As usual, in
December, the good, the bad and the ugly who run the religious industry
accelerate their activities, and believers happily part with
considerable sums of money to support that industry.
There is a kind of tacit understanding that mid-year belongs to the State; the Budget, tax returns and so on; and year end belongs to the religious people.
At mid-year, the State promises things like tarmac roads, electrification and even personal prosperity in exchange for the taxes citizens pay.
At year end, believers are assured by the religious operators that special divine intervention and outright miracles are waiting. Their cash offerings would be an investment in an enterprise where shares are guaranteed to rise sharply.
Almost comically, the believer is sometimes asked to attach to the money a specific written end-of-year request, and to put both in an emphatically ‘free’ envelope.
After God’s people have removed the money, they wink to each other and stage a ritual prayer, drawing God’s attention to the heap of written requests, after which God is scheduled to deliver the goods the following year!
Call it a con job; but when Abraham’s racket wanted a steady supply of choice meat, they also deceived themselves, and then everybody, that it was God who craved the aroma of roasted meat.
Anyway, between the peak cycles when the State and the churches scoop their big loot, there is an arrangement of suckers that are hooked to your ‘system’ to relieve you of whatever flows into your pocket on a regular basis.
The number of these tubes partly depends on your life style. But, as a generalisation, if you fairly match that not-so-heroic mythical figure called the ‘average citizen’, the tubes are now roughly set to siphon out Shs1,000 at a time; sometimes several times a day.
If you tend to jump on a boda boda for every little trip from A to B, instead of walking, the minimum charge is now Shs1,000.
Looking at the various voice packages offered by the two leading mobile phone service providers, each package works out at about Shs1,000 per day.
If you want both networks equally viable for initiating calls, that is Shs2,000 per day.
A couple of weeks ago, after a game of tennis in Jinja, I watched some youngish people silently absorbed in their smart phones. WhatsApp, Facebook. They were (tennis) ball collectors and (golf) cuddies. Not rich boys. We chatted a bit. (How disruptive I must have been!).
I asked them how much they spent on their social media applications.
They said they were economical because of their limited means. On average, each was “okay” at about Shs1,000 per day, although they knew friends who spent three times as much.
There is a kind of tacit understanding that mid-year belongs to the State; the Budget, tax returns and so on; and year end belongs to the religious people.
At mid-year, the State promises things like tarmac roads, electrification and even personal prosperity in exchange for the taxes citizens pay.
At year end, believers are assured by the religious operators that special divine intervention and outright miracles are waiting. Their cash offerings would be an investment in an enterprise where shares are guaranteed to rise sharply.
Almost comically, the believer is sometimes asked to attach to the money a specific written end-of-year request, and to put both in an emphatically ‘free’ envelope.
After God’s people have removed the money, they wink to each other and stage a ritual prayer, drawing God’s attention to the heap of written requests, after which God is scheduled to deliver the goods the following year!
Call it a con job; but when Abraham’s racket wanted a steady supply of choice meat, they also deceived themselves, and then everybody, that it was God who craved the aroma of roasted meat.
Anyway, between the peak cycles when the State and the churches scoop their big loot, there is an arrangement of suckers that are hooked to your ‘system’ to relieve you of whatever flows into your pocket on a regular basis.
The number of these tubes partly depends on your life style. But, as a generalisation, if you fairly match that not-so-heroic mythical figure called the ‘average citizen’, the tubes are now roughly set to siphon out Shs1,000 at a time; sometimes several times a day.
If you tend to jump on a boda boda for every little trip from A to B, instead of walking, the minimum charge is now Shs1,000.
Looking at the various voice packages offered by the two leading mobile phone service providers, each package works out at about Shs1,000 per day.
If you want both networks equally viable for initiating calls, that is Shs2,000 per day.
A couple of weeks ago, after a game of tennis in Jinja, I watched some youngish people silently absorbed in their smart phones. WhatsApp, Facebook. They were (tennis) ball collectors and (golf) cuddies. Not rich boys. We chatted a bit. (How disruptive I must have been!).
I asked them how much they spent on their social media applications.
They said they were economical because of their limited means. On average, each was “okay” at about Shs1,000 per day, although they knew friends who spent three times as much.
In a modest household, taps and flushing toilets on the national
grid will set you back by around Shs30,000 per month. A thousand
shillings per day!
Basic lighting and running one refrigerator costs around Shs30,000 of ‘Yaka’ per month.
One thousand per day! Ironing and water heating, another Shs30,000. Basic cooking on the grid, another Shs30,000. Additional cooking on gas, another Shs30,000.
Your best-laid plan in bits of Shs1,000 per day means a cool Shs120,000 every month on energy alone.
MTN, Airtel, National Water & Sewerage Corporation, Umeme, your gas supplier and the tax collector must be smiling.
Regardless of your predicament; indeed precisely because of your predicament, the religious operators use the 52 Sundays in the year (plus any other day or night when they can dream up a scheme to ‘help’ you) to milk you for their upkeep and for financing their operations.
At these round-the-year gatherings, in average neighbourhoods, there are far more one thousand-shilling notes in the collection baskets than any other denomination, although the more cunning operators sometimes pass the baskets round several times to address separate causes!
When all the beneficiaries are done, and you have survived another 12 months, you will come back and thank God. If the toll by then has not crept up to Shs2,000, you will record that it was spending Shs1,000 that made you broke in 2017. Happy New Year.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
altaccaone@gmail.com.
Basic lighting and running one refrigerator costs around Shs30,000 of ‘Yaka’ per month.
One thousand per day! Ironing and water heating, another Shs30,000. Basic cooking on the grid, another Shs30,000. Additional cooking on gas, another Shs30,000.
Your best-laid plan in bits of Shs1,000 per day means a cool Shs120,000 every month on energy alone.
MTN, Airtel, National Water & Sewerage Corporation, Umeme, your gas supplier and the tax collector must be smiling.
Regardless of your predicament; indeed precisely because of your predicament, the religious operators use the 52 Sundays in the year (plus any other day or night when they can dream up a scheme to ‘help’ you) to milk you for their upkeep and for financing their operations.
At these round-the-year gatherings, in average neighbourhoods, there are far more one thousand-shilling notes in the collection baskets than any other denomination, although the more cunning operators sometimes pass the baskets round several times to address separate causes!
When all the beneficiaries are done, and you have survived another 12 months, you will come back and thank God. If the toll by then has not crept up to Shs2,000, you will record that it was spending Shs1,000 that made you broke in 2017. Happy New Year.
Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
altaccaone@gmail.com.
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