If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you over and offer you some herbal tea called Zumbani Tea or Fever Tea Tree, Lippia javanica if you want to be fancy. Its been the all-new rage, as some swear it cures COVID or at least alleviates symptoms. Imagine the bush used to grow wild and free, but well capitalism happened…
Maybe you are not partial to herbal persuasion in which case you are welcome to bring your preferred bougie tea leaves or coffee beans. If you haven’t read it, do check out one of my last posts which explains consent in something as simple as a cup of tea or coffee: Coffee With Consent. It’s a conversation we should normalise.
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that Afrobloggers has publicized the shortlist of nominees for bloggers in the running for the inaugural Afrobloggers Awards who are through to the voting phase. You can click on the image below to see the polls and to vote for some familiar faces or maybe just to discover new African bloggers.
You won’t find my blog among the nominees as that would be a conflict of interest, seeing as I am part of the people working tirelessly behind the scenes, the uncle of bloggers, making sure that African Content Creators get recognition and celebrated for the work they put in. Seeing all the excitement from the shortlisted people as I scroll through the interwebs makes me proud to say, look, look, we did that…
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that I can’t tell you who to vote for because it would probably be against the rules, but even if it wasnt, honestly I don’t know how I would be able to pick one as there are so many impressive bloggers out there. A moment of silence, for the judges who will have the unenviable honour of picking winners, had I my own way, I would just say congratulations to all the nominees; you are getting an award, you getting an award, everybody is getting an award.
A couple of bloggers have shared about the awards.. and note: for transparency, I am not saying vote for these ones, I am just saying check out how much this thing means to some people, besides some are in the same category, so there ha! ^_^
An Afrobloggers Bloggers Nomination Bagged: How To Vote – Louisa
Gelax Chatroom’s First Award – Afrobloggers Awards 2020 – Bolaji
A letter to a reluctant blogger – Mable
Afrobloggers Awards 2020 – Racheal
Race Class and Ethnicity in Africa – Leo
Take Bake your pen – Patricia
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you my seeming inability to pick a winner might mean I would make a terrible political candidate. I imagine that during my campaign, I would probably point out my opponent’s manifesto and say they make some really good points, maybe you should vote for them instead….
Uganda had presidential elections recently, internet was shutdown, opposition party candidates were arrested and predictably the election results are unerringly similar to how ours have played out. Its easy to understand why some people find futility in an electoral process where counting the vote counts more than the vote… At least after winning, if they could at least deliver a fraction of the promises they made, but no, they lookout for only themselves and holding them accountable makes you an enemy of the state.
In Zimbabwe in the past week several high ranking government officials including four ministers have succumbed to COVID, and there’s been rumours that… never mind the rumours but some people have been jubilant even, at the death of government officials, saying that COVID has been doing what elections failed to do. How badly will you have run a country that instead of sending condolence messages people thank karma for serving?
Meanwhile the secretary of information accused doctors of being medical assassins due to the number deaths of government officials. One cant go around making such accusations to the frontline workers lest they decide to start carrying out medical assassinations or worse they decide to stop risking their lives to saving people’s lives.
The secretary of information has since deleted the offending communications and worn an apolojersey in contrition, on his Twitter profile and that makes everything ok lets not be distracted or question how if anyone else had made such remarks they would be in jail for spreading alarm and despondency during a pandemic
.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that the COVID vaccine hasn’t even made its way to these parts of the world yet and the parliament has already released a priority of who will get it first.
•Frontline workers
•MPs
•Members of the security sector
•Ministers
I guess they are trying to make sure COVID does not do what the elections cant do, destabilize a constitutionally elected government.
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that to further halt the spread of COVID government has ordered government departments and offices to only run with a skeleton staff of 10% and police have ramped up their vigilance at arresting lockdown and curfew regulators.
Would you think people would defy lockdown regulations, just for the fun of it? For some it’s choice between starvation or COVID and if I had to make such a choice, I would take my chances with COVID..
If you were having coffee with I would tell you to go vote in the Afrobloggers Awards at least there your vote could make someone’s day.
Whats been going on in your neck of the woods
~B
PS Its been rainy but Zimbabwe was largely spared by Cyclone Eloise with some flooding in the South Eastern parts of the country but in Mozambique it left a trail of destruction.
Becoming The Muse 
Your thoughts.. if you will?