I’ve lived my long and eventful life with only one fixed rule: I will not spend money frivolously Why spend three thousand on a shot of whiskey when you can have three bottles of beer with the same amount of money? I’ve avoided all manners of expenses like cabs (I take moto’s and twegerane’s as much I can), expensive clothes (I do my shopping at Nyabugogo), pricey phones (I’ve got a Nokia 3310- the famous ‘Bagore Beza’) and especially classy ladies (they always speak more than one international language and they always have a taste for all things European…they always order things like ‘Vin and Martini’). Anyway, I’m a proud member of the El-Cheapo Movement. Our goal in life is to have as much fun as possible without giving our wallets, and ourselves, heart attacks. Trust me, it’s a noble cause. The only thing that I find weird with the members of this movement is their utter refusal to drink Primus, as opposed to Mutzig. If you didn’t know, Primus is far cheaper than a Mutzo, as we call it. I think even the cheap members have standards to uphold…don’t even try to get us to drink urwagwa…that’s a bit too cheap, even for us. Anyway, as you probably know, I don’t drink Mutzig anymore. I’m a water man, but you see, its all in the spirit of El-Cheapo. A few months back when I still drunk, a bottle of Mutzo cost six hundred francs, now I’m shocked to find that a beer costs between eight hundred and nine hundred francs in the cheapest joints. Don’t even mention the prices in the swankier joints. It’s highway robbery. Goodness, even a Fanta is getting expensive. This inflation is killer. However, I’m not really feeling the pinch because, smart me, I noticed that water rarely gets abovr five hundred francs no matter where you are. I can afford to drink at any joint in Rwanda I choose…how many people can say that? Anyway, I was chilling with the fellows at Papyrus on Friday night, doing what we usually did a.k.a NOTHING, sipping water (that cost a whole five hundred francs…as compared to a beer that cost one thousand five hundred francs) when I spied a table full of lovely girls. Who was I to resist the temptation? I gave myself a seat and promptly started discussing the intricacies of the Kyoto Protocol…yeah right! Whatever I said it must have made sense because everyone seemed like they were enjoying themselves. Everything went smoothly until one lady mentioned the dreaded ‘B’ word. “Let’s go to B-Club,” she said. Hmm….she must have been smoking a banned substance. I wasn’t going to spend three thousand francs getting to Gacuriro and then pay five thousand to enter the damn place. She was lovely, curvaceous and all but a couple of slow dances ain’t worth ten thousand. Unless she could morph into a hybrid creature that combined the best of Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba and Monica Belluci I wasn’t going anywhere. I work for every coin I have…I can’t be frivolous…I’m a proud of being a full blown member of the El-Cheapo. madogz2002@yahoo.ca
