A SIGNIFICANT number of Zimbabweans in the diaspora are in inter-racial relationships. I happen to be one of them, and you can add two of my sisters. Some are already cussing under their breaths and wondering how we ended up that way, now that is a story for another day.

Today, I’m here to share with you a funny story about some of the challenges of inter-racial relationships. So, my husband agreed before we got married that we would go kumusha, emakhaya, to the village, before we got married. He said he wanted to pay lobola; to enjoy the full experience of marrying an African woman (to which I corrected him, “Zimbabwean woman”).

My husband is European and he had never been to Africa before. Two things kept gnawing at me about his impending visit to my motherland. First on the list was his irrational fear of cockroaches. My husband has what sometimes feels like an unrivaled phobia of roaches. I had never before in my life seen a grown man scream and run when faced with a roach.

The first time it happened we were on holiday in New York, I heard a very loud scream coming from the bathroom. I panicked as I ran towards the direction of the scream (breaking my phone in the process) fearing the worst. I thought he had slipped and fell, a common bathroom accident. Imagine my annoyance on finding the source of his fear. Although roaches are disgusting and unwanted pests, I never thought anyone could actually be terrified of them.

He explained to me that these little pests can survive a nuclear explosion and they have survived for more than 280 million years, so yes, they are from the devil family. They can survive being submerged under water for up to an hour, he said. Freaky disgusting creatures by all accounts. So how do you explain to your Zimbabwean father that the man you are about to marry is terrified of cockroaches, without emasculating him? There in lay my dilemma.

I explained to my father that this was my husband’s first time in Africa. I said it would be great if he could call in the professionals to get rid of any pests. I’m happy to say there was no roach in sight when we finally made the journey home. Needless to say, ‘I will infest your home with roaches’ has remained a common joke in our family.

My second dilemma was how my village folks sometimes treat the family pets, especially the dogs. It’s not unusual for Bhoki the family Rhodesian ridgeback to be kicked for daring to beg for morsels of sadza/isitshwala or bones under the table. I knew my husband would find this needlessly cruel and unacceptable. So, I decided I would just be blunt and say it to my father straight up. Please can you try and avoid hitting the dogs when mukuwasha/umkhwenyana comes. Where he comes from, dogs are treated with love and kindness and it’s actually criminal to be cruel to dogs. Having been in Europe himself several times, he understood.

The visit went well and up to today, my village folks are now kinder to their dogs, unless they just pretend when we are there!