Diaspoman: When wining and dining condemned me back to the streets

Ever since I came back from the Diaspora, I have been searching for jobs but all in vain. Although I claim to have carried with me a wealth of experience from the Diaspora, I have failed to convince the various panels in and around the city. According to the panelists, my papers are constantly in a state of shock and pain. That is to say that whenever I pull out my CV at interview sessions, the pages start to tremble in real shame. The usual response I get from these panelists is that I should indeed go for further studies. This has been going on for a while and that is why I decided to head back to a small hill here in Kigali. At this hill there is an institution called SFB. It is here at SFB that I have been fighting it out with the dot.com kids. In fact, the first day I entered the lecture room, all the students stood upright as if it was inspection time. They had thought that I was their Economics lecturer all the way from my doctorate studies in India. But to their surprise, I just sat down in the front row before pulling out my electronic calculator. It was a beginning of a long course at SFB that would hopefully help me find a job. As you may have probably guessed, it had to be my long time pal by the names of Aggrey who had to foot the tuition fees. In addition, he has provided me with free accommodation plus 2 free meals per day. He has also been trying to pull some strings so that I could find a job and combine it with evening studies at SFB. Recently, Aggrey succeeded in finding me a job at a posh place here in Kigali. The boss of this company happened to be a very close friend of Aggrey. The guy was looking for a serious sales man who would help in selling slow moving stocks that were rotting in the warehouses. Aggrey convinced his friend that I was the right person for the job. He claimed that I had earned a lot of experience from the Diaspora, having trekked from country to country in search for greener pastures. The guy was impressed about my profile. He never even decided to double check my CV. The next step for me was to attend interviews. That night, Aggrey broke the good news to me. He advised me to dress up in a top class suit for the interviews the next day. That night I slept a very happy man. Indeed, the next day, Aggrey dropped me at his friend’s offices for my mega interview. I was dressed to kill! At 9am sharp, I was ushered into a long and superb boardroom. The panel consisted of 8 grumpy looking men. One of them was Aggrey’s friend who happened to be the MD. They started to fire questions. It was like a game of ping pong. I gave them all the answers they wanted to hear; “Dear future colleagues of this great organization, I assure you that I will triple sales in the first 2 weeks of my employment”. I could see the old men nodding their heads vigorously. They appeared to be impressed. Then the MD gave me this assurance “Hey, it seems you have the ingredients of a good sales person. We are ready to take you but we have one more task – we want to see how you conduct yourself at high profile functions. So tonight at 7pm, let’s meet at the Serena where we shall be attending a cocktail party for our clients. Ask the Receptionist for an invitation card”. WOW WOW WOW! That was a very easy task indeed! I mean, just a simple cocktail party? What could be so complicated about it! Besides, have I not acquired the right accent from the Diaspora? Yeah! At 7pm sharp, I was at the Serena ready for the cocktail party. Everyone was in a joyous mood. The guests were high profile people from big companies as well as government officials. It was time to dine and wine with the CEOs, CFOs, COOs and Ministers of the land. In the corner, the grumpy old men who had interviewed me earlier in the day were busy eying all of my movements. They wanted to observe how I behaved if I was to chew the post of Sales man. So it was now show time. Meanwhile the Serena waitresses strolled around with all tribes of drinks. When they approached me I picked a glass of Red wine. I started to mingle and converse with the guests. All was going on well and this prompted me to drink more and more. It was as if all the waitresses in the world were walking towards my direction. I guzzled glass after glass of Red wine until all the bottles were empty. Then I thought it would be wise if I would add in some few litres of J&B whisky. After some tots of J&B, I found my hand stretching towards a glass of Amstel. All these drinks ended up in my stomach where they began to perform a riot. The drinks fought each other and some of them climbed upstairs into my brain. Once the liquids hit my brains, the one and only Diaspoman started to behave in a strange manner. I started to shout at the top of my voice causing commotion. When I tried to walk towards the podium, the booze in my body forced me to kneel down. Then I started to crawl on all my fours. By the time I woke up the next day, I had lost my lucrative job offer. Indeed the cocktail of drinks ensured that I remained on the streets… Contact: diaspoman@yahoo.com