WE are having to shift in a few months time.  We have no money to continue paying the high rentals in Avondale, which I could readily afford as an employee of the International Institution, but which I have serious doubts I can sustain for much longer without a monthly salary.
I count it luck that my landlord insisted on us paying a full year’s rentals at a go.  Of course that always meant wiping out my bank account and toping that up with a few extra months’ salary advances to be able to manage but that was his style and who was I to argue with the house  owner!
In many ways, all the same, it made life easy as I didn’t have to quarrel every now and then with the infamous landlord.
Once I was done with rentals, I would forget about the fact that I was not a property owner who could get harassed through phone calls or phoney visits in the guise of checking on the condition of the house when in fact the fellow was just stone broke and… hey!  I wonder what type of landlord you have if you don’t live in your own house!  You see, when we go into these rented houses, it’s no guarantee that we will always have the money that the owners want when they want it.  Sometimes, things just don’t work out such that even as (deep in your heart) you wish you could pay promptly, you are just not able.
I am told it’s particularly mean and nasty in the townships where landlords as poor as, if not poorer than you can come bearing their fangs on you, Doberman style, because you are the reason they and their children didn’t eat at lunch and were again about to miss supper  (if you didn’t  produce the rental dues there and then)!
I have heard how some can be as prompt as to knock at your door at 06hours on the agreed due date for settlement of rentals.
“Tabwela bane tizibane ka nkhani kaja ai (We have come, folks, so that we familiarise ourselves that little story),” they would say in proverbial tongues.
I hear you can pick a good noisy quarrel where your poverty or dependency on other people’s houses can be exposed publicly and harped on in an endless shouting tug match.
Just it was the previous month, so it can be once again, being reminded that if you cannot afford living in other people’s houses, you shouldn’t bother living in other people’s houses.  They can get so unreasonable even with or in spite of your guarantees that you haven’t forgotten the due date but that this is in fact your due date too for getting paid, which would only happen sometime (later) during the day at the work place.
I have heard  of one no nonsense landlord who was in the habit of removing  all the doors from the toilets and bathrooms of all the  houses he rented out somewhere in Mtendere on the eve of the due date for settling rentals.
“Natenga viseko kuti mukumbuke kuti mailo ndalama zioneke  (I have taken away the doors so that you are reminded that  tomorrow, the money must be made available),” he would shout across the mdadada (shanty parlance for block of flats)!
I am told the fellow was so unreasonable and uncompromising that was his lifestyle with his tenants.
Since we all have to answer the call of nature and eventually, no matter how much we hate a bath, we have to have one at some point, the tenants were compelled to run around and settle the bills for fear of doing their thing in the open.
They were  made so conscious of the due date, and frightened of  embarrassment, they often paid a day or so upfront.
Whenever any of his tenants somehow delayed even in spite of carting away their toilet doors, the fellow would be back the very next day removing doors from the main bedrooms!
“Tizaona mwamene muzacitila vinthu va bakulu na bana  batamba! Natenga ciseko ca ku bedroom nifuna ma half yanga  ine.
Si nyumba yanu iyi kuti mukazinicita unconvinced (We’ll see how you will do adult things while your children watch!  I have removed the bedroom doors I just want my cash.  This is not your house for you to be inconveniencing me)!”
You can imagine the running around his tenants had to do for fear of such embarrassments.  I hear too that tenants spent very little time in his houses and flats.  None could fathom his poor attitude to business.
So they spent a month or two and quickly left.   Even those that could pay promptly found the gun point nature of the relationship to be unacceptable and soon left.
“There is no relationship between us and the landlord,” they would lament.  “It’s strictly money.  The man has no regard for dignity.  How do I start using a toilet without a door just as a reminder that the following day the rentals are due?”  So off they often went in search of properties owned by more reasonable landlords.
I shudder at the thought that I could soon be subjecting my charming and quiet wife, Amake Pachikani to this kind of lifestyle wherever it is we might find affordable accommodation once our due date in Avondale comes round.
I still have a bit of cash and I am trying this  and that to earn some profit and move on but I am learning  the hard way that it is not always that handsome-looking  plans work out.   If that red eyed boy in the centre of town is able to sit in the sun all day as if it doesn’t matter so as to sell a few metal bars at a profit and repeat the act all year round without turning charcoal black and exasperated, it doesn’t mean that the office-oriented Mixture Njombwinjo can easily mix it with  them and life goes on.  It’s hard, I tell you.  A few have jumped on planes and buses to J’burg, Durban and Dubai or to the more recent destination of choice,  Guangdo in China, but after finishing the sales of whatever  it is they went to import for resale, they find out they still spent more than they were able to recoup in spite of surviving on lunch and supper of popcorns and fritters while  overseas.  Anyway, I believe we will make it.
Particularly that Amake Pachikani prays every day for the success of my make shift survival plans, committing them to  our Lord. Daily!