Every day, I am a hustler looking to get paid, said Tupac Shakur. This is a hard slap on the faces of hustlers. This very week, hustling no longer yields. No good harvest at all. We are not making both ends meet. Before, we used to make both ends meet and life was somehow fair. We were dealing with life, but today, life is the one dealing with us.
A good hustler could return home with a pregnant fist, but today, try getting out, you will return home barehanded. Yes, if those in offices are moneyless, where do you think can hustlers get money from? Some people can complicate other people’s lives so much. Why do economists want to bury hustlers alive?
Whoever put the gear at which the economy is running now has slapped the faces of hustlers so hard. A hustler never gets anything to consume nowadays. The thing has defeated all the techniques of hustling. Senior and junior hustlers are in one trouser. Before this economic crisis reached its peak, hustlers were earning a living, though small. But today, the activities through which hustlers used to get their livings have reduced.
A hustler used to get money on training, conferences, mastering a ceremony, hawking, featuring other people’s works for pay, and so many other ways hustlers used to get paid. No more training. No more conferences. No more hawking as there are no customers. No more featuring as there are no more works. Unfortunately, there are more funeral rites and no one gets paid in a funeral rite. In a funeral, one pays instead of being paid.
As a working-class remains at home following an issue of no salary, a hustler too remains at home as channels for hustling are narrowing and narrowing further. Life has unfolded its true colours to hustlers. Not hustlers alone, but it has also unfolded its true colours to the occupants of offices, both private and public.
With this current economic crisis, no one is laughing. An NGO staff should not laugh at the government staff that he earns USD and that, he is the only one benefitting on the rise of the dollar rate. Yes, he gives 100 USD and receives 150,000 SSP happily but when he goes to the market, there is no commodity that favours an NGO staff. At that expensive price, an NGO staff still buys commodities.
The same story is told for government staff. So, no one is happy with the current situation. It has demolished the classes of people, thus making them classless. It has stabbed people’s hope for a better tomorrow. It has put people’s dreams on hold. This unending economic meltdown has forced students to drop out. It has dug potholes on people’s roads to success.
Just take an evening walk if you want to prove it that hustling has been wounded terribly. You will find people in groups in front of their houses discussing in small letters the affairs they used to discuss in capital letters. Hustling is not even wounded, but maimed. Each day takes hustling closer to the graveyard.
Now that hustling is wounded and is receiving treatment, what would push hustlers to a better day? In such a situation, only hustlers with IQ can cross the black days. Hustlers with IQ are those hustlers who are not spendthrift. They use the money they have hustled wisely. Though hustled money goes away the same way it comes, wise use of it at least changes the narrative.
For a few of us whose hustling still yields, make a good use of the money. Reduce the number of your meals and other expenses. From the look of things, the economists who will improve South Sudan’s economy are still in schools. So, the economic meltdown is going to take long. Put your brain to use while hustling. Hustle as if you are a specialist in hustling.
Thanks for reading “Sowing The Seed Of Truth”.