By Nenenji Mlangeni

You see, many a times I wonder how a lot of these Godly rich guys, who managed to transform their rags to riches status operate, think, dictate, decide but also how they enforce their attitudes for the benefit of the slumbering development at large.

Whether it was written or not, I don’t know, but these richest moguls have that kind of public God fearing appearance that even ends up betraying the public and the poorest as a whole in the end. The public is even at many times forced to vomit unnecessary opinions about them, under the influence of real frustrations.

One such a guy, richest and seemingly gospel guy is Bishop Simama who owns one of the biggest extravagantly-looking churches in town. On paper, you would think he is such a scarce benefit to the nation in terms of both the injection and circulation of cash in our economy, and also in terms of spreading the gospel of God to the lost poor souls, and you would expect him to behave in a most Godly sensible manner. However,  in action, you cannot even believe what he thinks about.

Look, we have Bwaila hospital, famously known as Bottom(Botomu) just after Lilongwe Bridge, near Chiluli’s magnificent tiled flat. The hospital, am told, was centrally located there by Kamuzu, and it is one of the busiest free government hospitals in Malawi.

The hospital was deliberately elevated to help in uplifting the lives of the poor who have nothing for their daily levity,  those who cannot afford paying for healthy services. It was strictly established as a push factor for the healthy status of the have-nots. Ask any woman from my Likuni side, they will tell you plainly that they always rush there whenever they want to give birth, or are suffering from anything.

People come from very far outskirts of rural areas in Lilongwe, many walking on bare foot just to benefit from this free hospital not because it is in town, but because it is free and they are swimming in absolute poverty, and they cannot manage to pay for their healthy services not because they are stingy, but because they have nothing to even feed for themselves.

Now, look, filling stations are places of high intensity of danger, and those who have witnessed international catastrophic fires emanating from filling stations and or fuel tanks of fallen cars will agree with me that it’s an epidemic that is very silent but too hard to contain in times of its eruption.

Suffice to say, fires emanating from fuels cover large distances and it is difficult to extinguish it because it always extinguishes the extinguisher. Worse still, it is too quick to spread, it’s danger, I mean real danger.

With these free facts and many world evidences at hand, who would think a God fearing rich guy like Bishop Simama, who owns a church to symbolise the care that he has for his children, can think of allocating and constructing a magnificent filling station near a hospital that carters for the poverty stricken individuals, individuals who are his sheep?

Sheep that are in dire need of a healthy recovery service ? Am not here to judge but this is too evil, sinful, immoral, wrong, morally wrong, wrongful, bad, iniquitous, corrupt, black-hearted, ungodly, unholy, irreligious, unrighteous, sacrilegious, profane, blasphemous, impious, base, mean, vile, you can finish the race.

Rich men like Simama, who are busy masquerading as church goers and God fearing testimonies for their riches are also the ones who are in the forefront in spearheading and activating dangerous traps for the lives of the poorest countrymen. Not only that, but threatening the lives of the poorest countrymen in their healthy recovering locations, imagine how hell is that ?

And a very disturbing and uncalled for scenario is the fact that he has been warned by the authorities to avoid putting his filling station dream into fruition. As a rich man of God, you wouldn’t think it could take him millions of seconds to think about it,  but ironically, he still went ahead with his poorest ambitious plan. Am told now he is busy bribing political parties, administrators,  departments, authorities et al in a bid to still open his filling station at that wrong place. Very pathetic rich guys. Rich in cash but poorest in thoughts.

Everyone who knows Simama, cannot believe that with all the stacks of billions he owns would be unable to look for a proper area to construct his filling point. That place will have to be used an expansion of the road in future. We already have unnecessary queues right there. And the distance between the filling station and the road itself is too small. He is in principle promoting the queuing problem right there.

It is indeed more important to be rich in humanity than to possess racks on racks and be more poorer in wisdom. In this case of Simama, I see the useless power of wealth overtaking a Samaritan human character,  I see wealth running to decide faster than the spiritual gospel itself, I see a noble common sense that’s too cheap being overrun by a pure financial bondage.

In Simama, I typically see a heart full of rags on rags of wisdom as opposed to his racks on racks worldly materials. My prayer is that whenever I will be like Simama, never let a financial bondage to overtake my good humour and wisdom. Simama needs more praying players and prayers.

If i can use a nation’s analogy, I would say Simama is ‘USA’ in worldly materials, but ‘Malawian’ in wisdom.