Stay out of other people’s affairs
“LOOK not what stews in another pot,” goes an English saying. However, people do not take heed. Several people make it their business to poke their nose into other people’s affairs.
Such mannerisms cut across sexes, ages, religions and body sizes.
Largely referred to as being “nosy”, “suspicious”, “melancholic,” “spying,” “prying” and “inquisitive” among a host of other names, the business of minding about other people’s matters is not without its fair share of challenges.
One can be bashed, maimed or even be killed for this.
You pay with your dear life!
Only this week, the country woke up to shocking news that a married woman had taken three children belonging to her husband’s “small house” for DNA tests to establish if they truly had been sired by her husband.
In a separate incident, an elderly woman from Glen Norah reportedly broke her leg while peeping through the window to establish who her widowed daughter-in-law was giggling with in her room.
Gentle reader, there are so many things that place people in spaces of bother and embarrassing situations that should at best be avoided. As I commit pen to paper, there is untold discord in churches as people seek to establish how Mr So and So got a position of responsibility ahead of them.
This is done at the expense of worshipping Yahweh, the real reason for which the church was established after all.
“I think Mrs Moyo is in love with the bishop because she is getting all the favours at our expense.
She is too young and not strong enough in faith to carry the weight of the responsibilities. Oh, this is a very big scandal,” you hear women saying while resplendent in church uniform clutching their bibles and hymn books.
Some even get violent and start demanding answers from the bishop.
“Baba taona sekunge maburuka pamweya nemaitiro amavakuita naamai ava. Dai mambodzokera kuchitendero chakasimba asi kana musina zvamurikuita mundinamatirewo,” you hear some crafty people saying during church services.
The workplace is not any better.
People will always raise questions as to why and how their colleague has been awarded an overseas trip, why they earn more and why they cruise in a company vehicle at their expense. Some will go to the extent of interviewing a colleague’s former classmates to establish if they really were bright in school or if they had no cheating tendencies.
Police suggestion boxes in the communities in which we live are always full of anonymous requests to have neighbours or co-tenants investigated because they would have bought meat, cars and other pricey household furniture.
“Please investigate Mrs So and So because she is changing furniture regularly and has a fancy lifestyle which does not match their income. Please assist because we may be living with a drug peddler in the community,” the letters read.
It is even worse if someone is known to be an accountant and happens to build a house or buy a new car.
His employers may be approached by not-so-wellmeaning neighbours with purported “leads” to a scandal. Cases of assessing what will be happening in other people’s lives are mostly common in the world of women.
There are some who make it a point to establish if a man intending to marry their former classmate knows that they were previously married and have children.
They will even furnish the prospective husband with details of the former husband and unsolicited for information just to pull a sister down.
“I know that you are madly in love with Chipo and we really appreciate this. But do you know that she has two children? Do you know that at school she used to have many boyfriends? You need to check these facts before you fall into a pit,” the woman’s close friends will say.
Gentle reader, it is not only tooth paste that protects teeth. Staying in one’s lane and not minding about other people’s business also does.
Inotambika mughetto.
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