THE SUFFERING RING OF 2018
By Zack Mayul, Juba, South Sudan
Tuesday, December 25, 2018 (PW) — Recently, a friend of mine asked me if it’s possible for her to walk into a jewelry store and buy herself a suffering ring to symbolize her 2018 as an odd year from the rest. She has been going through some sh*ts this year. I liked the idea even though I didn’t want to tell her that I might as well opt for the same choice since I have been going through some deep sh*ts of my own as well.
By the way, ours could not be as bad as yours or weighs heavily than yours. But hey, my buddy and I are soon going for this before the year clocks to zero. Are you interested to wear a suffering ring too to differentiate your 2018 and learn how to deal with your New Year in style? Come and we buy them at a discounted price.
There are many ways to suffer.
Perhaps, not just the economic raging that is touching all of us on private parts, neither is it the political scavenging that has resulted into the death of thousands of innocent South Sudanese, nor is it the unfair justice practice by some well paying NGO organizations that employs people with less knowledge in some fields of studies but focus on the sharpness of their slated tongues or recruiting team figure eight and twelve.
That’s not the kind of suffering that my buddy and I are requesting for a ring. We’re all in it, aren’t we? We have faced it, didn’t we? And we shall continue to face the wrath as long as we still love this country through thick and thin.
Anyway, have you ever convince someone that you want to see him/her, that there is something very important you two needs to discuss, that you two need your time alone?
Or maybe, as a man, have you ever worked hard throughout the week to fill the financial potholes in your pocket that always response to the force of poverty and then make a phone call to ask a girl out – maybe, to Devince Hotel, a place that is very quiet – where you will sit and watch the water rumbling as they makes their way to Egypt or Mediterranean Sea as you make plans on how to forget the torments of Juba Half-Life?
Hey, I am not talking about one of these random girls we meets on What’sApp Groups and scare them with the pictures on our walls that we snaps when we’re driving these old Landcruisers bearing UNDP and USAID donation and green NGO Plates. I am talking of that one girl you have always wants to sit by her side. The one who at times drags you into a discussion because she is a go-getter and want to see how you lay your plans.
The things Steve Harvey call short terms and long terms goals but eventually, you fail to connect because they communication is interrupted due to poor network connection. Have you ever have that feeling before? If yes, then you know what I’m talking about. But if nay, then here is another eulogy from my friend; how he missed his interview that would have help him take this kind of a girl out if all were necessary.
John (not his baptismal name), a friend of mine recently told me that he missed a job interview because the organization tried to reach him but his phone was claimed to have been off or the network was busy by the Human Resource Department – that they were trying to call him the whole day but could not trace him until they opt to send him an email.
According to him, the truth in the real sense was that his phone was never off or not the busies while talking to anyone in particular in order to interrupt the network. ‘The network was busy the whole day when we tried to reach you.’
He pointed out in his email. According to John, he remember llvividly that day that apart from one family member that called him in the morning, he doesn’t remember anyone else that called him for such a long time the whole day.
Moreover, the bars on his phone indicating network coverage were full to the brim. So, the human resource manager who made an effort of sending him the mail stating that he made it to the list of the selected interviewees (one of those rare HR that deserve to live long) did it out of his own generosity.
It’s after two days later that he went to a cyber cafe at Hai Malakia when he found out the shocking news that he missed the interview. Sad! Isn’t it? He still has no job as you are reading this. That’s call suffering.
Another friend of mine told me a story of a slay king type of a seasonal tycoon who booked a two night suite in Juba to accommodate his “new catch”, paying more than what can cost individual to acquire an intellectual asset throughout your academic years at Jama Juba just for two night stands.
On the first day, this girl’s’ phone didn’t go through, and when it went through, the $40,000- rich gentleman was furious.
He threatened the girl, and promised to order a warrant of arrest to her for failure to comply with him. Imagine the number of times he might have insulted her. Since she was a no giving f**k type of a babe, she didn’t tolerate the shit from Bwana Tygoon; she didn’t even give a hoot to bend low on him.
She played I’m Walking Away by Craig David and exits the temporal relationship and shake what Mama gave her.
Life in Juba is some way what biology call symbiosis – mutual benefit through one another. A day in Juba without proper communication is like a season without rain if we don’t connect with friends and families and know their wellbeing when we’re apart or when we’re in distance places.
What if you miss the scheduled date and time for interview like John who later finds it out in a cyber café that the company was ready to test his competence before they could decide whether to give him a job or not?
What if your child gets sick and you are in the field in Pibor giving humanitarian assistance and you have no access to friends or family to send money so that your child gets proper medication?
What if a civil servant is being plotted and we have no access to warn him of what is going to happen next because the Juba network keeps telling us network busy?
John is going to suffer looking for a job comes, January 2019, my friend in the first paragraph is soon crowning herself with a ring because she is suffering too. Tycoon has suffered due to lack of proper coordination with his friend, and maybe, the girl has suffered too since communication has quit the list of auxiliary needs and joins the basic needs. I cannot do my online exams because 4G phones are competing with 2G android phones.
Comes 2019, a year we’re all anxiously expecting to be different from 2018 and other past years, let’s be optimistic it will brings us another phase of life and things would probably change for the better.
Maybe my friend in the first paragraph will not buy another ring in 2019, John will not miss another interview comes 2019, and of course, the girl that played I’m Walking Away by Craig David; hopefully, she will play Love Me Harder by Ariana Grande.
Merry Christmas and Prosperous 2019.
Zack Mayul Studied Bachelor of Science in Marketing at Ndejje University, Kampala Campus, Uganda. You can reach him via his email as zackmayul54@gmail.com and on both Twitter and Facebook as Zack Mayul.
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