Big Brother Africa 4: Scheming, Plotting and … Jen’s Leaving!

ANOTHER day in the BBA house, another day of scheming, plotting, catty confrontations, power plays and conspiring!
That’s the stuff they choose to show us though. We’re getting complaints left, right and centre about the all-round censorship that seems to be characterising this season of what has in previous seasons been a hit show.

Seems that as soon as the talk gets a little nasty and the language dirty, the cameras switch over to the hammock swaying silently in the garden. Not just that, the cameras often cut away abruptly even in the middle of an ‘ordinary’ conversation – just when it gets to the interesting bit.And the sound! Besides the shaky camera work, the sound seems to resemble a Nollywood film, loud one minute, the next you’re reaching for your earbuds just to make sure you don’t have a latent hearing condition.Eish, it’s stressful just watching. It’s tough to keep up with a conversation, let alone get a good grasp of all the swirling undercurrents going on in the house. What is the point of a reality TV show if they constantly censor the reality? Audiences who dutifully pay their subscription fees every month are more than a bit miffed at the enforced ‘morality’ of this season. The general consensus among irate viewers seems to be that Africa’s Big Brother is Nigeria (at least where pure financial power and influence on MultiChoice is concerned) and the rest of Africa is not happy with it at all!Bring back the reality!JEN SHOCKHere’s what I have been able to gather though, first things first: it seems Jen from Mozambique has got some bad news from home and will be leaving the show. Yeah, I can hear Africa’s collective groan going around. Even I feel a little sad that she has to leave. Sometime yesterday afternoon she must have gotten a call from home. Though exactly how the chronology played out is not clear.In tears, she called Paloma and told her that she had to leave. When Paloma asked her why, she quickly said that she couldn’t tell her.From what I have heard, Jen seems to have experienced some difficult circumstances involving her family in the past. The other day she opened up to Paloma, Kevin and Liz, telling them that at a time they would go days without a decent meal, even eating rotten meat just to survive. She also spoke a bit about her Dad who treated them quite badly and was a public figure back home, so perhaps she may have said more than she should and certain family figures are not happy. We don’t know yet but keep watching and hopefully soon, all will be revealed.What a pity. We’ll miss you Jen. Hope everything works out alright.TOIL ANDTROUBLESticking with the girls, Rene seems to have made herself enemy number 1 among the ladies in the house. Have to say, Rene’s really got no one to blame but herself. Basically, before entering the combined house, the ladies apparently made a pact to unite when it comes to nominations. First joint nomination and the ladies decided that Eddie and Erastus had to go. Rene, feeling she couldn’t nominate her fellow countrymen (go, girl!), decided to vote for Leonel and Kristal. That would have been fine, except Rene couldn’t keep it to herself, blabbing to someone then trying to cover her tracks. Then, self-appointed leader of the ladies Paloma started blanking her out, Kristal got to hear that she had been nominated and completely ignored Rene too.To save herself (she obviously didn’t think this one through) she made things even worse by changing her story and saying she voted for Jen instead. Eish, now they all don’t trust her, with Jen even going so far as to call her a liar straight to her face.She’s not a girls’ girl anyway and seems to be more comfortable with the guys, which I think is fine. Now the smokers’ group just has to try and lure a few more girls into their alliance otherwise their numbers will be off, with the majority of the girls seemingly aligning with the non-smoking guys – Quinn, Jeremy, Leonel and Kevin. BIG FADERYacob, the one who couldn’t stop bemoaning life without women, is now all of a sudden mute when it comes to the girls. He’s all talk and no action. Instead of trying to get to know the girls and entice them into their alliance, he, Phil and Hannington seem to spend their time giving the girls the evil eye and calling them serpents. Eish – the bitterness!They’ve all realised that they have to re-strategise now that they have seen the amount of power the ladies yield. I like, I like.If it’s a numbers game, then I am afraid that our Namibian housemates’ time may soon be up and I predict Rene’s name to be on quite a few lips, come nomination time on Monday.In couples news, Jemma (Jeremy and Emma) had tongues wagging yesterday morning after they apparently moaned and groaned the way through the night. Kristal, Erastus, Kaone and Mzamo were enjoying their morning ciggie when Kristal asks if anyone else heard the moaning coming from Jemma’s bed the previous night. Erastus also heard it and joked that the moans sounded lovely and that he was jealous that Jeremy had one up on him. Even offering Mzamo three cigarettes just to sleep in his bed and pretend to moan so that he could also be THE MAN!I don’t think Jemma really did anything more than whisper and kiss the night away but it’s just funny to see how stories get all twisted and blown out of proportion along the grapevine.That’s all for now guys, make sure to catch Sunday’s eviction show on DStv Channel 102 at 19h00. In the meantime, I hope you’re all voting to keep our playboy Erastus in the house.* Tune in to DStv Channel 198 or 199 to catch the action live 24/7, or watch the daily highlights show on M-Net (DStv Channel 101/102) and AfricaMagic (DStv Channel 114) every day at 18h30. Weekly highlights will also be aired on NBC, every Saturday from 21h15 – 22h15.