An angelic species that is not so angelic

I celebrate women, they are generally an angelic species, so kind hearted, generous, very orderly and above all very loving. Take not that I said generally, of course there are exceptions. Women's weakest point is gossiping and this last New Year's Eve, I experienced the full brand of women's gossipy nature.

So there I was at a New Year's Eve braai at my father's house, bonding with the whole clan. My brother in the diaspora had through one of the many online Zimbabwean shops, (that have mushroomed on the world wide web that Zimbabweans in the diaspora use to buy food stuffs for their relatives back home) bought a lot of beef, chicken, pork, fish and a lot of beer, wine and soft drinks to make the braai possible. The many kilograms of meat in the freezer was my brother's way of telling us that he will be thinking of us as we enter the new year, even though he couldn't be with us in person. And believe me after the many days in 2008 when we could not afford to buy meat everyone thought of him as we tasted the delicious & scrumptious roasted meat. I could be found mingling with the men of my clan whom I get on well with more than the women, must be something to do with the fact that I grew up the only girl in a family of seven and when I attended a girls only boarding school I was in a cocoon of my own making concentrating on absorbing knowledge and so never took time to get used to girl talk. As a result I find women's talk so cheap and boring most of the time because they concentrate too much on trivial and mundane issues. Anyway so there we were arguing about politics with my male cousins when I made the mistake of taking an opposite debating side to one of my cousins, Tonderai, who doesn't like loosing arguments. I am the one who made the final argument that convinced most of my cousins who were on the other side of the debate and Tonderai didn't take it well. He then decided to come up with a way of indirectly chasing me away from the male group, he started the topic of male aphrodisiacs and as soon as he introduced that topic I moved away from the male group at the speed of lightning, didn't want to end up feeling embarassed. That was when I joined the women of my clan and found them gossiping about my cousin and his wife who have been married for five years now and are still childless. I won't go into detail about what they were saying, all I can say is that instead of minding their own business or at least feeling pity that maybe the couple have a fertility problem, they were making fun of the couple and coming up with all sorts of funny and superstitious theories as possible reasons why the couple is still childless. I found the talk so beneath me and repelling so I just sat there listening without contributing a single word to the conversation and feeling disgusted. Then the woman they were talking about entered the room and the sudden change of topic and the plastic smiles on the face of the women as they greeted her and hugged her, had me feeling even more disgusted. To prevent myself from blurting out what I thought of these women's behaviour I decided to detach myself from what was happening in the room and so closed my eyes, feigning sleep and started imagining what if the three wise men who went to see Jesus soon after he was born had been women. What kind of conversation would they have had as they left the stables after seeing Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus laying in the manger.

This is how my imagination ran wild. Of course the women would have brought a lot of the needed diapers, clothes, and milk-producing food for Mary and even offered to help her with house chores during the first four weeks after the birth when she will still be an invalid. Mary would have been so happy with the three women's angelic attitude not knowing that soon after leaving the stable their not so angelic side would come out as they start gossiping about her. This is the type of conversation that I imagined the three women having soon after leaving the stable.

Woman 1: I can't imagine giving birth in a stable, that Mary is not well-organised, she should have booked at a maternity hospital as soon as she discovered that she was pregnant.

Woman 2: I think her giving birth in a stable is because of financial problems. Imagine having a husband who is a carpenter, who doesn't have a stable source of income.

Woman 3: Those two, Mary and Joseph never struck me as a couple with a sexual connection, I must admit I was a bit surprised when Mary got pregnant. Did you notice that baby Jesus does not look like Mary or Joseph, I wonder whose looks he takes after.

Woman 1: There is something special about that baby Jesus, that I can't put my finger on. I could have sworn that I saw an angel holding that baby Jesus in the manger, but when I blinked she was gone, I must have been imagining things.

Woman 2: I could sense the Holy Spirit in the atmosphere in that stable but that didn't surprise me because that Mary is a real Mrs Goodie-Two-Shoes when it comes to spiritual things.

Woman 3: Girls that baby Jesus is obviously a somebody, are you forgetting the angel and the star that led us to go to that stable to see a new born king.

Woman 1: I can still smell the stench in that stable, sitting in there made me feel so dirty, I hope the smell didn't catch on to my hair and clothes.

The gossiping would go on and on until the three women reach their destination, at which time all the angelic deeds of the three women would be completely cancelled out by the bad talk. Talk about an angelic species that is not so angelic.

When I eventually let my mind get back to what was happening around me, namely the braai and my relatives and friends who were around me I was happy to notice that the conversation had moved to Christianity and the very same women who were gossiping the loudest about my childless cousin were potraying a holier than thou attitude that would have made Mother Theresa feel inferior in comparison. That is some women for you, they do glitter on the outside but if you look deeply within their hearts most of them are fake gold.
MY FELLOW WOMEN LET US LEARN TO AVOID GOSSIP!!!
Let’s say you have a piece of wood, a nail, and a hammer. Pretend the wood is a person, and the nail is a nasty gossip about that person. If you hammer in the nail, you’re obviously hurting him or her. If you then pull out the nail…well, there’s still a hole in the wood, and the damage has been done.