I’m not saying anything…

I wish I could say something final, authoritative even, on the markets which seem to be passing on the unfashionable tendency of catching fire when no-one expects to but I can’t.

Zomba market was up in smoke the other day. So, too, was Nkhata-bay. Mangochi market was razed to the ground. The cause of the fires was unknown; but burning candles were suspected to have caused the fires. Mzuzu ‘Taifa’ market was burnt, not just once, but twice. Cause, again, unknown, but the candle, again, is the main suspect. For someone visiting Malawi for the first time, he would think the country never had candles in a long time.

Now, we have Ndirande Market. Again, cause unknown, but anything from the usual suspect, the candle, to an electrical fault, owing to the fact the fire started a few minutes after electricity had been restored (and Ndirande gets more than its fair share of blackouts) was culpable.

So far, our ‘forensic experts’ (and I’m assuming we have any) have failed to get at the root of the fires.

But I have become suspicious of these fires (and that’s not because Ndirande Market, my home market, is involved). When the market was burning down, I was about 10km away (and I guess that exonerates me as a suspect).

When I heard Ndirande Market was burning down, the first thought that crossed my mind was not about where I would get my relish for the next day. Rather, as I suggested to a colleague, I suspected more than a candle burning out its loneliness away.

Days later, I still can’t shake off that feeling. I have tried to but I just can’t.

How is it that of late we have too many lonely candles which seem so single-minded to wage a vindictive war against humanity? Is there some company that is manufacturing these malfunctioning candles which seem to possess foul-tempered souls?

But then I would be foolish enough to give inanimate objects like candles the credit, as it were, for wrecking havoc on humanity. Still, I need to find suspects as an armchair forensic expert and that brings me to the vendors themselves.

For quite a while, we have had complaints from people saying money is not as abundant as it used to be during you-know-who’s tenure. I’m not so sure if they plucked their money from the trees then but I’m certain that some people (at least I know a few) got loans (as they still do now) from banks, other micro-finance lending institutions and loan sharks.

Loan-sharks haven’t learnt the language of mercy yet nor have they mastered the skills of negotiation. So, once you get a loan from them, you have to pay, even if it means when you buried and rotting; they’ll still find a way to make you pay.

Banks and micro-finance lending institutions can be merciful when it suits them and not the customer. And that’s very rare.

So, weighed down by the interests rates, I somehow suspect some traders could be starting the market fires (that is, after they have already cleared their goods) and beg for mercy from the lending institutions. But that’s just my suspicion and it’s premised on the fact that a desperate person will employ desperate measures.

High on my list of suspicions, however, is politics. But having said that, I will let the world to judge me but my worry now is: Which market burns next?

Watch out!