Ghetto Blast: Tenants: Why always on the receiving end?

the skinning and ended up wishing lightning struck more beasts in the area so they could get a salty chew to titillate their taste buds. Those who heard of the news later kicked themselves for not being at the right place when it mattered most.
Unfortunately, the landlord had no fridge. He had no choice, but to push the burden of keeping the meat fresh over to his tenant. The tenant dutifully stored the meat in his freezer and gave the landlord’s family whatever they required on request.
However, during this period, the lodger was assigned by his superiors at work to attend to a breakdown out of town and failed to return home that night. That is the day he rued why he ever agreed to store the landlord’s meat.
“What kind of a person are you? What behaviour is this? Why make me eat vegetables when you know your freezer is full of my meat? If you did not want to store the meat for me, why did you not say so in the first place? Do you think I can even trust that what you are telling me is the truth?” the landlord bellowed without giving his tenant a chance to explain himself.
The way the landlord shivered as he spoke and his bloodshot eyes told the story of someone who was agitated. The landlord’s wife who had suggested the previous night that the tenant was now big-headed had complicated matters.
Here he was, in trouble because the landlord felt he had not been given a good bite of the sherry.
Such are the situations most lodgers have to contend with in the ghetto. Landlords rule. They behave worse than absolute monarchs. If its monthend, they want their money pronto no matter your wife is in hospital or that your mother passed away last night.
Bill payments are demanded promptly despite the fact that the money is not remitted to the requisite offices on time.
Some landlords do not even pay that money at all and you are surprised to find water and electricity supplies disconnected even when you are fully-paid up.
Whatever the landlord says goes and if you are not comfortable with it, the best way out is to find alternative accommodation and disappear with lightning speed.
Unorohwa nezveusiku ukaita nharo nalandlord.
If you happen to buy a new fridge or stove, you are best taking delivery of these in the landlord’s absence.
Even when you buy groceries, it pays to literally smuggle these into the house because if you are detected, the rent goes up.
When cooking, ensure the doors and windows are tight because any flavour denoting a good life is sure enough to trigger and upward review in rent.
A landlord is a powerful person gentle reader. Ndichamakwengwerengwe chaiye. So powerful have landlords become that they feel elevated by God to dictate which people should pay you a visit, how many times, at what time and when.
They even play match-maker no matter your are not related. “Eh . . . mukoma! At this house we uphold Christian values.
This business of bringing ladies in trousers should end. You should not close the door whenever you get a female visitor,” some landlords will tell you straight in the eye. Others even invite their friends and relatives over whenever they want to caution you.
Being a lodger at some houses is as if you have committed a crime. It’s an undeclared prison sentence you will be serving. Unenge wakatenherwa mukajeri kako wega. It can be worse if you are not married.
A landlord will assign his ugly unmarried daughter who is an “off-layer” to do your laundry and the dishes. But if that relationship persists, you are immediately ordered to take her hand in marriage on charges of enjoying wifely favours from her.
If your sister pays you a visit, they demand her national identity card to ensure you are not double-crossing their daughter with her. During their parties, your radio automatically becomes the source of entertainment.
Even your CDs and record albums are played and left directly exposed to the sun and should you complain that becomes the end of your tenure. I won’t explain what happens to you if the albums go missing. Some tenants are treated as sex objects.
If you turn down a proposal from the landlord’s brother you are gone. The same applies to male lodgers who refuse to rub lips with anyone chosen for them by the landlord.
Some landladies may even force you to be intimate with them and if you want to behave the way Joseph did when confronted by Portipha’s wife you are finished. If a tenant is hated in the ghetto, they are made to clean the toilet every day of the week.
It’s more than murder to bath before the landlord.
The father of the house must bath first, then yourself last. If you drive to work, you must always be alert to the fact that the front passenger seat is reserved for the landlord.
“Kudza muridzi wemba yaunogara kuti mazuva ehuroja hwako awedzerwe panyika,” yours truly heard someone adulterating this commandment which implores on children to honour their parents.