Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe – An online satiricist has declared that she no longer has things she wants to write about. Zema Kargbo has told her fellow satiricists at The Incidentally that she really enjoys writing, and often finds time to sit around and just write her thoughts down onto paper, which is how she started her satirical blog (and later podcast), which she dubbed “The Saucy Spaghetto” after the tomato-based pasta loving slums she grew up in. Zema’s blog covered issues such as Boko Haram, Africa’s economic and political decline since its peak as the seed of humanity, the local eccentric manner of replacing cheese with Dijon mustard in sandwiches and much like The Incidentally, any damn thing that she wanted to write about.
Zema tells us that she is studying for her exams in agricultural biology and is also working part time as a print room operator for MBCA Bank. She describes it as an enriching time in her life, but tells us that she no longer has the time to read the news or have an opinion, as all her time is caught up in socialising, printing and learning about crops. Zema says that writing a mix of criticism and entertainment is tiring – she used to spend days watching the news, hoping for a glimmer of an idea to pop into her head. She tells us, with some shame, that sometimes she would just copy a news article word for word, and just change a few things here and there and add a funny picture. We would write more about Zema, but to say anything more would be to give away trade secrets.
While here at the Incidentally, we are sad to see Zema stop writing (as we would have liked to have her on as a guest writer), we are also glad that she has helped bring this issue out into the open. Everywhere around the world, people are trying to make their opinions matter by putting them on their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds – Zema’s problem is an extension of that “wanting other people to give a shit” attitude that is so pervasive. Satire, in her world, is a tool that masks the intrusive opinion of the writer and is not entirely honest with its audience. The result of an article: laughter, followed by quizzical pondering about why the world is such a strange and sometimes awful place and a distinct awareness of a problem that suddenly became very real because the reader just had a little chuckle. Satire is a serious business, and Zema shouldn’t feel bad about shedding the weighty burden of trying to change society’s thinking.
Zema has told us that she is keen to start taking photos of puppies and trying to make a name for herself as a food blogger on Instagram instead of continuing her work at The Saucy Spaghetto. We wish her the very best
Incidentally – we wholly realise that satiricist isn’t actually a word, however, we (at The Incidentally) unashamedly defend its right to be “a thing”.
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Photo Credit: 1000 Bulbs
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