The Circle of Broke-ness

THE Lion King must be one of the best known animated films ever made, with the soundtrack, breath-taking imagery (that sunrise at the beginning still gets me) and they even threw in a bit of controversy with the Kimba the White Lion comparison. So even if you’ve never watched the movie, you’ve at least heard about it, right? I mean, people who claim they don’t even like animated films will make an exception for The Lion King. It’s like the Tom & Jerry of cartoon series. Whenever I tell someone, who’s not really into cartoons, how passionate I am about animation, they usually say, ‘Well, I like Tom & Jerry’, in an effort to create a connection between us. But back to The Lion King – it really moved a lot of people, didn’t it? There’s that scene after the stampede where Simba finds Mufasa on the ground, calls out for help, before finally breaking down in lonely miserable sobs and snuggling under his father’s lifeless paw. Don’t you feel a mango in your throat just thinking about it? We are offered some relief later in the film from Timon and Pumba as they tutor young Simba in the joys of Hakuna Matata lifestyle. I bet even now, there is a tourist somewhere in Kenya or Tanzania, desperately resisting the urge to burst into song after hearing a native Swahili speaker casually utter the famous line of that memorable chorus. There’s another famous scene near the beginning of the film, where after a playful hunting lesson, Mufasa explains to his son, how they are all part of the ‘Circle of Life’. Wow. I can’t tell you how many times people have used that line on me, in an attempt to convert me from my vegetarian ways (actually, I’m not pure vegetarian – I’m a pescatarian, i.e. I do eat fish – but apparently fish doesn’t count as meat in Rwanda). So, as little Simba is being taught to respect all living creatures, ‘from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope’, he comments on the fact that he and his dad (being lions and all), eat antelope. Mufasa responds with this, “When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connected in the great Circle of Life.” Now if I was an antelope – an antelope that spends half my day tearing across the savannah, a few centimetres from the jagged teeth of the lionesses that wants me for breakfast – and I found out that there was some lion in my grass, I would eat that grass with vengeance! I won’t chomp it down with fury. I’d try and chase around the field if I could. But I’m not an antelope – I’m a young woman. In fact, I’m a young businesswoman if you want to get more specific – and here in the business world, we have another kind of Circle. I call it – the Circle of Broke-ness. Let me show how it works. Let’s imagine that there’s this lady. Let’s say she’s 25 years old. She owns a multimedia business in, I don’t know, Kigali, for example. Now this lady is pretty good at the technical part of her work, but not so good at other elements of running a business, like following up on payments. So sometimes it seems like she spends more time stressing over late payments, than actually working on the stuff that she’s supposedly good at. Now, on this example of a day, she’s sitting at her desk mulling over how she’s going to pay the internet bill that month, when her landlord walks into the office and asks for the rent she owes him. The lady gulps and asks him to give her a few more days. Once he walks out, she quickly calls up one of the many clients that owe her enough money to pay that rent, and, once again, begs and pleads with them to pay. The client, biting his nails nervously, promises to pay her by tomorrow. Now that client, who happens to own a restaurant, calls up a woman who had taken a big group of her friends out for lunch last Sunday after her boss promised her that her salary would be paid that day. But, when she got the bill and went out to the ATM to withdraw the cash she discovered her account was empty! Somehow, she had convinced the restaurant owner to let her pay in a week. But the restaurant owner was now on the phone, telling her he really needed the money. So, panicking, the woman calls her older brother and asks him for a loan. Her older brother who is planning to repaint the dilapidated stairwell of his building is short on cash. So he calls the lady who owns a multimedia business and tells her he actually needs his rent money today.So you see? They were all connected in the great Circle of Broke-ness. This is one Circle I’d like to break out of – uh – at least I would, if I were the lady in the example. Now, of course, there is a Circle of Wealth that exists too. Every now and then, I slip into that one as well – sorry, not me, I meant the lady in the example. The Circle of Wealth works the same way, just reverse: The woman who took her friends out for lunch actually got her salary on time – the restaurant owner then pays the multimedia entrepreneur – the entrepreneur pays her landlord – the landlord has enough cash to not only paint the stairwell but also the railing of the building – the building looks so good the multimedia entrepreneur has more clients walking in – those clients are usually hungry after walking up and down that painted stairwell and go for lunch at their favourite restaurant (guess which one?) - the restaurant owner decides to spend some of his increased profit on rehiring the entrepreneur to create an advert that will attract even more clients – the entrepreneur spends her increased profit on renting out extra office space from the landlord to set up an animation studio. From the studio, a stunning beautiful internationally acclaimed animated film is produced that some people will later compare to The Lion King (minus the controversy of course). But that’s just an example. --- Akaliza Keza Gara owns a multimedia company, Shaking Sun Ltd, in Kigali, Rwanda.