Wozhi loved December time. At 57 years of age, he styled himself as a retired mechanical engineer who had worked in Dubai, Canada, Israel, India, Poland, Chile, and pretty much everywhere on earth.
He owned two apartments in Maputo, each netting him $77,000 a year in rentals, thus making him a high-net-worth individual by Mozambique’s standards.
“I have five kids; you’ll see my eldest son by the pool in summer,” Wozhi told Benz, his new tenant whom he was driving across town to one of his apartments in the Matola neighborhood where there was a vacant room.
“Two of my kids are twin girls—we couldn’t stop marveling when they were one year old—they smiled at the same time somehow,” he bragged.
“Really?” asked Benz.
“That’s the thing about babies,” said Wozhi, the talkative engineer turned landlord steering his old Chevrolet Silverado truck past a dusty gas station.
“Twins feel they are a separate family within a family,” he said.
He was a divorcee, and all his kids were grown up, with the eldest son living at his city home as some sort of a live-in manager who ensured no tenant was smoking or dabbling in drugs.
Then Wozhi surprised Benz in a sudden turn.
“I was having breakfast with my son and my fiancee this morning, and I thought your offer of $500 per month was good rent per month. Welcome home, Benz,” said Wozhi.
“I thought you were married to the mom of twins,” Benz replied, tucking his bags into his new room. The window gave an immaculate view onto a dirty swimming pool.
“We parted; I got a Russian girlfriend now, an immigrant to Mozambique, educated, full of humor. You won’t see me much this Christmas. I’m going on a vacation to Namibia with family,” said Wozhi.
“Right now?”
“Our tickets are ready—we fly out tonight,” Wozhi replied.
“I’m happy for you,” hallucinated Benz as he tucked his baggage into the new room.
He contrasted his life with Wozhi’s. Wozhi was 17 years older than him, but he was retired, had two rental properties, and could take exotic holidays at will. Looking at his own life, he had one baby and was renting a tiny room, doing odd jobs between dishwashing and factory work.
“I’ll be indoors this Christmas,” he added.
“You better be,” laughed Wozhi as he cranked up his truck, rushing for the airport.
To Benz’s liking, the house was too quiet for the three weeks Wozhi was on holiday with his family. The other tenants took advantage of Wozhi’s absence to smoke cannabis in the corridor, which aggravated Benzi. He feared the lingering smoke would sicken his baby. But because he was a new tenant, he was literally walking on eggshells.
He would have to await Wozhi the landlord’s return so that he could lodge a complaint properly. For Wozhi was not reachable on a conventional cell phone or WhatsApp during his Christmas break. At last, after three weeks, Wozhi returned from his Christmas break laden with so much luggage, heaps upon heaps of bags with gifts shopped for in Namibia. He took a while to haul them up the stairs to his bedroom, where he lived with Stefi, his Russian fiancée.
“That was a fabulous holiday you had, I suppose,” Benz told Wozhi, remarking at his glowing face.
“Namibia is a wonderland. My kids and ex-wife had so much ecstasy riding quadbikes over the desert sand dunes,” Wozhi replied.
Benz was astonished. So Wozhi didn’t just take Stefi, his fiancée, for the holiday but chose to tag along with his kids and ex-wife.
“Wow, that was funny,” sighed Benz as he slipped into the shared kitchen to make scrambled eggs and lettuce for his wife and baby.
Benz admired the lifestyle Wozhi led with his fiancée Stefi—they spent lavishly, each drove SUVs, lived upstairs in an expansive room with Roman bathtubs, and ate the most expensive wood-fired pizzas for dinners.
Then strange events began to happen in May. Wozhi the landlord would squat for one hour in the toilet room next to Benz’s bedroom. A man in his 50s sobbing alone in the bathroom. Benz didn’t understand it. Wozhi began to wear only one attire, black jeans and a yellow sweater.
“It’s unusual, a man with so much money,” Benz told Nyama, the live-in cleaner at the property.
“I saw him charging his cellphone in the abandoned loungeroom.”
“You don’t know,” Nyama whispered to him, dusting off the property’s trash bucket.
Wozhi was splitting with his Russian fiancée Stefi. They were no longer on talking terms, Nyama claimed. “He’s sleeping in the lounge.”
“He is?!” asked Benz, shocked.
“Yes, he wasn’t merely charging his cellphone in the lounge—that’s his new bedroom until his fiance moves out of the property at month’s end,” laughed Nyama.
Wozhi the landlord was a serial boyfriend, as Nyama mocked him. He lived with a new girlfriend every January, and his relationships barely lasted a year.
It seemed Wozhi’s relationship problems were the talk of town. Much as he seemed wealthy, he just could not keep a woman for long. Another secret was he was still in love with his ex-wife and was known to drag her drama into all his new relationships.
The answer was simple: Wozhi simply needed to beg his ex-wife for forgiveness for cheating with multiple women, bring her back home, and vow never to cheat again, Benz advised him after Stefi moved out. In no time Wozhi’s ex-wife moved back in with the children.
Surprisingly, things worked out perfectly fine.
