By: Megameno Shinana

Christmas is around the corner and just hours away we will embrace 2023 but holly-molly, what a hectic year it has been.

Granted, 2022 has not been a pretty year for most of us and the economy seemed to have been in some kind of a tail-spin with intermittent increases in fuel prices, a general increase in the price of food, and repo rate hikes.

Pretty much a good part of the year has seen tremendous efforts to have the population fully vaccinated and get our lives back on the rails of normalcy.

We have, throughout the tumult of it all, learned to travel again, open up our borders again, and embrace visitors with very little suspicion as the Covid-19 variants simmered down in their ferocity.

It has been good to have the crowds back again and hopping from one event to the other without having to deal with some morose security guards checking one’s temperature or asking for face masks.

The year 2022 arrived with a heavy cloud pregnant with the very essence of hope as we scampered away from the death, the rot and the devastation which routed us out of our senses even as we dealt with the collective trauma which came along with the virus.

It has been a tough time for nearly everyone who has been trying to service their loans with the banks and fight back the menace of property repossessions.

It has equally been tough for civil servants whose daring act to down tools was met by a 3% increment which bangled up, albeit a little, the finance minister’s fiscal plans.

But there have been silver linings to the dark cloud, and the economic chaos of the year has also brought with it some success stories, and promising showers of hope for both our economy and our people.

The discovery of oil offshore has been a major boost to all our confidence even as some of us continue to question whether indeed we have really found oil.

The president and his team have been in and out of the country selling the green hydrogen dream and international media coverage has been quite favourable, seeding again the grains of hope in a time of economic adversity.

The proverbial Namibian House has not been and will never be a perfect house.

It shall always be a place of conflicting opinions, of partisan differences, of progressive and non-progressive forces but above all, our differences in belief should not challenge our ways of life as a people as well as the collective national aspirations embodied in our blueprints.

The Swapo party congress has been another major highlight which has cast into the crystal ball, the charm and possibility of a woman president come 2024.

Debates in the national assembly have been exciting, boring and at times petty and at times tragically not inspiring.

Young parliamentarians have brought interesting motions in the house.

All this is progress, albeit gradualist, for a nation that is trying to rediscover itself and pick itself from the doldrums and cast a positive image in an ever-changing world where leadership and a strong sense of nationhood are the very foundation of progress.

As we celebrate this Christmas, may we be bound by the collective understanding of what this festive affair is all about.

It is about family and sharing, it is about embracing our neighbours in the true spirit of brotherhood and sisterhood, it is about forgetting our troubles for a moment and seeing the simplistic yet infinite beauty of life.

And days away from Sunday, we shall see ourselves walking into the aisles of 2023, a year that should bring about a paradigm shift in the manner we conduct our lives and do our business.

On behalf of the team at The Villager and our sister radio station, Eagle FM, we wish you good luck and happiness, and may this coming year blossom the flowers of our dreams and bring forth the refreshing fruits of astronomic breakthroughs and success stories.

Merry Christmas and a happy prosperous New Year!