The first month of the year is just getting into its second half, and this is just the beginning of the worst it is known for, especially, among wage earners. January starts every year with celebrations on the first and through to, at best, the middle. New year fantasies and pageantry last only two good light weeks. The only unlikely experience belying the celebrations is the paltry of learning to write the new date correctly. This year, it is more a challenge than the usual. This, remember, is the beginning of a new decade as well.
I hear you cannot now write the date in contraction again, after all the ten years of of our bad decade of insurgency, until next year. Example: 01-01-20 is wrong. You can only write: 01-01-2020. But that you can do so from next year. I saw this in a message on Whatsapp, whose argument I contest with keenest. But personal style can be crazy, you know. It is no respecter of rules or even housestyles. So anything is possible and can be true or wrong. It is the age of everyone knows because everyone has.
January is the Nigerian public servant’s nightmare, out of eleven other innocent months, except for wetty but drypocket August. And the beginning of this decade, thanks to January, is no different from the annual scare and frights coming along with setting in January or, worsestill, January’s wicked second half. January is preceded by darling damned, delicious December. It is the shortest of the year,followed by February. Others are just normal months.
December and February sandwich January in pre- and post- definition akin to that of prefixes and suffixes in words making sentences like months make a year. December baits the salarian into temptations of nearing end of year once December sets. That carries bundles of hope. It means a new year is here.
But December promises and assures early salary too, in massive compliments, by the 25th latest, for almost all workers except those on calamities of stage failure in processes of their own organisations, or those whose badluck announces a wicked farewellbid at the end of the year.
December salary usually carries, in most cases, the punctuations of sum pay of arrears in anything – shortfall, bonuses, accumulate allowances, promotion arrears, backlog of anything. Huge smile to year’s end. But then that is also greeted by end of year mass expenses of different sorts – end of year family home visits, Christmass, marriages, end of year parties, association or club annual meetings or cultural summit of ethnic encleavages for local champions, or religious gathering. We are a lavish people. Do not accuse the yorubas alone as partying people. We are all involved in different ways. So it is swollen purses greeted by grown demands.
The break is like vacation on the carribean islands. It steals your senses away, and like honeymoon sets to pitch the woman against the man in the marriage ahead, the vacation removes your sense of reason and takes your guts away. You hardly remember you have a pregnant wife expected delivery on the January 25. How about that. I hear you say, Nooooo! But well, notice has been given eight months back.
Back home in January, after everyone returns from the village, senses of workers settle down to the reality of fresh January just begining the first week, giving hope of new year, new hopes, new aspirations and the promise of a possible blessing of a house, car, good health and long life, depending on everyone’s own priorities. But there is one promise January does not tell anyone. It is silent on that. And that is its own lenth. Thanks to January’ hide of the bitter truth. Gradually, the hopes begin to diminish as January pulls into its days.
Only those salarians who receive the annual lashes of the year’s longest month remember the depth of the challenges which set into life this time of January. December’s gift of early salary and accumulate bonuses had met the lavish pride of uncontrolled personal expenditure during the break in exchange for huge services for status symbol bigboyism and egos enlisted, which dazzled, intimidated and harrassed the village poor and young girls. That is no respecter to anything January expects soon. It is blind.
And so reality dwells down on handout remnants of fuel or transport budgets. Everything, most monies spent. God loves you if you have foodstuff left back home, a remnant of cookingas in the cylinder, and may be you bring along village stuffs in fish and bush meat if you come from hunting or riverine places.
Salary is the most unlikely source of living. Thanks to the Hausa name for it: albashi. Literally it means, even if you take a billion as salary, if you have to wait to monthend to get it, forget. It is the same vicious cycle that binds you with the level one officer in your workplace.
It is okay to be a salarian. But thank your Lord your brothers are not wicked and your inlaws are kind and generous. And may your car tank still half the bar, enough for two weeks of local school runs. Shshsh! Do not talk of school fees. I did not mention that. Do not blame me. Na you talk that one.
January is the most wicked month of the year. It maltreats the salarian and does not give any lesson in return. It does not give any measures of alleviation, coping strategy or suggestions as guards for January’s cruelties. It does not give hard lessons to teach the salarian to prep. It does not provide alternatives. It just does not care how you get out of the depth of the ocean in that long swim to the riverbank and to the breath of February’s breeze.
Junary is such a humbling month, too. It humbles the rich and make them meet the poor in unison harmony of human brotherhood of life. Only few unkind poor will look into the reddish eyes of the poor worker weakened by January’s unkindness and say, “welcome to our world. Come sit under the three with us, after work.” Good times for all, isn’t it? Enforced unity. Money is the evil that divides Nigerians, no mater the amount.
This is the friendliest times workers also have with the jobless and provisional shop owners. Everything goes for the record debt book, already swells to frequent updates from unpaying customers. The shops lean and replacement is not possible, until end of January, which is no where here. Pity the traders too. It is like January leaves no one out.
Nothing makes up for January and its excesses on the salarian. Nothing. It is an annual feat of life the lucky living must experiences. And there is nothing anyone can do about it. That is why no one cares anymore. No one prepares to prevent anything this time. It is like the injection you have to take to treat malaria. It is painful and scary. But once done, you get relieve set in by sweat.
That is reason smart Nigerians or the ajebos ran fast from January, a seven letter word and into a ten word deep ditch of corruption, in trying to do anything to avoid the devastattion of poverty, the seven word sister to January. I dont know how many escape it. But I know many who do so only on interim measure. Another year, the chase catches them easy close, and they are arrested back to face the wrath of January again.
January is, in the end, huge fun for workers. It has become a routine. It is a part of life in a year that makes some good part of the life we desire to enjoy. But then find something in laternative that is more sustaining, an additional legal and clean income that does not compete in time for the salary work you do January.
Meanwhile, you are just a colleague in the journey of living out January to its damned end. So here you are. Enjoy it as it lasts. Catch the experience and the fun. But as you wobble, do know that February is still eleven days away. Goodluck. Enjoy.
Hassan Alhaji Hassan can be contacted on 08032829772/08050551220 (text only with full names and address)a[email protected]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect WikkiTimes’ editorial stance.
