From Zimbabwe, NewsDay reports a current event in the Harare suburb of Highfield.
A commerical sex worker, Mati Nhamo, was hired by Last* Mbele on Sunday night to end his weekend with a bang. She spent the night at his place, and decided to give him a little extra service by doing his laundry the following morning. Sadly, the line on which she chose to hang the wet wash turned out to be a live wire. She was electrocuted, dying on the spot.
Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority personnel ferried the girl's body to Machipisa Police Station, from where it was transferred to Parirenyatwa Hospital for a post-mortem. In a blinding flash of discernment, doctors blamed the death on an electrical fault.
Here the plot takes a disturbing twist. Mati's family have refused to remove her body from the hospital, saying they will not bury her until Mbele pays the customary bride price. For his part, Mbele says the woman was only his "regular girlfriend", not his wife, so her family should get compensation from the power company, not from him because her death was not his fault, but an electrical fault. Geddit?
The shocking part of this story, as any resident of Harare can attest, is that the line in question was connected and operational.
* About Mr. Mbele's name... During his years in Zimbabwe, Walt met many people with the given name "Last". This phenomenon is directly attributable to a misunderstanding of the birth registration form's instructions: "Last name first, first name last". No, I'm not making that up.
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