Do you have a loose 5k?
You’ll be at home on a Friday evening with your family or alone. You receive a phone call from your friend. In the background, inebriated baddies are singing along to some promiscuity-inducing hit song and your friend screams into your ear, “Boi, do you have a loose five thousand? Payable month end!”
Zambians have been going on about ‘new money’ in the last few weeks but one would argue that the correct term is ‘new banknotes’.
Because only new money would be a loose five pin sent via mobile money knowing it’s going toward copious rounds of alcohol, platters and … rounds, if I may volunteer a vivid picture.
See, there are men that think nothing of living in the moment and dropping a bunch of ten pristine K500 notes on what ultimately finds its way through the alimentary canal of the barely dressed people they just met.
The JCTR’s Basic Needs and Nutrition Basket for March 2025 clocked in at ZMW 11,546.87 for a family of five in Lusaka. This means the man with an overly active social life in the capital city is feeding grown men and women the equivalent of half a month’s household needs in two hours or less.
You’ll be hard pressed to find a family or single man with a loose five pin on a Friday night. Yet there are outliers among us.
And we must honestly learn from the Zambian man consistently fundraising a loose stash of Dr Kalyalya’s currency every seven days.
It takes a special Zambian man to extract money from friends and family then proceed to spend it on a platter for a mistress that boasts about their data bundles remaining the same price even after Trump’s tariff hikes. Now that’s what you call a current affair.
If he has the capacity, talent and shamelessness to call up to three people on a Friday and secure money for a bucket of ciders, why isn’t he applying the same grit to a business idea?
The answer is obvious. Because he is enabled by the men that have not set any boundaries for their resources.
They will go all week posting useful or informative WhatsApp status updates that go without any comments or reactions. Around Thursday afternoon to Friday evening, the emojis start flowing in.
Why? Because they tend to have a loose one thousand to give away and it’s a massive ego stroke to be the man with liquidity. After all, it’s just a K500. But to do this every other week?
Both men have no boundaries regarding money and friendship. One wastes easy money, the other gets their status validated in a vicious cycle.
Discernment serves you well when you hear the desperation in his voice, asking if you have a loose five thousand. Continue enabling this behaviour and soon, you’ll be the one making that exact call for your children’s empty stomachs.
