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Sekai Nzenza on Wednesday
“So what kind of married woman is your niece if she puts such a profile picture on Facebook and uses the same picture for Whatsapp?” fumed Philemon as he stood next to me in the car park near his workplace.

Shamiso is my niece and she is also Philemon’s wife and mother of their seven-month-old baby, Prince.

He had spotted my car and ran to me carrying his usual business gadgets that he sells — mobile phone chargers, airtime cards, phone protective covers of all types and sunglasses of various brands.

We had hardly greeted each other before he asked for an explanation regarding Shamiso’s behaviour.

As tete or aunt, it is my role to advise, discipline and counsel Shamiso.

I said I was not on Facebook any more, but I was definitely going to have a look on Shamiso’s Whatsapp number and check out the profile picture.

Philemon then pulled out his phone and pressed the numbers a few times until he came to his wife’s profile picture. He gave the phone to me so I could see the profile picture for myself.

Although Philemon and Shamiso do not live together as husband and wife any more, they still see each other very often.

In fact, at a recent wedding, Philemon and Shamiso were looking at each other in the eyes and they walked arm-in-arm, like they had just got married.

They also text and call each other daily.

They meet in Harare Gardens on Sunday afternoon and walk around holding hands, something they did not do when they first met in Glen Norah two years ago.

Philemon hopes that one day, Shamiso will come back to her senses and realise that she is a married woman and she must go and live in Bocha, way past Buhera, with his grandmother.

But Shamiso remains stubborn when the matter of living in Philemon’s village comes up.

She argues that the days when young women stayed and worked in the village while husbands did various jobs in the city are gone.

A woman must stay close to her husband. This way the husband does not yield to temptation and look at other women.

The Bible supports continuous husband and wife companionship.

Besides, why should a young woman till the land, weed the fields, carry water, gather firewood and cook big pots of sadza for the whole extended family while the husband works during the week then sits around talking politics and soccer with his friends at weekends?

What kind of marriage is that?

Despite the separation between the two of them, we still refer to Philemon as Shamiso’s husband.

When we have weddings, funerals or ceremonies in the village, we still expect Philemon to attend as a good son-in-law is meant to do.

A traditional marriage solemnised in the village by the bride price/lobola does not end so simply. This marriage will be hard to dissolve because there is a kid involved as well.

Besides, our family “ate” Philemon’s bride price and we celebrated the union between the two in our village and also in Philemon’s village. A marriage is not between two people; it is between two families.

Over the past few months, we have provided the couple with marriage counselling hoping they will stay together even though the move to the village discussion remains a big problem in the marriage.

I looked at Shamiso’s profile picture on Whatsapp closely as Philemon stood there right next to me.

The picture shows a totally different person to the village girl we knew less than three years ago.

Shamiso is still as light skinned as she was before but now her skin is soft and all the little black spots that once sat on her nose are hardly noticeable.

Her natural hair that used to be done in intricate beautiful patterns is well and truly hidden under a long curly brown weave sewn over her natural hair.

Her eyebrows are trimmed and painted.

A black pencil is drawn to emphasise the lines. She is wearing red lipstick and blue eye shadow to match her almost see-through chiffon blouse.

You can see one strap of her white brassier under the light blue shirt.

The nails on one hand are long and painted blue with a tiny pink flower at the corner of each nail.

Shamiso’s cleavage is right there, defiantly confronting your eyes like two ripe half mangoes.

She is smiling with her head tilted to the side in a pose that others might call seductive or flirtatious or just playful.

It’s a cheerful profile photo of a young girl who is no longer as innocent as she was when she first came to town three years ago. The city does that to young people.

This is why my grandmother Mbuya VaMandirowesa used to say we should not go to Harare, when it was still called Salisbury back in the colonial days. She said the city, or tawindi as she called it, gave women too much independence and forced them to become prostitutes or pfambi because there were no rules to tell them how to behave. A single young woman was not at all safe in the city, especially if she was the type who looked at herself in the mirror all the time and thought she was beautiful.

Mbuya used to talk so much about the evils of the mirror and yet we did not have a mirror when we were growing up in the village. But, whenever we went down to the river, we stood there, looking at our reflections in the water and sing, “Amai ndakanaka, amai ndakanaka!” swinging hips with hands on the waistline, meaning something like, “oh my mother, I am beautiful!”. Occasionally, a piece of broken mirror painted red at the back found its way to the village and we would treasure it until it was so scratched and you could hardly see your face.

I enlarged Shamiso’s profile picture and looked at a girl who was barely 20-years-old now.

Three years ago, Shamiso completed Form Four in the village and passed three subjects. She was a quiet, soft, pretty girl with a beautiful innocent smile. She came to Harare to look for work like most village girls do. She worked as a maid for a short while then met Philemon.

Within a few weeks, they were living together in a rented one room in Glen Norah. When Shamiso became pregnant, we forced Philemon to do what was right by us and pay the bride price. He did.

Philemon opened the passenger door and made himself comfortable in my car. He said; “I have told Shamiso to take the photo off immediately and do you know what she said?” I said, no, I did not know.

Philemon placed all his gadgets on the floor of the car. I was in hurry but I let him sit there. The guy needed counselling. Shamiso’s choice of photo on her profile picture was a serious marital matter that must be addressed immediately.

I decided to put on my tete or aunt advisory role voice. I told Philemon that Shamiso was not doing anything unusual. As people we are vain creatures. We like to look at ourselves and flaunt our beauty or whatever aspects of ourselves are attractive to others. You know, others show legs, breasts or even stomachs. Some have nose, ear, lip, nose rings or they pierce themselves in the most unimaginable places to enhance beauty of a different kind.

“Tete, would you wear what Shamiso is wearing and put it on Facebook or Whatsapp?” asked Philemon.

That was more of a direct question. I shook my head and joked that I was not as youthful any more. Besides, my chest was not as well endowed to flaunt around the way other women do. Not even a massive push up brassier would do the job.

I am allowed to joke like that, because Philemon is my nephew-in-law and therefore my ‘little husband’. He looked at my chest briefly then laughed and quickly composed himself saying; “Tete ka, this is serious. If that niece of yours does not remove the indecent profile picture from Facebook and Whatsapp, I will divorce her.”

Afterwards, I called Piri to tell her about Philemon’s distress and how as aunts, we should tell Shamiso what pictures could be shared and what was not good for public viewing. Piri checked Shamiso’s Whatsup profile and started laughing saying Philemon should be very happy that Shamiso was not wearing a bikini and showing a pierced navel.

“These days, young people have no limits as to what they want to show to others,” Piri said.

I then called Shamiso to tell her about Philemon’s concerns.

She said it had only taken a few hours for more than 20 people from everywhere, even as far as Canada and Australia, to say they liked her new profile photo.

Speaking with a very high pitched happy voice, she said that picture was just the beginning of more beautiful photos of her to be posted regularly on Whatsapp and Facebook.

“How else am I going to meet new friends?” Shamiso asked.

• Dr Sekai Nzenza is an independent writer and cultural critic.