No one knew it was coming. They went to bed sure of espressos, silk ties and salon styled hair and slept like babes in the wood completely unaware that there would be no cure for their sleep deprivation, fashion crisis and mangled weaves come morning.
Martha Mukaiwa was the first victim. She turned left in Carl List Haus with every intention of purchasing the espresso that was all that stood between her and certain collapse on the treadmill on the fifth floor and let out a scream so earth shattering, a guard nearby rushed from his post before muttering furiously about what was clearly not a crisis.
Only it was. Square Café was gone. Closed and covered in red and white paper that said the same word over and over and over again.
BROLL.
It seemed to laugh at her, taunt her, even, as she headed towards the elevators and realised she would never eat Square Café’s N$10 mini quiches again, let alone be hit on by the cute barista who buoyed her ego right until she walked past her gym’s circus mirrors and contemplated an end to misery.
Later, thinking she would grab a quick bite at Fresh ‘n Wild in Old Mutual Plaza on her way to the FNCC, she found the same thing.
Broll had been there and they’d covered Fresh ‘n Wild’s homemade iced tea and gourmet salads with their red and white calling card that seemed to be spreading like a rash. (Not the good kind you get from frolicking on grass. The bad kind you get from frolicking on whores.)
Though they were the most piercing and interspersed between deafening tummy rumbles, Martha’s weren’t the only screams heard that day.
A woman who had got her weave wet filming PDK’s ‘Summer Party’ rushed to Ndilianna Hair Studio and almost pulled out what was left of her hair at the sight of it closed and wrapped in Broll paper.
Worried that someone would see her looking like something the cat declined to drag in, the woman rushed out of Town Square past Les Nobles Exclusive Boutique where she had bought her boyfriend a red and white polka dot tie for Valentine’s day the year before.
Ironically, the colour scheme matched the paper which draped the shut store’s doors as the Brollpocalypse continued to take took hold of rental spaces around the city centre.
Whether the establishments closed because they could no longer afford to pay the rent or each had simply decided that they would operate from elsewhere was beyond what could be gleaned from the plague of red and white paper.
Instead passersby were left to wonder whether it could really be that business owners peddling such different services could all have packed and boarded up because Windhoekers just didn’t want coffee or salad, silk ties or salon hair.
What whispered was the idea that perhaps consumers simply did not want them at the exorbitant prices that were being charged to pay the equally exorbitant rental prices which meant fair few dined and did their hair so business owners could not afford to pay their rent.
Legend would call it a vicious cycle in the shape of a balloon that eventually popped and rained red and white confetti all over the new year.
Yet life carried on. People walked past their favourite places and some were sad to see the end of establishments at which they had only window shopped. However, most of them would put the endless red and white out of their minds and think even less about their existence in a country ravaged by monopolies.
In case it is unclear, the paper was advertising space for hire. It was an invitation to the next little man with a big dream to call Broll to get their share of prime dream growing real estate. For six months, twelve or eighteen, if they were lucky, but mostly until four walls began to cost them more than they could sell.
And they moved one month, one week and one day closer to being a casualty of the Brollpocalypse.
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