Average Joe's Blog

Inspiration. That is the price you pay for being famous. Everybody invites you to a retinue of tedious ‘lectures’ where you are supposed to inspire your awestruck audience to greatness. Inspired to change your fortunes; like hell they say. Hell, I hate these gatherings, not especially because most of the time I am the subject of attention. Why can’t people just appreciate the fact that we are more than seven billion on this earth and that there is NO defined formula for ‘success’. That one man’s success could be another’s downfall? (Come on, man; you are supposed to inspire these kids; not depress them). I have no qualms, though, about today’s lecture; it’s kinda impromptu and I am in my home turf, flanked by my former favourite teacher (she is my friend now, and she asked me to give a word or two to her current demoralised class) and in my former favourite classroom – a perfect setting for an ambush speech. There is a maroon desk in the corner over there – the three ...

It is a given that Christmas time is a time to show goodwill; a time when we share our material possessions with just about everyone – friend or foe; even during these our times of great trepidation and uncertainty where things to share are between little and none, and the only thing one can be sure of is that which is already in one’s viscera. But, as they say, between true friends, even a shared gourd of water is good enough. Ten times out of ten during the past decade, the end of the year brought with it a lot of grief and consternation among our most impoverished and long suffering Zimbabwean ‘masses’, for it meant one more year added to the biblical seven of hunger; another interminable, tedious, hangover-less festive period spent with bottoms down under that mango, peach, musasa or munhondo tree that has suffered immature menopause due to a seemingly eternal drought. I am engaged in a hair-raising panga duel with the urge to laugh right now; and I am losing – so tough were th...