Kicking of my Sunday with some hip
hop music, to steam myself from the energy of the kicks and the melancholy and
the mixture of emotions in the sampled melodies. I had a very simple day, going
to edit the film I am co-working on with a friend. As I was about to get the bus,
I borrowed a two hundred airtime from my airtime reseller, “Ubu noneho ndi ku nkoni
nzayaguha” I said.
A few meters away, as I was trying to call the friend, a skinny dark skinned guy with a near bald shaved
head and red eyes walked up to me. “Yo Rasta!” One fist bump, needless to
say he was hungry barely asking for a coin to eat. He is a former ‘Chaguwa’ reseller who was jailed for selling illegal products. Apparently he had just
got out, that’s why he hadn’t eaten for a day.
This has become so frequent that I was
numb to his pain, at the same time I had just borrowed airtime and was counting
my coins on the way to town. The answer was no, the former Christian in me felt
bad for a while , because the man could’ve rushed or robbed for the 100 hundred
he kindly asked for. I stood aimlessly
in the street for a while but soon got over it.
As I was walk in in town to run an errand
before the rendezvous, I listened to “Keep
it 100” by Joyner Lucas. A hip hop song that basically
documents the relationship of the working class and money through the exchanges/transactions
that a 100 dollar bill with a phone number written on it goes through.
It starts from him getting it as a
salary from the ATM, the bill going from wallet, strip club, purse, church… Basically a realist picture of people under
Capitalism through one note. I kept thinking about its playful yet simple lyrics, like the “…she wanna retire soon she
swears to God, she looked up and seen the Hand of God, Oh my God … Forgot she
had a pimp…” I should probably write a review for it…
Anyway, one line clearly stuck with
me as I thought about the prostitute who could easily be anyone doing a
distasteful job. It was the simple “You
gotta do what you gotta do when it’s time for paying bills”.
The words faded as I went to work,
even as 3 more people begging the “Rasta” for a coin, seriously Is it me?
It all came back as I ended the day finally
watching “Deux Jour Une Nuit”, one of
the many masterpieces from the Dardenes brothers. A film portraying a situation
where people are caught between a rock and a hard place.
The protagonist who suffers from
depression is trying to convince her co-workers to vote for her and give up
their 1000Euros bonus checks for the extra time they worked while she was sick
(yet to finish it as I am typing this …)
Clearly again people have to look out
for themselves and their families, and you really have no way of pointing
fingers at anyone of them. One of the sweet miseries that come from competition
that stems from capitalism.
Life in the city of Kigali, like
many in east Africa or all over the world is getting more and more expensive. Capitalism is the same everywhere,
Situations where people are confronted for their survival in the concrete and
corporate jungle are only a few years away , if not here already.
It can and probably will get messy
because “You gotta do what you gotta do
when it’s time for paying bills”.
g3nz3rt
#showerthoughts
Comments
Post a Comment