Andrew
OWNING property in the big city is considered a milestone, but the journey thereto is no stroll in the park.
It is littered with trials and tribulations that the faint-hearted stop midway.
One major dividend in the matrix is the builder.
Sadly, most of the characters are very untrustworthy in the strictest sense of the word.
Their challenges border from pure ignorance to poor workmanship and truancy.
Called “muvaki”, “bhiridha”, “contractor” or “dhakaman” these characters can make you rue your decision to hire them in the first instance.
Some builders will never make any meaningful progress despite being paid to the last cent, and all they are known for are demands for food and extra material which they barely need.
Relationships between most people and their builders have often ended at the police stations across the length and breadth of our “teapot-shaped” motherland.
“I hired this bloke to do work for me but all I get are excuses and reports of him being always away at funerals. I wonder if he still has any relatives left as we speak,” one workmate once told me.
“Wangu ndaitoda kumubeta chaiko. Imharapatsetsetse yemunhu iyoyo,” she said as she threw her hands in the air in disgust.
But she is not alone.
Mr Pomerai Nzarachirombo had his own challenges.
He said the builder he once hired would sell his cement to neighbours which resulted in lots of delays in the completion of his house.
“The guy made me a regular customer at the hardware. I had to do away with him.”
Some builders are known to be sweet-tongued monsters who may run away with the wife, daughter or sister of the person who hires them.
They know no manners at all and are quick to anger even at the slightest of delays in payment.
As I commit pen to paper gentle reader, there are scores of people who are nursing injuries inflicted on them by some of the builders they hired.
A lot more have financial injuries after the builder misread the plan and ended up committing resources to wrong dimensions.
Builders also usually fight among themselves over money and the moment the head is paid; he starts running away from his peers.
“All was well until the main builder got paid. From that instance he then started absenting himself, leaving his brigades broke and having to retrace their footsteps back home.
Gentle reader, if you want to see poverty visit you in its rightful colours, hire an inexperienced builder who barely knows anything except demanding payment.
These are the characters who run away the day the inspector comes to scrutinise the project.
Gentle reader, we need to closely monitor those we hire to do work for us.
Inotambika mughetto.
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