The Week of Death just wound to a most anticipated end a few minutes before I pounced on my old model ragga muffin lap top to type this column. For the uninitiated, the week of death is a term that was coined by talented but renegade and idle society paparazzi at The New Times; it means the ruffest and tuffest week of the month for those in salaried employment. The week of death has come to be synonymous with doom, gloom, sadness, misery, irritability, volatility of temper, lack of humor and, most importantly, a begging epidemic among people in the salaried ranks. This begging epidemic actually makes me to wonder why we even have to come and work and show off our corporate tags if we have to beg our way through the last one or two weeks of the working month? People like you and me. When you get a job, you usually negotiate your pay, and then this will be fixed by the powers that be. Then, as a rule worldwide, most bosses then decide that you must be paid at the end of the month without consulting you. Well at least that’s how the corporate system runs. But as an African street hustler, I want to be paid immediately I complete a particular kiraka. This means that if I go out in the Kigali night to cover Mani Martin or the Indoro duo of Nina and Charly for The New Times, I should expect that the accounts department prepares my pay for this particular kiraka so that I can access it either the following day or at the end of the week. Why wait for a whole month? I have tried to whisper this idea into the ears of Isabella, the boss in Human Resource but what I got as a reward was a cold shoulder from her. By cold shoulder I mean to say that she rolled out her signature line: “Moses, let us agree to disagree”. Anyway the point was not the Human Resource, but rather the need on my side to be paid immediately I complete a certain mission for my employer. I want to be paid in the same way as those African street hustlers and street corner toughs who operate mobile auto-mechanic services along Nyamirambo’s Rue de la Talinyota. Imagine if you took your battered Toyota Rav4 to those guys and then after finishing the repairs, you ask them to wait for the month to end before you could ever pay them? Lastly, out with the week of death, and back to the pseudo-liberating feeling of having money on you for the first two weeks of your monthly hustle.
