Mwaka Mpya Mambo Mapya

Mwaka mpya mambo mapya...or so goes a popular Swahili phrase thrown around at the beginning of every new year.
I say this to myself as I laze around, bills on my mind, the "ketchup song" playing in the background...yes, I see the sly grin slowly forming on your face, you don't remember the last time you heard that song mentioned, right? Good old days! The problem I however have isn't really how songs these days have become unmemorable, the memory of the days long gone or that despite it being end month, my dear bank hasn't notified me of that badly needed health boost my account has been in dire need of...no. It's the phrase "mwaka mpya mambo mapya" that troubles me.


How true is it that with a new year comes a new dawn? How much change does occur vis-a-vis how much stays the same? Its an election year in a country I consider my home away from home, and politicians there are simply reusing the same tactics, same promises that they used five years ago to woe voters...copy + paste! At the workplace hordes of wage chasers troop in, heads bowed low knowing that that dream "bonus" and "raise" they'd worked soo hard for will remain just that, a dream; "Gachungwa" nurses her bruised ego and tired soul as she sits silently at the back of her dads SUV, back to her matrimonial home she goes as her parents tell her that they too have been through worse in their marriage but still made it work...you...you seated there, thinking just one more, one more read, one more tweet, one more buger, beer, puff....then never again...as huu ni mwaka mpya, mambo mapya...