Got Style?
In whichever country you are, winning 275 pounds daily for the duration of a month would be considered a very luxurious prize to most people. That is 1925 pounds a week and approx. 8250 pounds in total. What could you do with that kind of money?
In the UK, you can treat yourself to extremely nice dinners every day, travel everywhere by taxi (well, maybe not, taxi’s are VERY expensive over there) and go for a nice holiday in Ibiza. Were you in the USA, your best bet would probably be to setup camp in Las Vegas for a month. Trying your luck there with $490 a day to blow must dramatically increase your odds of becoming a millionaire overnight. In Japan you could spoil yourself with electronics and in France you would be bathing in Champagne for a month.
I could keep going as the possibilities are endless and very tempting. However, except for the gambling-plan, an amount like this would not change someone’s life forever in the “Western world”.
I’m sure you can feel it coming, but in a country like Kenya 275 pounds could change a person’s life forever. 31.760 Shillings daily is a mind-blowing amount. You could buy a nice house, send a whole class of children to a good school or live the good life for a couple of years. Putting it in the bank might even sort a family out for the rest of their lives. Considering some people live off 100 shillings a day or less, saving it up and continuing their old lifestyle would allow them to live for approx. 26 years without having to work.
Of course, this last option is not realistic. We’re all human beings and receiving large amounts of money changes most of us in ways we can’t predict beforehand. We could intend to keep up our old lifestyle, but with so much money in the bank it just wont happen.
It’s like politicians and power here: everyone promises they will change the world and fight for the poor when they’re unelected. Once in power however, most tend to go for personal financial gains and protect only their own family and friends. Were all these people lying during their campaigns? I don’t think so. Some might have been, but I’m sure a lot of them had good intentions to start with. It’s the thing that power does to people and you can’t judge what it will do to you until you get it. As Abraham Lincoln said: “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”
Just as it’s easy to claim you WOULD fight for the poor and you WOULDN’T be corrupt when you’re not in power, it’s also not very difficult to critisize rich people when you don’t have much money yourself. As with politicians, there are people who don’t deserve their riches, but I’m sure there are also a lot who do. If someone has worked long and hard to earn his or her money, what’s wrong with them enjoying the fruits of their labour? However, what I can’t understand are the excesses…
Why does Cherie Blair (Tony Blair’s wife) have to spend 275 pounds a day on her hair? “Because it was campaining time” as some labour spokeswoman defended the expenses? Give me a break. Even from a campaigning point of view it seems much smarter to donate that money to a good cause and make a statement about it (“Cherie Blair sends 30 Kenyan children to school for a year instead of doing her hair!”) than to have the general public find out the First Lady is spending more on her curls a day than what John in the Street makes in a week.
Unfortunately, Cherie Blair’s hair is nothing compared to what the Beckham’s and other real stars spend on “styling” every day. Why do people do that? Why do we need 5 Ferrari’s, $10 million yachts and $20 million mansions as soon as we have buckets full of dollar bills? To me it seems one fast car, a nice house and dining out every night would suit me just fine. The rest could go to other people who are in need (wherever they are) and that would only add to my own happiness.
This last statement sounds very heroic of course, but I’m also far from being loaded at the moment. Who knows what I would do if I ever become rich? Maybe we should turn this into a small research-project: anyone else who currently agrees to give most of his future riches away drops me an email now, then as soon as one of us actually does hit the jackpot you explain the others why the world doesn’t work like that?
Originally published on Inside Africa (insideafrica.tv), 2006.