The Sunday Mail
Rosenthal Mutakati
WHEN Ruramai went to take a shower, his uncle’s family reached for his bag, emptied the contents and started repacking his belongings one by one.
They feared he could have helped himself to goods from their imposing mansion.
“Nyatsoongororai kuti hapana chatorwa here nemunhu uyu?” his uncle’s wife ordered her children in hushed tones to camouflage her evil enterprise.
Meanwhile, she was keeping an eagle’s eye on the bathroom door for fear of being detected.
“I grew up poor myself. I understand what people in that life station can do. He always visits us though we have never been to his house. He is forcing himself on us, so he is after something,” she purred, oblivious to the fact that she was sowing seeds of hate in her children.
Luckily, Ruramai had not taken anything.
In his bag were his tattered jeans and a torn blanket to keep himself warm.
Though painful, such are the challenges the poor endure at the hands of their well-heeled relatives.
There seems to be an unwritten script somewhere that the poor are thieves and frequent homes of their rich relatives to steal.
You cannot prepare a meal for a well-off relative and they easily eat it without grumbling or claiming to be full.
Somehow it also seems to be always the rule that the rich do not take car rides with their poor relatives.
“Never lose guard. These people are thieves and dabble in muti. Never trust them whenever they come near you,” you hear some women discussing on their way to church.
“Whenever a poor relative pays a visit, I make sure I do not cook for them. The moment you expose such people to sausages and regular hot meals you would have invited trouble. Where were they all along when I was climbing up the ladder of success?
“Each man for himself and God for us all. Who said I should share the little I have with almost everyone when they do not do the same. The moment a poor man comes to my house, I give them work to do in the garden because someone cannot come and sit expecting to eat for nothing,” I heard a colleague saying to her peers.
Being poor in this day and age is seemingly criminal.
It is not unusual to find an elderly person being roughed up by young children simply because they are poor.
“Nyarara apo mudhara; unotaurei iwe usina mari?” I heard an elderly man being told straight to his face by someone young enough to be his grandchild.
In some instances, you become the butt of almost all jokes.
Gentle reader, society tends to ridicule the poor rather than help them.
“I was shocked at my sister’s funeral in Mt Darwin. No one offered me food or even water to bath yet young children from my rich cousins’ families were being showered with all the niceties. Even during family discussions you are not consulted because you lack the financial muscle,” a certain elderly man told this writer during a trip into town this week.
“Ah, ah, ah poverty is like rotten meat. No one wants it near them and the moment people know you are poor, they do not want to associate with you. That is why the poor sleep at rich people’s funerals but when the tables turn, the rich will always claim to be busy or tied up with important engagements,” the old man said with tears welling in his eyes.
Besides always being mistaken for thieves and having to contend with menial tasks at most social and economic gatherings, I consider being born poor as a blessing and it makes one look at life in its rightful colours.
Inotambika mughetto.
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