Relatives and friends who visit monotonously

Visits by some relatives and friends are monotonous and therefore a nuisance. As if it is a mistake to be relatives or friends with them, some do even come home very early in the morning, ostensibly to say ‘hello’ to you when actually you least expect them and their motive is different. Sometimes you are too busy and time strained but there they are. When they find you preparing to go to work, they linger around until breakfast is ready and take it with you. The problem is not about eating your breakfast with you. It is about the bad habit of coming anytime, unannounced and least expected, inadvertently trespassing on your family life and time. They have no guts or decency to appreciate that you are a family and not them, sometimes needing and deserving private time to be alone, to discuss issues pertaining to strictly your family life and enjoy it as you wish. When they see you leaving for work, they remain around for an hour or so, chatting with the people you leave at home, switch on the television to watch programmes or sit by it in case it is already on until lunch time. Alternatively, they play DVDs, buying time for lunch to be ready. Some who are a bit decent, leave for their homes immediately they see you leaving for work but come back some minutes to lunch, eat lunch with the people at home, leave after lunch and come back in the evening round seven o’clock to watch television or play DVDs again. Some come back that time to see if you could take them out to some good place in town to enjoy or relax as you do. Nevertheless they have no decency to appreciate that they do not deserve doing so since they have been idle all the day long, not even supposed to eat. “He who does not work should not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Whenever they come, such people always have nice stories to tell or narrate about things they have seen or heard in the environment, during the day or week, to blackmail you or bogusly make you happy. They leave for their homes after supper but will not do so when they know you do not have a good job or better life than theirs to afford good meals. I guess they will also not time your meals when they know you do not eat well if they know you can afford doing so. Some relatives and friends who have what to eat at their homes but are idly busy or rumour mongers or spy like, they simply come frequently, any time of their choosing, to find out what is going on in your home, so as to have something to tell the village or their companions or their likeminded audiences. They behave like information officers passing on useful information or news when actually they are nothing but rumour mongers. Usually, such people tell lies to make whatever they say sound believable and worth knowing. You will detect this kind of character in them by the way they also frequently tell you stories about other people in the neighbourhood or elsewhere. They are even ready to tell you about the people who fought in the village or street, including those who fell with motor cycles and bicycles, and the tree that fell near the river, useless stuff. Some use their closeness and familiarity with you to befriend your children and workers at home to the extent of even corrupting them. Some use such ‘opportunity’ to borrow things from your home, which they end up not returning after you forget. Some even go to the extent of stealing small things, thinking that you will not easily notice or suspect them because of the closeness with you. After befriending your children or being commonly accepted figures or visitors at home, they can easily abuse your unsuspecting children. Such relatives and friends go to the extent of visiting you at your workplace to tell you stories or ask for bus or taxi fare as if you had sent them somewhere to do something for you or as if you had arranged with them to find you at the workplace at that time. In case you realise that the relatives who are behaving so do it out of ignorance, you should find time to politely point out the inconveniences it causes and request them to stop the habit. If it is your friends doing so, you are unfortunately with the wrong type and level of people. They reflect the character you are comfortable with, suggesting you are also like them. This is because a person’s character is like that of the people he associates with. There are many good people around, out of whom to choose friends. Why stick to the bad ones who can cause you embarrassment, vandalise your home and even cause you to lose your job? It is only safe to associate with decent relatives and friends. dalemuta@yahoo.co.uk