If you’re a lady expecting a 100-long-stemmed-rose bouquet and a trip to the Bahamas, you might be in the wrong time zone. Botswana women have argued for decades — feel free to Google this — that Batswana men have desecrated the art of giving meaningful presents – or just giving a present to their ladies – during Valentine’s Day. Every February, as Cupid sharpens his arrows while men sharpen their excuses.
Men suddenly develop selective amnesia, forgetting the one date plastered across shop windows since New Year’s Day. I am confident that if we ever encounter alien life, even if it is a one-celled fungus, it will be better at giving Valentine’s Day presents than Batswana men. At one point Ladies Conference decided that ladies cannot eat flowers and urged all their members to refuse to take bouquets without P200 notes wrapped around their petals.
And some men who are in cahoots with these women decided to embrace the Ladies Conference resolutions. So all over this country we are seeing more and more of these types of men who were upsetting the delicate balance of dating, in a country where people of both sexes have traditionally coexisted in peace and harmony without petals wrapped in P200 notes. I am of course joking.
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We have traditionally coexisted the way the high-tech banking and scrap paper receipts coexist in Botswana. Men’s Conference are still looking for these men who embraced this resolution and there’s a rumour that they are mooting an extra-ordinary general meeting (EOGM) with one agenda idea: How To Deal With Men Who Send Bouquets With P200 notes. Enter Bank of Botswana – the mother of all banks in the country.
They put an end to that nonsense when they put up a huge red sign that said ‘No P200 in Valentine’s Day Bouquets’ and instantly saved the male population. I think the Bank of Botswana is led by a group of men who are equally under siege too. They have watched unhappily as they were outdone by the richer guys and wondered how they could get their own back.
It is the equivalent of going to a wedding where the richer guys arrive with gold-plated gifts, and you show up with a goat tied with a ribbon. My point — and the reason we went “Yay” when we heard the announcement — is that lately there is a growing resentment towards men who do not send their roses with petals wrapped in P200 notes and I am one of them. There has always been some friction, of course but we managed to navigate it with ‘transaction pending’ and ‘I am waiting for payment from the ministry’.
The latter excuse is like the official broke man’s excuse and these days with government payments taking years to fulfill it is the choice excuse to wiggle out of demands for a present. As a result you can do business with government and when the payment gets processed you are lying in a graveyard all bones and no flesh and the payment becomes part of a deceased man’s estate. (For comments, feedback and insults email[email protected]) *Thulaganyo Jankey is a training consultant who runs his own training consultancy that provides training in BQA- accredited courses.
His other services include registering consultancies with BQA and developing training courses. Contact him on 74447920 or email[email protected] As cases continue to threaten herds and rural livelihoods, one simple but critical action can make a powerful difference: strictly adhering to FMD regulations, including refraining from slaughtering cloven-hoofed animals.Cloven-hoofed animals, such as cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs, are highly susceptible to FMD. Slaughter, especially during outbreaks or restricted periods, significantly increases the risk of spreading the virus through…
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