Have you noticed how when you call up a person on their phone and they are home, they usually follow it up with an uncalled-for explanation of what they are doing at that moment? “I’m just home… watching some series… and eating my noodles. I looooove noodles.” Apparently, it is not enough to just say one is at home. There has to be a “plot”, and serious plot at that. So if people are not watching that new series their friend dropped off the previous night, they are perhaps catching a Mexican TV soap, or other such things. Those days, when you called up a friend and they were at home, it was common for them to tell you they were doing general clean-up, dusting the sofas, or even fixing a meal. Someone would tell you they had taken the day off to do their laundry, or simply to be home –just. After all, what’s the point of paying all that exorbitant rent, if one only intended to use their house as sleeping quarters? Not today. In our times, it is all about having “plot”, or “proggie”. It’s about “happening”, and “not catching a cold”. So, when some friend calls you up and wants to know what you are getting up to at home, they want to know if there is “plot”. Or rather, you want to show them that you have “plot”. And the last time that I checked, plot no longer had anything to do with such things as doing the laundry or cooking a meal or dusting the carpets. In any case, do people of today still even do those chores? It is said that in Kigali, a person who earns Rwf100,000 a month will find it prudent (and within their means) to hire a househelp to buy them groceries and airtime from around the corner, and, of course, do the dishes. Now that everybody seems to have a maid of late, and one who is on the ready to undertake any chore at the shortest notice, it would seem that whatever is left of their time is to “work hard and play hard”. By working hard, you know what I mean. By playing hard, we mean not joining in a sweaty game of rugby or footie, rather, we mean “having a blast”. “Having a ball”. “Living it up”. “Burning some dime”. Be careful about the person who calls you up in the midnight hour, only to tell you, against a backdrop of ear-shattering music, that they are out with buddies at that posh bar, having a blast. Why does one have to wake me from my precious sleep deep in the night, just to tell me you’re “having a blast” with your partners in crime? Why did you not instead contact me earlier in the day while you planned the night, with a view to including me in your gang? In any case, how am I to be really sure that you are actually by the poolside at the Kigali Serena, not your neighborhood alimentation?
