Very strange things happen when people get paid for their sweat. People in possession of cheques from debtors now rush to cash them before said debtor empties the account to deal with more pressing needs. It’s called stealing from Claudine to pay Sandrine. But that’s not all. Cigarettes will now be bought by the packet, as opposed to the humiliating and dehumanizing ordeal of having to endure the walk down to the boutique to buy just four sticks of Intore. When people are paid, some of them who used to drink Gatanu or Inzoga y’abagabo now turn to Amstel or petite Mutzig. Office workers no longer just vanish from their work stations to a secret lunch rendezvous. When times are hard, lunch is at the very best a tricky subject to talk about and at worst taboo. You go and have your lunch, return to office and resume your tasks. On and immediately after pay day, lunch now becomes a highly democratized and transparent process. Like minded office mates drift together naturally around meal times and leisurely hit their favorite buffet. On a good day, a well-bred colleague will actually ask you out to lunch, without any strings attached. They will even buy your soda, and for the case of The New Times, such a colleague is likely to even pay for the fare to as far as Kisementi, just to treat you to a nice buffet. I wanted to drop hints on the particular joint in Kisementi where well-bred office workers take their mates for lunch buffet, but that would be free advertising for them. They can go to an ad agency if they need their trumpet to be blown. I have digressed a little, but we were still on the subject of the effect pay day has on oppressed workers of the world like you and me. You want to know what ‘oppressed workers of the world’ stands for? They are people in formal employment who wonder why their bosses still insist on paying them a block salary at the end of every month, instead of paying up at the end of each day’s gupagasa. Let’s say you’ve bought a bunch of bananas from the market, you look around for a strong, able-bodied ghetto soldier with a good vibe to carry it home. You agree on the cost of his labor, he hauls your plantains to his head or over his shoulders, and off you lead him. On arrival home, you pay the ghetto soldier cash money, and step back to observe as his face now lights up with millions of ideas ticking in his happy mind: Intore, Turbo King, Super Gin, or a big glass of chilled kivuguto depending on how good the pay is, and the need at hand. That, and nothing else, is the kind of arrangement that all oppressed workers of the world secretly wish for, because the urge for Intore can’t wait a whole month till pay day.
