At All Cost, Avoid A Punishing January
With inflation at an all time high and confidence in the economy of the country at an all time low, next January will serve a lot of people some rude awakening. As in, traditionally, people, especially salary earners have always struggled in the first month of the year. I would never forget in a hurry the lamentation of a big brother some years back after he had his "dirty December."
He looked at me and said, "My guy, January na the longest month of the year o." This dude painted the town red that time. We ate and drank to our fullest. December 26 and 31 were spent downing exquisite alcohols and spirits. He really made that December one of the best I ever had. But when hunger started biting hard the next January, not even me could save him. He learnt the hard way; I learnt from his mistakes too.
My budget-friendly Christmas celebration plan started some months back. One of the nonnegotiables of Christmas in my household is fried chicken plus jollof rice. In the previous years we either bought a fowl or were given one for Christmas. However, with the economy causing a jolt in the finances of people around me, I'm not expecting anyone to give me a broiler and that's mw facing reality.
With that already clarified, I set out to secure the Christmas fowl way before the yuletide. Right now an average broiler is going for about 30k, and that's for the scrawny, underfed ones. The robust ones are priced at around 50k - an eye watering sum indeed for some meat that wouldn't last more than two days. Add to that the ridiculous amount of a bag of rice and a 25 litre keg of groundnut oil and you just know we are in for some deep shit.
Funnily enough, the price is just picking up pace. By the third week of December, there would've been at least a five percent increase in the price of the above mentioned goods in response to the yearly last minute scramble. So, one of the things I did to protect myself from a painful January was to get the things needed for Christmas celebration way before the rush hour of December.
As for broilers, I bought two day-old chicks late September and have been nurturing them at my own pace. One died mysteriously while the other has fattened up a lot and we are still two and half weeks removed from Christmas. So, I raised a broiler this time to save me the extra cost of going out to buy one at an exorbitant price. It wasn't totally cost free, but I already bought feed that will last it till the day of its death.
Another thing I did was a little bit drastic but necessary. For every Christmas/New Year celebration we slaughter fowls on two occasions: during Christmas and new year. This time, it will be different. Once the sole surviving broiler is slaughtered for Christmas, something more budget friendly will go for the new year celebration. Shikena. I don't want a painful January.