The Sunday Mail
ADMIRE sat forlornly on the entrance to the general manager’s office, twiddling his fingers on his cellphone in one hand, while holding an advance salary application form in the other.
A chatty lady, whom he passed off as his sister, was sitting next to him.
On being ushered into the office, he frenetically scratched his head before handing over his form.
“Morning boss, I have a slight problem. The rains that fell in Rusape last week damaged the roof of my mother’s house and she has been sleeping in the open ever since. This is why I have come with my sister to help me explain the dire situation,” he said.
Though he could see that he was being sold bottled smoke, the general manager approved the application and off Admire went to dance rhumba with women of easy virtue and the odd hangers-on.
Welcome to the wet season, where people make all sorts of funny excuses to wring cash from employers, friends, relatives and even well-wishers.
Called “fibs”, “lies”, “nhema”, “vharazi”, “nyepimbi” or “manyepo”, people largely have long, wild and unrealistic tales to tell whenever it rains.
While I share the excitement with everyone over the predicted normal rainfall season, especially after latching from one drought to the other, the rainy season is not without its fair share of challenges. I stand to be corrected, but people appear to have a penchant for telling lies whenever it rains. Some lies are so animated that even the very people who tell them end up taking them for gospel truth.
While growing up in Glen Norah, we used to be told of a thief who was a master of his craft so much that he could steal milk from someone’s cup of tea and leave them drinking black tea.
It was a lie!
But such are the kind of lies people tell during the rainy season. Lazy women who do not take kindly to staying in rural areas tilling the land to produce food crops for subsistence and to sell often complain of headaches and other health challenges just to stay in town.
“I am having this nagging headache. It just started last week and I do not know how I will manage since this year I intended to grow crops at our rural home. Someone must be using juju on us so that we do not succeed,” you hear women telling their husbands to excuse themselves from being dispatched to the rural areas.
Some men are fooled by their wives to the point of buying medication for them.
The rainy season is associated with floods, lightning, mudslides, and people will never stop taking advantage of these weather phenomena to get cash from their peers.
“My grandmother drowned during a heavy downpour last night”; “my house was burnt by a lightning bolt yesterday” and “there are mudslides in my rural home, I need to check on my family members” — these are yarns you hear from people seeking either cash or time away from work during the rainy season.
The wet season might be critical for the development of the country’s agro-based economy, but this is a period when people lie through their teeth.
Thieves also normally strike when it rains. They take advantage of thunderstorms to camouflage the sounds they make during their criminal enterprise. Violent men often beat their wives when it rains because they know no one will come to the rescue.
“Did you know that there is no time as dangerous as the rainy season? This is the time when you wake up to find cattle, goats and chicken stolen. You can even wake up to find your car without an engine,” an elderly man once told this writer.
Jailbirds also have a unique way of wriggling their way out of the hard work that comes during the rainy season.It is believed that some of them eat a lot of chillies to raise their body temperature in order to pass themselves as unfit for duty. Others deliberately injure themselves with hoes just to get some days off.
Parenting similarly becomes difficult.
Children have to be always monitored to keep away from water bodies where they risk drowning or contracting bilharzia.
Rains are good; they can and should never be wished away, but they have their fair share of challenges.
Inotambika mughetto.
