Average Joe's Blog

By Jere Chikambure The biggest threat to our body politic and the peace and prosperity of our nation today is – MEN. Men hate losing – and that is to tell it as it is. If a man loses a battle, he will return to the scene again and again and try harder until he gets something – anything – from his constant nagging. The men from Germany were so livid after their humiliation in Versailles that they spent the next two decades plotting their revenge, which exploded into World War II of 1939. Never mind about Hitler wanting to restore the German pride and economy back on track – it was a point to prove to the men who had disgraced his countryMEN after the previous war that the Germans still had the balls. And because other men just could not resist the challenge from another, thousands of people lost their lives so that a few men could prove they still had it down there. If a woman is fired from her job in the morning, she may cry foul. But overall, she will realise there is

I slept like a dead man. Not that I felt dead; I was curved like a handball at the back of the bus, my knees digging into my ribcage – breathing was becoming a luxury I was too crammed in to afford. There was simply not enough space to stretch my legs so I could enjoy my fitful sleep. The soil at the Kasumbalesa Border – which separates the Zambians from the Congolese – is so fine a conman could succeed in selling it off to you as cement. As the buses and gonyetis ooze towards the exit point from the Zambian side, their tyres are actually buried halfway in the quicksand-like clayey-loam; leaving soft ditches and raising enough dust to bleach everything and everybody in the 5km radius of the national boundary. I think I may have told some of my friends that the Beitbridge Border town is the worst pace I have ever been to. But now that I have been here, I can apparently see how  so wrong I was – Kasumbalesa will beat them all systems down. Ignorant that their place

There is only one word to describe a ride into the splendour of the eastern jungles of Chimanimani in Manicaland Province – green. Yes; Green Like Me Garden , one might want to add – shades of Wallace ‘Winky D’ Chirumiko and his self-appointed ‘Di Big Man’ mantra. There is really no telling. For the road network in Chimanimani is maze after labyrinthine maze of green wattle tree after tall green wattle tree. The road leading to the frontier town from Chipinge has enough wattle trees to make you wonder whether you are a wattle tree too. And yes, the sharp curves as the road meanders its way around the mountains are dangerous, with ravines plunging straight from the edge of the road and settling where the eye cannot see. There are heart-stopping tales of vehicles straying off the lanes and flying into the deep, and – looking down at the dot that is the mangled remains of an unlucky commuter omnibus – somehow the knowledge that all the passengers made it out of their ordeal un

Whoever – or whatever – the object of your love is; love it to optimal levels. For love is the greatest gift the guy up there bestowed upon us. It has never ceased to amaze us how we are willing to walk naked in the park so that the Gunners (or whatever team you feel you wanna put here), or the DeNgoz’ get that champions league trophy on their coffers. Or how we will gladly give up our own lives so that those of the dear wife with a kidney failure can be revived. All the hope we have – even when evidence on the ground proves a scenario contrarie. The spontaneous anger and anguish that engulfs us, the tears negotiating their way out of our unbelieving eyes when the apple of our eyes betrays us. Ever wondered why you tear your clothes in disgust or pull your hair when Linda (or Maggie, or Maidei, or Madea, or Megan) does that things that boils your heart to the point of burning it? It’s not anger damn it! You feel all that ‘cause you love ‘em. That child who absconds lessons, g

Have you ever wondered how – growing up as kids – we wished so much to be all grown up so we could go to school with our brothers and sisters? Boo; I myself couldn’t even so much as wait that my mother had to glean a grade one place for me when I was in my fourth year! Amazingly, we can’t find it in our hearts to be satisfied with the seven years of plenty in elementary education either – we wanna grow up even more, and physically expand in the process, as we long to explore our fantasies and the crushes of infancy. How we would love to pile up more years so we can go to high school and discover the mystery of dating, whose grandeur the elder sibling has succeeded in immortalising in our gullible mind and hiding from it in equal measure. “You’re still too young for girls,” he sneers. So we wish to grow up again, become taller, go to high school, possess that booming voice, those curvaceous coca cola undulations that are the opium of many a coked out mind, grow the pubis that