Big Brother Africa: B’s notorious B.I.G. nomination moment

WHOA! Bertha has workshopped her head-of-house eviction nomination switch with God.

Big time. S’true.Not only that, immediately after Sunday night’s eviction, she swung into networking mode, donned the breastplate of righteousness and launched an offensive of crusade proportions among potentially aggrieved housemates.Got to hand it to the girl.She works her turf! As Bertha would have it, our girl Meryl had left her with something of a poisoned chalice by saving her the previous week.When Meryl came up for eviction, she had had no option but to replace her with Maureen.Her hands were tied.If Meryl hadn’t saved her, she would have let the nominations stand as they were.She felt terrible.Nothing personal.Maureen was a marvellous person.But she’d had to decide on the spur of the moment.(I won’t mention here that Maureen was one of Bertha’s original nominees, nor that Maureen herself had nominated Bertha – aka B.) And hell, had B prayed about the switch, and prayed about it, and PRAYED about it.And anguished.And interceded with God.She had pleaded that the right thing would happen.And heavens, here was Maureen.Still in the house! Thanks be.And thank B.God’s will had been done.Still, it had been more agonising for her, Bertha, than anyone else.She had had to endure a weeklong dark night of the soul; had been the one who had had to carry the cross of knowing.Sjoe! The girl wears stigmata with the ease of a fashionista draping herself in Versace.GRIDLOCK’D Heck people.This is a reality show! Nothing wrong with housemates being Christian, but I have a feeling that God is not taking sides on this one.Either the Zimbo is playing a hell of a game – and believe me, I think she’s one of the strategists in the house – or she could not bear to be seen to be doing someone in.God forbid that Bertha come across as Cruella de Ville.Or as a scion of that infamous scheming Catholic baddie, Catherine de Medici.Sweet Moses.This is a game; a game about betrayal, deception and outwitting your housemates.And ultimately a game about elimination, or in BBA, eviction.It’s about getting the better of your housemates – there’s US$100 000 up for grabs! Someone has to go.Someone has to win.Early yesterday morning, Bertha was seen sitting alone outside praying aloud “for a divine strategy”.CODE SPITS TOAD Which brings me to another member of the house’s axis of righteousness.Code.Code, for the record, is a member of Bertha’s Sunday morning house Bible study group.Bertha I still get.But Code? I’m not even sure Code gets Code.IS there anything to get? This shypoo of a man had the gall to be “shocked” and “upset” by Bertha’s Maureen manoeuvre.The pretty but flighty, if not slightly neurotic, Ugandan has been ‘Cody-ody’s’ (yuck) on-again, off-again, ‘as the mood takes me’ squeeze.This is the dawg who ran whimpering to Bertha about being dogged by temptation (read Maureen), comparing himself to a high priest under siege; who nestled in B’s ample bosom – for hours – as she tried to console him, and offer anti-vice advice.The noble Bertha probably thought she’d done Code a favour, and likely believed she’d set the hounds of heaven on those treacherous temptations.Wrong! Code, who only the previous day had given Maureen the umpteenth blah-blah brush-off (but still snuck into her bed that night) looked confused.And, being Code, later tried to gossip-shop it with Max.Like, damn dawg, you know whaddi-mean.Wassup? Was he really upset? Mmmmm …Think it’s more like a cat faced with being deprived of the mouse it’s been paw-slapping around.The man spits toad! EPITAPH FOR JEFF Well, now we know why Kenya’s Jeff, at the disputed age of 23, is such a prolific author! To cut a long story short, under questioning from Meryl, he gave up that he’d last had sex two years ago, when he had been in a relationship.Asked by Meryl how he coped, he said he wrote.So there you have it.Two novels under his belt, a third on the way and a fourth in the pipeline.The two-year factor might also explain those crazy, frog-caught-in-a-blender early morning exercises.We enjoyed it while it lasted! Hey, Jeff was a good guy.Nothing not to like, just not Broadway’s best.And it looks like he has a fabulous Mum.Happy landings.A BIG UP FOR MERYL! I hate it when people make cut and dried judgements about our girl Meryl.It makes me start to feel very Old Testament.Her detractors are as stubborn as George W Bush on those non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.And even when mitigating evidence is offered, they tend to do turbo-charged Dick Cheney on denial.Or they morph into ‘propagandists’ in the mould of former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, also known as ‘Comical Ali’ (or ‘Baghdad Bob’), Saddam Hussein’s chief propagandist during the invasion of Iraq: vaingloriously flying in the face of all the facts! So props to Toini, Jonas, Oscar, Simon and others from Namibia whose messages I’ve spotted on the BBA SMS strip giving a big up to Meryl.* Watch BBA2 on Channel 37.S’true.Not only that, immediately after Sunday night’s eviction, she swung into networking mode, donned the breastplate of righteousness and launched an offensive of crusade proportions among potentially aggrieved housemates.Got to hand it to the girl.She works her turf! As Bertha would have it, our girl Meryl had left her with something of a poisoned chalice by saving her the previous week.When Meryl came up for eviction, she had had no option but to replace her with Maureen.Her hands were tied.If Meryl hadn’t saved her, she would have let the nominations stand as they were.She felt terrible.Nothing personal.Maureen was a marvellous person.But she’d had to decide on the spur of the moment.(I won’t mention here that Maureen was one of Bertha’s original nominees, nor that Maureen herself had nominated Bertha – aka B.) And hell, had B prayed about the switch, and prayed about it, and PRAYED about it.And anguished.And interceded with God.She had pleaded that the right thing would happen.And heavens, here was Maureen.Still in the house! Thanks be.And thank B.God’s will had been done.Still, it had been more agonising for her, Bertha, than anyone else.She had had to endure a weeklong dark night of the soul; had been the one who had had to carry the cross of knowing.Sjoe! The girl wears stigmata with the ease of a fashionista draping herself in Versace.GRIDLOCK’D Heck people.This is a reality show! Nothing wrong with housemates being Christian, but I have a feeling that God is not taking sides on this one.Either the Zimbo is playing a hell of a game – and believe me, I think she’s one of the strategists in the house – or she could not bear to be seen to be doing someone in.God forbid that Bertha come across as Cruella de Ville.Or as a scion of that infamous scheming Catholic baddie, Catherine de Medici.Sweet Moses.This is a game; a game about betrayal, deception and outwitting your housemates.And ultimately a game about elimination, or in BBA, eviction.It’s about getting the better of your housemates – there’s US$100 000 up for grabs! Someone has to go.Someone has to win.Early yesterday morning, Bertha was seen sitting alone outside praying aloud “for a divine strategy”.CODE SPITS TOAD Which brings me to another member of the house’s axis of righteousness.Code.Code, for the record, is a member of Bertha’s Sunday morning house Bible study group.Bertha I still get.But Code? I’m not even sure Code gets Code.IS there anything to get? This shypoo of a man had the gall to be “shocked” and “upset” by Bertha’s Maureen manoeuvre.The pretty but flighty, if not slightly neurotic, Ugandan has been ‘Cody-ody’s’ (yuck) on-again, off-again, ‘as the mood takes me’ squeeze.This is the dawg who ran whimpering to Bertha about being dogged by temptation (read Maureen), comparing himself to a high priest under siege; who nestled in B’s ample bosom – for hours – as she tried to console him, and offer anti-vice advice.The noble Bertha probably thought she’d done Code a favour, and likely believed she’d set the hounds of heaven on those treacherous temptations.Wrong! Code, who only the previous day had given Maureen the umpteenth blah-blah brush-off (but still snuck into her bed that night) looked confused.And, being Code, later tried to gossip-shop it with Max.Like, damn dawg, you know whaddi-mean.Wassup? Was he really upset? Mmmmm …Think it’s more like a cat faced with being deprived of the mouse it’s been paw-slapping around.The man spits toad! EPITAPH FOR JEFF Well, now we know why Kenya’s Jeff, at the disputed age of 23, is such a prolific author! To cut a long story short, under questioning from Meryl, he gave up that he’d last had sex two years ago, when he had been in a relationship.Asked by Meryl how he coped, he said he wrote.So there you have it.Two novels under his belt, a third on the way and a fourth in the pipeline.The two-year factor might also explain those crazy, frog-caught-in-a-blender early morning exercises.We enjoyed it while it lasted! Hey, Jeff was a good guy.Nothing not to like, just not Broadway’s best.And it looks like he has a fabulous Mum.Happy landings. A BIG UP FOR MERYL! I hate it when people make cut and dried judgements about our girl Meryl.It makes me start to feel very Old Testament.Her detractors are as stubborn as George W Bush on those non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.And even when mitigating evidence is offered, they tend to do turbo-charged Dick Cheney on denial.Or they morph into ‘propagandists’ in the mould of former Iraqi information minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, also known as ‘Comical Ali’ (or ‘Baghdad Bob’), Saddam Hussein’s chief propagandist during the invasion of Iraq: vaingloriously flying in the face of all the facts! So props to Toini, Jonas, Oscar, Simon and others from Namibia whose messages I’ve spotted on the BBA SMS strip giving a big up to Meryl.* Watch BBA2 on Channel 37.