The truth runs marathons

A friend of mine got so hopelessly drunk during New Year celebrations that I felt compelled to drive him home to ensure he was safe.

On arrival at his family’s palatial residence, his mother directed me and two other guys who were assisting me carry him to a backyard decrepit wooden cottage.

It had an unlockable door and had also grown moulds.

We failed to locate his bed and had to lay him on the floor before beating a hasty retreat outside because of the putrid smell in the room.

To our unhappy realisation, the guy’s baronial image belied his dire circumstances.

If only I had known earlier, I wouldn’t have accepted the copious amount of beer he regularly plied me with.

“Vamwe varume vakaroora, nemasutu evamwe/Mhandara yave mumba/Masutu, haingaawane/ Mhandara haina kuziva kuti masutu ndeekukwereta,” sang the legendary late James Chimombe and his Ocean City Band in a laid-back tune called “Masutu”.

The song aptly captures the guy’s situation.

Sadly, my friend is not the only one in this predicament.

There are many people out there who are living a lie.

These characters are so sweet-tongued that they will convince you to lend them your vehicle and swanky attire to please a love interest.

They even have the nerve to introduce their brothers and sisters as garden boys and maids, while also lying to unsuspecting girlfriends that they were orphaned at tender ages even when their parents are alive. Women also do the same.

There are some women who go about borrowing chickens and other expensive food items from acquaintances just to treat their unsuspecting new lovers to sumptuous dishes and appear to be living large when the opposite is true.

Lies, however, do the rounds while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

The truth will always come out and leave them with egg on their face.

“Never trust someone at face value. Some people who are wallowing in abject poverty are much better off than most high flyers who lie they own the expensive houses they live in.

“If you are not careful, the characters will even give you a breakdown of the building materials they used to build the mansions they live in. The truth will only come out when the landlord comes asking for his money,” a city florist, Mr Pomerai Nzarachirombo, said.

He said he was annoyed by people who want to appear to be what they are not because such behaviour exposed liars to crime as they seek to cover up.

Women have often fallen into the hands of married men who claim to be living with their sisters when in fact the said “sisters” are their wives.

“Oh my God! Men are liars. A certain man once lied to me that he was divorced and was living with his sister as he recovered from the divorce.

“I only discovered that I was being sold bottled smoke when I paid the said sister a visit seeking to take her out for lunch. I ran for my life that day because she threatened to scald me with water and shouted in the neighbourhood that I was a prostitute. I felt empty that day,” said one lady who identified herself as Chiredzi.

At churches, you find some people volunteering to do things they cannot afford as they desperately seek to present themselves in good light, but that is not without consequences when people eventually discover the truth.

Some divorced ladies even go about lying to men who want to ask for their hand in marriage that they are virgins looking after deceased relatives’ children.

However, such women are often left in the lurch when the truth finally comes out.

Gentle reader, honesty pays and as we begin the year, it is important to start working hard to ensure we achieve the status we want the world to believe we have.

Let us stop lying and be honest to ourselves and the world.