Online Reporter
Eish bafowethu… this week’s stories made even Bra Binzy clean his glasses twice just to make sure he was reading correctly. People are falling in love online, in churches and some are flirting with pure madness. As usual, your resident umjolo mechanic is here to service your hearts, tune your brains and tighten the bolts of your dignity. Let’s dive into the madness.
MY HUSBAND ACCIDENTALLY PAID LOBOLA FOR THE WRONG WOMAN
Dear Bra Binzy,
My husband is a village boy, who sometimes drinks too much. Last month, his uncles sent him to deliver part of my lobola balance to my mother’s family in Nyamandlovu. He went with his cousins who were also drunk.
Bra Binzy, instead of going to my mother’s homestead, these fools took the money to the wrong family, my mother’s neighbour who shares the same surname. Those people accepted the money with smiles and ululations.
Now the neighbour is claiming my husband has “married her daughter” and they want the rest of the lobola. I’m furious, embarrassed and tempted to leave him. How do I fix this circus?
Burning With Shame – Bulawayo
BRA BINZY RESPONDS:
Haa dadewethu… this is not a marriage problem. This is a GPS problem mixed with beer and ancestral humour.
Your husband didn’t marry anyone’s daughter. He just gave charity dressed as tradition. But the neighbour? Opportunists of the year. How do you accept lobola meant for someone else without blinking? Those people didn’t just smile. They smiled in future tense.
Here’s what to do:
• Gather both families.
• Explain the drunken detour.
• Demand the money back.
• If they refuse, let the village elder handle it—villagers fear elders more than High Court summons.
And please, make sure your husband never runs errands with cousins who drink like potholes drink rainwater.
Stay calm, sisi. You weren’t replaced. He just got lost.
THE ONLINE STRANGER WHO
STOLE MY HUSBAND’S EMOTIONS
Dear Bra Binzy,
Help me out. I’m married to one of those strong silent types. My man rarely shows emotion. No sorrow, no happiness, except the occasional rare smile. He does love me and the kids in his own way.
My problem is that I have tried for years to change him and make him more communicative, to no avail. Last year, at work as part of a cyber training exercise about online breaches, we were required to temporarily open fake social media accounts. After the exercise, we were told to shut them down. I kept my Facebook account and my husband is one of my friends, although he does not know it.
The pain is that he has totally opened up to me, an unreal online persona, in ways I never imagined possible. We talk about everything. How his day has been, his anxieties (and they are surprisingly many), his insecurities and how every tiny event has affected his day. Online, he is everything I wish him to be in real life.
It really hurts that it took less than a week of communication online for him to open up to a faceless stranger yet he failed to do that with me. How can I make him do the same in real life? How can I make him trust me as much as my online persona?
Anonymous Bulawayo
BRA BINZY RESPONDS:
Sisi… eish, this one is a PhD-level love problem. Your husband is not opening up online because “the stranger understands him better.” No. He’s opening up because men fear vulnerability with the real people they love. With strangers? They become poets, philosophers and emotional gymnasts.
But sisi, you committed emotional undercover operations. You are basically dating your husband behind your own back.
Here’s the truth:
Real life requires courage. Online? It’s a mask. No consequences, no expectations.
Tell him, gently, that you want more intimacy. Create safety, not pressure. And please, before you reveal the Facebook twist, rehearse. Because if you tell him badly, you’ll start a civil war in that house.
Next time, don’t catfish your own marriage. Talk, not spy.
THE PROPHET WHO CAN SEE EVERYONE’S SECRETS…
EXCEPT HIS OWN
Bra Binzy.
I slept with my pastor’s wife and now we do not want to stop. Her husband is one of the most well-known prophets in Zimbabwe.
The problem is that I’m beginning to think the prophet is fake. I was deathly afraid that he would catch us after the first encounter and rain brimstone and fire on us, but he appears not to have the faintest idea that we have sex at his house and church. Every day, he prophesies about the most intimate details of other people’s lives but he never sees what’s happening at his own doorstep. It’s been 6 months now, still not a flicker of prophetic exposure.
Bra Binzy, help me to end this affair and expose this bogus man of God.
Yours in Christ – Brother Abel
BRA BINZY RESPONDS:
Ehhh mfowethu… Brother Abel, son of chaos, soldier of temptation, ambassador of adultery. You are not looking for advice. You are looking for fire insurance.
First: You don’t need to expose the prophet. You need to expose yourself to some cold water and get your mind back.
Secondly: You’re shocked that the prophet didn’t see your affair? My brother, even God is looking at you shaking His head.
Walk away. Change churches. Delete her number. And please, stop trying to switch off someone’s anointing just because you switched off your belt.
Focus on repentance, not revenge.
CLOSING WORDS
FROM BRA BINZY:
Bafowethu, this week proved one thing: love without wisdom is a public hazard. If your heart is confused, ask. If your marriage is choking, talk. And if your relatives drink too much, never trust them with money.
Until next week… keep your hearts soft, your brains switched on and your umjolo drama far away from prophets and strangers on Facebook.
