So let’s agree that if the current President didn’t start the whole Recession, at least he started the Beer Recession! For other things we can always ask Rre Mogae himself.
I am tired of The Recession. I may have a bunch of people to blame for causing The Recession, but I haven’t been so smart as to work out how it could be ended. I am currently writing the President a letter, appealing to him to end The Recession if he can. I have also decided to enclose two sachets of Grand Pa for his headache, because we all know how the current President is. It would be a delight if The Recession ended tomorrow.
In fact, there is somewhere in my letter to the President where I tell him there are nights I dream The Recession having ended; in the dreams I see myself drinking a lot of beer, Black Label for that matter; hanging out with a lot of chicks, just like in the old Masire years! I know the current President likes obstacles, but I’m sure that he, like the rest of us, wants The Recession to end. Have you thought of what you’d do the day The Recession ends yourself?
