The Weekend.

I don’t like weekends. Not in an ‘I refuse to like something that everyone likes’ way, but in an ‘I simply can’t keep up’ kind of way.

I don’t know how to it explain it really. This is probably one of those situations that people who love to call out people about being ungrateful and entitled live for. I don’t think I blame them though.

The week is okay. No, don’t get me wrong – it’s not the best thing that can happen to one’s life but neither is it the worst. And that right there is its charm. With the week, you know what to expect. Blues on Monday, or spending the whole of Monday denying that Monday blues are a reality. A breath of fresh air on Tuesday because Monday is finished, you’re safe for another 6 days. Wednesday is the reminder of inner strength, because how else would you have made it that far through the week? Thursday is the assurance that no matter what happened, there is only one day to Friday – and everyone knows that Friday is all about TGIF. Yaaaaaay!!

And that’s where my palms begin to get sweaty. The annoying kind of sweaty that you get when you finally go for that dentist appointment after postponing three times. The kind that makes you wonder what it is your ancestors did that led you onto the path to live better and consciously take better care of yourself. Nothing else can explain such madness but past generations’ wrong doings.

The weekend does that. It wants to be had, in only the finest way and it will not accept anything less. Like clockwork, my mind begins racing on a Friday afternoon about ways to have a LIT weekend and be nothing but turnt. Which is okay, in theory. In reality, I have to be out in the cold for most of the night, spending money that I would rather spend on expanding my Tomy Takkies collection, leaving me inebriated for which I’ll have to pay dearly the next day. May be I’m just an old soul in a young body but the weekend sucks.

Even knowing all that, I am still not immune to the weekend.

The card payment system is the weekend of banking (in Uganda). For starters, banking is not a thing. It’s something people do if they must, say for salaries but if they have a choice, a bank will not be the choice. Banks are thieves that will put a charge on everything, withdrawals and deposits off the counter or by ATM. They will charge whenever they can, and that’s all the time. Secondly, the establishments that provide goods and services do not work in favor of a card payment system – for every five establishments, only one has a card payment option. This, by default, means that even if people wanted to carry out transactions by card (which they don’t), they can’t.

I recently found out that grown people, with enough information about banking, receive their salaries in their bank accounts, and withdraw it all to keep under the mattress. And this is done by people that have probably been robbed at least once or know someone that has been robbed in their homes. However, in their minds, after doing a SWOT analysis, they concluded that under their mattresses is safer than the bank.

I don’t know anyone that has ever been robbed because they used a card during a transaction, and neither do most people that quote fraud as a reason for not using card payment systems. May be we have all watched one too many movies. I guess that’s why it makes more sense for people to withdraw money outside Acacia Mall, then walk into Acacia Mall and carry out cash transactions even when most of the establishments there have a card payment option.

In all this, I have a question that keeps me up most nights – who then is using the card payment system because why else would banks continue to push the product? Although if I was a more organized individual, the question would be, why would anyone bother with card payment systems in Uganda?

Image Source