Ghetto Blast: With kids you come second best

filthy women and a visibly shy teenager walked in. The team —which appeared to have no time to even exchange greetings — shot straight to the lounge with eyes so red as scarlet.
They were holding a tattered bag, which gave a glimpse of equally dirty personal effects inside.
“We have come to leave this girl. Ane nhumbu yemwana wenyu. Thanks very much tozoonana,” said the elderly ladies, leaving behind their daughter who had been impregnated by Oscar’s son Oliver.
While all this was happening, Oliver jumped out of his bedroom through the window leaving his parents to deal with the strangers, of course knowing that his shenanigans were now an open secret.
Only a pack of mbanje and a few matchsticks that lay on his bed bore testimony that he was nearby.
Barely a week before this incident, Oliver had been warned against bringing his girlfriend home but he did not take heed.
He decided to throw caution to the wind.
Yakange yadeuka isisaorereki.
Across the street, James and Memory had their peace disturbed by policemen and sniffer dogs following leads that their son James (Junior) was into drugs.
Samson and Christine had also not had a quiet afternoon. Countless women had shattered all the windowpanes to their Budiriro home because the couple’s daughter had reportedly snatched the husband of one of the bellicose women.
Blah Jose and his wife Pfugamai had locked themselves in their house. What with a busload of touts that had been hired to assault them because their daughter had blown off the love candle without a kombi driver’s approval.
“Mudhara nhasi unobata moto. Mwana wako akadya ngeke dzedu. Akatinha machips edu nhasi akuti njuga hapachina. Totokudhonza huro ngezha,” shouted one of the hired touts while charging towards the house.
It was a real yowee, yowee situation.
Such are the happenings in the ghetto nowadays gentle reader when parents are being made to pay for their children’s sins. Children are a gift from God, but there are times when you wish the cup had come to pass.
They can shake you left, right and centre and leave you considering how lucky your parents were to have a child as understanding as yourself under their roof.
Some children are a disaster.
If they spend the day at home, be sure there is something wrong out there. Vabereki varikuneswa maneka mudzimba umu. They are forced to accept daughters-in-law for their jobless offspring.
It’s kind of a fashion craze.
There is a kind of relationship between today’s youths and pregnancy that is yet to be explained.
Unemployed youths with such a penchant for beer that they sell all their clothes to get the wise waters are having girls elope for them. It’s not to say the girls are saints. They are equally to blame and an urgent solution needs to be found to ease their parents’ burden of having to look after the unwanted and usually unplanned offspring of their jobless children.
Some girls steal cash from their parents’ houses to spend quality time with a jobless boyfriend in town.
There is an innumerable number of girls that bribe gardeners and spoon and turners (slang for housemaids) to let their boyfriends into the family homes.
“Sisi chingoregai Thomas apinde mumba. Tinozukupai chibhanzi. Siyanai nezvakawanda sistreni tinoona yekutamba. Musangoudza daddy because vangatidambure nekutiona,” you hear some schoolgirls negotiating with the housemaid to allow a boyfriend into the family home.
As I commit pen to paper gentle reader, there are a good number of parents who have been graduated into grandparents at less than 40 years of age.
Last week, I met a 36-year-old grandmother who told me her daughter had been impregnated at just 16.
There is just no happiness in most homes.
Most parents have become imprisoned by the actions of their children under the roofs they call home. Today’s children have turned into monsters.
They dictate when their parents should go to sleep, the amount of pocket money they should be given and the kind of music these people should play.
“Daddy chimbobvisai music yenyu yechibharanzi because pane bhebhi rangu ririkuuya. Please don’t bring masese here because it does not augur well for me for my peers to see that mudhara wangu anorova Scud,” you hear some children tell their parents.
Some children will not open the gate for you.
They will be busy watching your television set, using your electricity, sitting on your sofa enjoying your food yet they leave you at the mercy of thieves outside.
Most children of today are a real nuisance.
They have the temerity to ask your father and mother as to when they will return to the rural areas so they can have their bedrooms to themselves.
The coarse and unpolished language they use when addressing you is as if they are talking to a friend. Some children will threaten to beat you up for disturbing them with the hooter.
“Iwe mudhara chibhero chechimota chako chine ruzha. Chenjera kurohwa uchititadzisa kuona TV zvakanaka,” I heard a certain bloke being told straight in the face by his son.
Jobless children will even ask you to pay lobola for their lovers on their behalf and condemn you to the life of always having to look for money if you are not careful.
Spare the rod and spoil the child, says the Bible, but with kids of today the rod can be turned against you.
They can even get you arrested for abuse.