Thou Shall Not Be Caught!

© 2011 by Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 07/01/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-8663-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-8664-9 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Thou shall not be caught!

About the Author

Thou shall not be…!

Synopsis of the story

Thou shall not be caught!

Problems engendered by a disintegrating society are exposed and discussed in this book, Thou shall not be caught! by Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu. Issues such as robbery, rape, corrupt officialdom, sexual abuse in schools and in workplaces, ritual murders, homelessness and the exploitation of the helpless are brought into the open and frankly described by this daring author’s characters. Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu balances these disturbing trends by proposing positive measures by which the negative forces can be minimized if not entirely eradicated. His ‘brand you’ idea, i.e., ‘branding yourself to be a commodity that God would want to buy’ is a novel example of this writer’s optimistic outlook that this degenerating human race could actually change for the better. The plot is clever and leaves the reader guessing to the end. Even if you don’t agree with everything this writer says he is guaranteed to make you think. Rory Cameron, Brisbane Australia.

About the Author

Emmanuel Chinyamakobvu was born in the then Southern Rhodesia, and the present day Republic of Zimbabwe. He went to a number of primary schools in rural Rhodesia before enrolling for secondary education which he eventually completed in independent Zimbabwe. He later obtained college degrees in Agronomic Engineering, Agronomy, and Environment Management. In between college he lectured at the Harare Polytechnic, before joining the Department of Natural Resources. During his tenure in the Department of Natural Resources he participated in the negotiation process of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) on behalf of the government of Zimbabwe. He later joined the UNCCD Secretariat. While with the United Nations, he practiced sustainable environmental management and rural development with a close linkage to poverty alleviation. Given his exposure to the work of the UNCCD, he worked with diverse stakeholder groupings, facilitating conferences of multilateral negotiations between country Parties, institutions and organizations. In the later years, his work with the UNCCD, also involved policy advocacy and partnership building between countries and development partners (donors). During his young and more adventurous years, Emmanuel participated in the Second Chimurenga that brought about the independence of Zimbabwe. It was his experiences in that war that inspired his book, The Audacity of Breaking Free. He is also the author of The Intricate Mediators of the Land Reform in Zimbabwe.

Thou shall not be…!

Tito had been sitting in the shade of the bus stop quietly taking his drink to cool off the heat of the tropical sun when Nhau came along holding a bottle of beer and sat down in the shade of the same bus stop, a few meters away from where Tito was. At first Tito did not pay and particular attention to Nhau or to the other gentleman who was sitting in the same shade reading a newspaper.

A few minutes later, Tito walked across the road into the supermarket and bought himself another drink. Then he retraced his footsteps back into the shade. As he approached the shade of the bus stop, he noticed that Nhau was still sitting there with his bottle of beer closed. That is when Tito struck a conversation with him.

Sorry my brother, it’s not my business, but I cannot fail to notice that you have not opened your beer yet, though you have been holding on to it for almost half an hour now. If you need an opener, I have one here with me. I hear beer tastes much better when it is freezing cold, but in this hot sun, I don’t think it will be cold for long, said Tito handing out an opener to Nhau.

Oh boy, I cannot believe I bought a beer. I am not even a regular drinker my Elder and neither have I ever tasted beer before, said Nhau with a perplexed face and some level of indignation.

I am not quite surprised, remarked Tito. When I first saw you coming to sit here, though I did not pay much attention, somehow I thought something was weighing down heavily on your mind.

You are very observant my Elder, aren’t you? Are you a cop or a psychologist or something like that? I must be looking terrible. Now I have even bought a beer without even realizing it. Maybe if I had opened it I would have drunk it without even realizing that I was drinking beer, responded Nhau without giving Tito an opportunity to say who he was. It is domestic affairs my Elder, he continued. My former wife damaged my car, smashing the windscreen and deflating the tyres, not to mention my house.

Why did she have to do that? inquired Tito.

Elder, it’s a long story. You don’t want to hear it. But since you have asked, I will tell you. I divorced with my wife a couple of years ago after realizing that our marriage was not working. After the divorce she took me to court claiming maintenance. She was demanding that I pay her four hundred dollars a month. But the court after making its own assessments concluded that I should pay her two hundred dollars instead. That did not go down well with her, explained Nhau with an impression that was begging the listener to understand his side of the story.

If the court made its judgment according to its findings, why should she not be happy? I would have thought she took you to court because she would agree with the outcomes, queried Tito. In any case, why should she vandalize the car?

Elder, I have been asking myself the same question again and again. If only she had vandalized the car alone, that would be different. She went on to break all the glasses on the windows of my house. The disappointing thing is she does not want to accept that she vandalized my property because of the outcomes of her claims at the courts. She now says that I am living with a woman she claims to be her relative, her niece to be precise, Nhau narrated.

I had to call the police to take her away after realizing that should I attempt to deal with her on my own, I could end up seriously injuring her, if not killing her, recounted Nhau. "In my life I have never wanted to fight a woman and I have never done it. It was the police that then advised me to get a peace order from the courts. Strange enough she did not show any remorse on her actions. She openly admitted to the magistrate that she was responsible for the vandalism. She claimed she wanted all her relatives to know that I had taken her niece for a wife. Even more surprising my Elder is, not a single relative of hers has come forward to confirm that my new wife is related to her in any way.

I told the magistrate that in my opinion, my former wife was just raising the issue of me marrying her niece to cover up for what she probably thought the verdict of two hundred dollars per month she would receive from me for maintenance was a gross miscarriage of justice. She then decided to take the law into her own hands and destroyed my property, said Nhau. So there you are Elder, you asked and that explains why I am lost in memory. he added.

I am glad I asked and thank you very much for telling me, said Tito. Women can be a strange lot my brother.

Very strange indeed if you ask me, echoed Nhau. Until you have gone through some initiation, then you know what kind of people they are capable of being and things they can do.

I have been there my friend I know what you are talking of. As you see me sitting here, it is because I had to force myself out of my house for fear of losing my head for no good reason all because of women, explained Tito. He raised his hand motioning Nhau to keep quiet. "You don’t have to ask me what happened, I will tell you.

"A few years ago, I got married to a nurse with the expectations of living happily ever after. Maybe you had similar expectations as well when you married your ex-wife. Surely, like any other average family, we had our own problems here and there, but on the general we were happily married, or so I thought. All these years I understood that my wife was a nurse and therefore she had a humanitarian job to do and serve lives. I never had problems with her working and I never really bothered about her nursing routines.

"Then one night our last six year old daughter, Marjorie got ill in the middle of the night. The maid woke me up and I decided to take the child to the hospital where the mother was supposed to be on night duty. When I got there, I was well received since most of the staff there knew me because of my wife. When I asked for her, that is when I received the shock of my life. I was informed that my wife had been off duty for two weeks. She was actually supposed to be on leave.

"If I was talking to someone who did not know me that well, I would have concluded that they were confusing me with someone else, but not in this case. I was shown the duty roster and sure enough my wife was on leave. I suppose you can tell what my wife had made me to believe and what was actually happening.

"I managed to keep calm and waited while the child received treatment. I wanted to call my wife on her mobile phone but I decided otherwise. After an hour at the hospital Marjorie was discharged and we went home. In the morning I delayed to go to work waiting for my wife’s return. When she eventually arrived I just behaved as if everything was normal. She then asked whether I was not going to work. I told her I was, but because the child had fallen ill at night, I could not go before she came home.

"Then she said I should have brought the child to the hospital for her attention. I suppose her idea was to find out whether I went to the hospital and had discovered that she had lied that she was working when she was elsewhere. I did not say a word. I just showed her the hospital cards and the medication the child was supposed to take. That is when Marjorie came into the room and said to her ‘Mum, dad took me to hospital last night and we looked for you. They said you were on leave. Where were you on leave for the last two weeks?’ It hit her like a sledge hammer and she dropped onto the sofa like someone struck by lightning.

My brother, I just took my car keys, walked out of the house and drove to work. She must have known that the game was over. When I came home that evening, I found the house empty and my wife and the children were gone, recalled Tito.

Where did she go with the children? asked Nhau who had listened attentively.

"She went to her parents, but the story does not end there. Her father, who happens to be a respected Mufundisi in the community he serves, would not have anything of that. He told her in no uncertain terms that she should return home to her husband. But the situation had become untenable for her.

As you would expect, when I found her gone, I immediately called her parents to inform them that my wife had left her matrimonial home for an unknown destination taking all her belongings and every piece of furniture in the house. That was when I was informed that she had gone home to her parents, narrated Tito. Nhau learnt that when Tito went to see his in laws, he got more than he bargained for.

When my brother-in-law, Witness, who happened to be visiting his parents saw his sister bring the children home and her belongings unexpectedly, he asked Samantha why she had left her matrimonial home. She tearfully revealed the double life she had lived since her marriage, recounted Tito.

It immerged that his wife, Samantha had lived a double life with two husbands. Of the four children that Tito thought he had fathered, it turned out that the first and the third were fathered by Toby and he had fathered the second and the fourth.

*     *     *

Titus and his newly wedded young wife Samantha were not on good terms. In fact Samantha was convinced that Tito, as she preferred calling him was having an affair with the pretty housemaid. Samantha had hired Anita to assist with the house chores. Her nursing job at the local hospital was taking all out of her and she felt she needed the help of Anita to give herself more time with her husband as and whenever she was home.

Actually Samantha had prepared herself to start bringing children into her new family. Therefore to her Anita would live with her and her husband and help her look after the kids while she would be gone to work. However, since the coming of Anita into the household, Samantha thought she sensed there was some unwelcome friendship developing between her employee, Anita and her husband Tito.

In fact the other women in the neighbourhood had warned her of the dangers of having a maid in the house alone with her husband while she was at work. Stories were told of women who were always gone leaving their husbands and the children in the care of the maids. It is said many husbands eventually convinced the maids to have sexual relations with them. By the time the wives realized that the maids were the new mothers of their houses, it was too late to redeem their marriages.

Concerned, Samantha sought the advice of her work mate Wadzanai after confiding in her of her suspicion. Though Samantha had a few other friends at the hospital, she chose to talk to Wadzanai because she was a family woman and a mother of three who carried a personality that Samantha admired. Also, Samantha had long realized the gift in Wadzanai of giving that kind of advice one could live on in real life. Wadzanai was someone Samantha held in high regard and she had taken her to be her personal mentor. At lunchtime Wadzanai set her down and gave Samantha her piece of mind.

Samantha, before I tell you my personal experiences, I want to give you some piece of advice and the decision of what to do, is yours to make, began Wadzanai. "I am aware that, there are many maids out there who have ended taking over homes that belonged to other women. It happens. But I am also aware that it’s not every husband who goes for anything wearing a dress. There are men out there who respect their wives so much that they cannot contemplate getting involved in an extramarital affair, let alone taking the maid to bed.

I have never met your husband and therefore I cannot pass any judgment on him, continued Wadzanai. "While it is prudent for you to trust your husband, use your woman instinct to make the right judgment. But please avoid making decisions on impulse. The fact that your husband is befriending your maid may not necessarily mean he is sleeping with her while you are at work. It may be his ways of making the maid feel comfortable in the house while you are not there.

Again, not all maids are stupid as we may want to think. Some are quite intelligent and they would not tolerate a man who would want to use his privileged position to sleep with them. They will raise hell at once. I therefore suggest that you study the situation carefully before you take any haste decision. That is my advice in short, explained Wadzanai.

Having given that advice, I should also tell you the dark side of bringing maids into the house, at least from my personal experience. For me, the issue of maids is a painful one. I have had several maids, but Winnie, made me regret ever bringing her into my house. I treated her the same way I have treated every other maid who came into my house. She was to me like my own younger sister. It is in me to treat maids the way I would also want to be treated even here at work or if I were to be the maid myself, narrated Wadzanai.

"Like any