At this rate at which the month of January is treating us, I may be forced to consider changing the name to Jan-worry in coming years.

But no worries, for scorching as the month is in many people’s pockets and personal finances, it soon will come to pass. Just because it’s Jan-worry, and it is hotter than Knowless Butera and Rihanna combined does not mean the month can choose to drag on indefinitely.

If my desktop calendar serves me right, we’re actually in the last quarter of the month, the all-dreaded "week of death”. The week of death alludes to the toughest week of the month –for salaried employees and regular wage earners that is.

But the January week of death is different from the weeks of death in other months because if anything, what is all January but a month of death? In other words, in the month of Jan-worry, the week of death does not make for much news because it’s business as usual.

Ever wondered why otherwise decent people make millions of New Year resolutions that they never bother to follow through? It’s because they make the said resolutions at the wrong times: December and January.

In December, people generally make resolutions for the coming year while engulfed in the excitement and over indulgence that usually come with the season. Most times, the motivation for such resolutions is beer-fuelled, is loud and abrasive, but does not amount to much thereafter.

The reverse is true for New Year resolutions made in January, where people are generally broke, hungry and therefore angry, because a hungry man is an angry man.

So how then do we tame and stamp our feet on this monster called January, once and for all?

Eat humble pie: Nothing beats the sight of those kitengi-clad market women un-shelling freshly harvested amashaza from their green pods.

In fact, in culinary terms, nothing beats the combo of amashaza and white rice to taste. I know of an oldies song from West Africa that actually extols the virtues of ‘rice and peas’.

But amashaza does not come cheap, as compared to its closest substitute –beans, the reason you should generally avoid it in these hard times. See, the cow peas we consume in Kigali come from further up North –Byumba, as compared to ibishyimbo, which occur abundantly in Musanze and in many swampy valleys spread around Kigali’s suburbs.