Entanglement with a Prophet

Short Story
Entanglement with a Prophet
By Lawrence Kadzitche

There are many women who use their beauty to get what they want from men. In that respect, I was on top of the ladder. That is not to say that I had a face and figure that would give me a leading role in a movie. Those roles are reserved for skinny girls. But that is in the movies.

In the real world, it is the full-figured women who rule. It is rare for men to pass a curvylicious woman without turning to take a second look. Forget about the ‘sapling-like’ slim figures promoted in the media. A curvy body is the epitome of a woman’s beauty: much coveted and attractive. And to top it all, when you have an ample backside, celebrated as nyash, you have got it all as a woman.

So when I say I had it all, I mean I literally had it all. And so far, my looks had never let me down. I was tooled even further for my last leg of my journey from South Africa to Malawi on that day. Everything about me bespoke of money. From the Brazilian hair flowing out of my curved brimmed fedora hat, the black Ray-Ban sunglasses hanging on the bridge of my nose, the body hugging red Yves Saint Laurent suit with the matching red high heels to the car keys with the BMW tag dangling in my hands.

When I flashed my passport out of the Guchi handbag that morning at Cuchamano, the chubby customs officer in a uniform that looked as if it would burst at any time scarcely glanced at the booklet. He stamped it while his eyes feasted on my body with unmistakable lust. A sweep of his fat hand and the 50 US dollar note that I had secreted inside the passport disappeared behind the counter.

A similar action had happened when I was exiting South Africa at Beit Bridge into Zimbabwe and repeated on entry into Zimbabwe and exit at Nyamapanda. Just as the Mozambican Officer had just done, none of the customs officers at those border posts had noticed, or rather had pretended not to notice, that I had overstayed in South Africa. The 50 US dollar bill I carefully inserted inside the passport each time I handed over the document had helped matters quite a lot and I was politely waved off with lots of ‘travel safely, madam’ through South African, Zimbabwean and Mocambican borders.

When I entered Malawi, I openly shared 20 dollar notes to the immigration officers who were on duty at Mwanza border post. It was not a bribe, just a gift from the daughter of the soil returning home and the powerful BMW SUV with South African registration number glided freely into Malawi. I passed through the check points at Zalewa and Lirangwe showering the officers with 10 dollar bills.

You see, I had all the reasons to feel charitable. When I was leaving for South Africa five years ago, I was a thirty-year old girl with literally nothing and living off Joanna’s assistance. Joanna, a reserved short and plump girl, was my childhood friend whom I called Shortie. She in turn called me Talkie Tall, myself being bubbly and twice her height. We grew up together in the horrible slums of Ntopwa, went to the same school and both of us dropped out in secondary school due to lack of school fees.

Her story was one of rags to riches. She worked for a year as a housemaid for a certain expatriate white lady and when the woman was leaving, she left all her house hold items to her. Joanna sold the items and started a small stationery business which grew very fast into the biggest stationery shop in Blantyre. She won big supply contracts to government departments and private organisations. In no time she bought a house in in the posh suburbs of Nyambadwe.

On my part, I hated working. There was no way I was going to work as a househelp or work in any other similar job. Actually, I had no plan to work at all. My hope was that I would meet a rich man and that would be the end of my problems. But years down the line I was still unmarried and living off Joanna’s charity.

That’s when Joanna encouraged me to trek down south for greener pastures. “It’s much easier for you to make money in South Africa than here,” she had said without elaborating.

She gave me enough money for transport and other expenses. Beauty has its own advantages and I easily found a job as a waiter at an upmarket restaurant in Cape Town frequented by the city’s who’s who. Within a short period of time, I had hooked a rich married boyfriend and settled into the life of a kept diva, attending glamorous parties, eating in exclusive restaurants, driving high class cars and dressing in designer clothes.

I was now swimming in money and planned to open a chain of grocery shops. Joanna was still my best friend although we had not been in touch over the last two years. I intended to go straight to her house to show her how well the prodigal daughter had done in her sojourn in South Africa. I knew she must by now be a very big business lady but even myself was not lagging far behind. My plan was to stay with her until I bought my own house.

So, early in the afternoon, my car surged into Blantyre City and knocked on the gate of Joanna’s imposing mansion in Nyambadwe. Intimidated by the sleek automobile, the guard at the gate simply let me in without asking who I was.

I parked, put my hat and sunglasses on the passenger seat and slid out. Whistling, I sashayed into the house without knocking. Joanna had often told me to take her house as my own. Mi casa, su casa, she had always said and so I went straight to the fridge that was in the dining room, poured myself a glass of juice then went into the sitting room.

“Hey, Shortie, guess who’s back?” I shouted gleefully, sinking into a sofa in the lounge. I knocked off my high heels and perched my feet on a glass coffee table.

A tall thin young woman in maxi dress appeared and stared at me with astonishment, a silent question forming on her lips.

I assumed her to be one of Joanna’s new friends. “Tell Shortie that Talkie Tall is back.”

The emaciated woman stared at me uncomprehendingly.

“I’m Joanna’s old friend from the ghetto days,” I introduced myself gaily.

Understanding dawned on the woman’s face. “You must be Alinafe…”

“Exactly,” I confirmed her guess sipping my juice.

“Yes, Joanna often talked about you…”

“I’m glad to hear that. We were like twins,” I said. “So where’s she?”

A shadow passed over the woman’s face. It was that shadow that one has when one doesn’t want to say something unpleasant.

“Err…Joanna sold the house…”

“Sold the house?” the question came out involuntarily.

“Yes, we bought it two years ago.”

I wanted to ask her the reason why Joanna had sold the house but thought it best not to. “Sorry, I just took it for granted that it was still her house,” I said taking my feet off the coffee table. I hurriedly threw my feet back into my shoes. “So where’s she living now?”

The shadow crossed the woman face again but it was gone as quickly as it had come. “She’s living in Ndirande now.”

Ndirande? I had known most of Ndirande to be a sprawling slum. But that was five years ago, I admonished myself, it could now have transformed itself into a suburb now.

But the woman was speaking. “It’s difficult to give you directions to her house. I’ll let the garden boy escort you.”

That should have warned me but it didn’t. I thanked the woman and left in the company of the garden boy. The plush suburbs fell behind. We passed through Blantyre Central Business District. It was still clean as it had been when I left but I was surprised to see women selling vegetables on the sidewalks. Hawkers were also here and there selling their wares on the pavements.

We turned off Magalasi Road into Ndirande. At first the buildings were reasonably good. But as we drove on, they became a beehive of a small structures of different types. The road itself became narrow and full of potholes. Further on, the potholes became gullies. I had to drive at a snail pace though the crowded passage that passed for a road. Crumbling houses hedged the road on both sides as it snaked through the location. Most of the structures facing the road were makeshift shops selling mostly groceries and illegal spirits.

The road got worse that at some places I had to go out to see if my car could pass. But this did not help because at one place one front tire went into a big hole and the chassis hit the ground. I found myself stuck. Before I could do anything, a group of young men arrived and carried the vehicle out of the hole. I paid them handsomely.

The further we went, the worse the state of everything from the road to the houses and the appearance of people. The houses were crumbling and the people looked no better than beggars. The dogs were thin with flies all over them. This was a perfect portrait of abject poverty. I was about to pass a small dilapidated mud thatched hut when the garden boy told me to stop.

“We’ve arrived, madam.”

I took off my sunglasses in disbelief. So where did Joanna stay? All the houses I saw were fit to be in some neglected remote village. I always travelled with a pair of flat shoes. I put them on. This was not a place for high heels.

Kicking open the door, I was welcomed by a mass of dirty children who were looking at the car as if they had never seen one. Accompanying the children were flies. They flew everywhere like a swarm of bees. An overpowering smell of rubbish and human excrement punched me like heat from an oven and I resisted an urge to cover my nose.

What happened was as if it was surreal. Joanna came out of the hut and halted in her tracks as if electrified. I also stopped, my eyes popping wide and my mouth freezing open. My friend had been a short plump woman but the woman I saw before me was a skeleton wrapped in a tattered dress. She almost looked like a malnourished child. What could have happened?

Then the spell was broken and we both surged forward towards each other. We hugged each other for a long time, crying like children. I broke free and held her by the shoulders.

“Shortie!”

“Talkie Tall!”

“Jo, what happened?” I sobbed the question.

“It’s a long story, Nafe,” she replied.

“Well, I’ve got all the time so let me hear it, Jo,” I said softly.

It was indeed a very long story. But the long and shot of it was that after Joanna found out that she could not find a husband, she went to consult a certain popular prophet who claimed that he could do anything in the name of Jesus. In the prophet’s television program, women came to give testimonies of marriages they had found after he had prayed for them, of children they had borne after his prayers…the list was endless.

The prophet told her that God could grant her wishes but she needed to make painful sacrifices. “In the bible, all the people whom God granted favours made great sacrifices. Gideon sacrificed his daughter. Samson forfeited his life. So if you’re willing to make sacrifices, God shall grant your wishes.”

“Prophet, if I wasn’t ready, I wouldn’t be here” Joanna had replied.

The man of God had told her to offer a seed to God. Although the amount horrified her, she went ahead to do it. And that was the beginning of the end. The prophet kept on demanding huge sums of money as seed.

“My Bible says that those who sow with tears shall return with songs of joy carrying sheaves, my daughter,” the prophet had assured her.

She seemed as if she was bewitched because she could not resist his demands no matter what people tried to tell her. A man whom she later learnt was in cohorts with the prophet, proposed marriage to her. This man pretended to run an importing business and disappeared with the rest of her money. By the time her eyes opened, she had sold her house and remained with nothing. But her greatest shock was what the prophet told her when she approached him for help. He callously told her that in his calling he was always meeting people and therefore could not remember her. And that was the end of it.

“So here I’m as poor as a church mouse,” Joanna concluded her sad story.

I kept calm. But my serenity was like a lull before a storm. What the prophet had done was no different from committing murder. Had Joanna not been a strong woman, she would have committed suicide over what he had done to her. A plan was already forming in my mind. The prophet had used Old Testament verses to trick Joanna. I was also going to use the Old Testament verses to get even. An eye for eye.

I was silent for some time, taking deep breaths to control my temper. Exploding was not going to work. I needed to take control of the situation. When I opened my mouth, I was smiling. “First things first, Jo. You cannot stay here. I’ll buy a house very soon so let’s go find a lodge to stay for the time being.”

We burnt most of her things except her personal treasured possessions and turned our backs at the slum. In town, I bought her new clothes. In the evening when we went out for dinner, she was looking like her old self except for the lost weight which I intended to get rid of by over feeding her.

We spent the next days looking for houses and identified one in Namiwawa. I paid for it in cash and fully furnished it. We moved in together. I knew Joanna had a good acumen for business and we agreed to enter into a partnership where she would run my businesses in return for a stake in them. She was all over the moon over the proposal and jumped into the business with her usual vigour.

While she concentrated on the business, I turned my attention to the problem of the thieving prophet. The fake man of God needed to be taught a lesson. He would learn the true meaning of the saying that of the species, the female is more dangerous than the male.

He was by far and wide, the most well-known and richest prophet in Blantyre. He was the father and founder of a big charismatic Pentecostal church that went with a very long stupid name that encompassed miracles, blessings and all sorts of wonders. There was nothing about salvation in the name. His real name was Josophat Gwayi but went under fancy titles such as Brother of Jesus, Papa, Baba, Number One Prophet, New Elijah, Moses of Today, Bringer of Miracles…the titles the thief had appropriated were endless. He was always dressed in glittering expensive suits. He drove about in a convoy of latest vehicles. His sermons were all over television and other social media outlets.

It was this religious crime boss that I had to deal with. I knew it was not going to be an easy task. Men of God are protected by a simple lie: they make people believe that to go against them is to go against God. That’s why they are able to get away with almost anything. Who is prepared to go against God?

But I knew this was all a lie. To go against fake prophets was not to go against God. Even in the Book of Books, Elijah went against fake prophets of Baal and that was not going against God. The good thing was that the Bible had already provided ways of identifying these charlatans- by their works. So a prophet who stole from his frock was not a man of God but a thief and therefore lost all the protection and privileges that went with being a true man of God. My mind made up, the bogus prophet was a thief and I was a pit bull. When a pit bull catches a thief, it’s always a miracle if the thief escapes with his life.

I had noticed one big weakness that plagued most men of God: beautiful women. They seemed to fall easily to the wiles of women. Just listen to the scandals of powerful men of God. It’s mostly about women. There seems to be something that attracts men of the cloth to women. You can even read it in the bible. We all know of the sad ending of the great judge Samson. King Ahab was a good man. His wife Jezebel was the cause of downfall. Even the great and wise king Solomon failed to decipher the secrets of women.

So I planned to bring down Prophet Gwayi the way Delilah had tackled Samson. No holds barred. Very savagely. I had all the advantages of a woman. A big bust. Breasts that pointed out like hillocks. A narrow waist. Wide hips. My superior nyash was a bonus. With my front yard as dangerous looking as my backyard, I was ready to pounce at the thieving prophet. Like Belshazzar, he had been weighed measured and found wanting. I was going to go around him the way Joshua circled around the city of Jericho and joyfully watch him crumble like the walls of the doomed city.

End of Part One