ASK Tatiana why the week that preceded the Monday night nominations was hard for the Big Brother housemates. Trust her to tell you it was because of Zimbabwe’s Bertha. In fact it is the reason she gave during the nominations.

This Angolan model might not have enough English words to express herself fully, owing to her Portuguese descent. But believe you me, she found the words to describe last week’s blend of a Bertha that the house had not seen for the previous seven weeks — that is to say, the real Bertha, not the cloak-wearing one.

Giving reasons for nominating Bertha, Tatiana said: “Last week was very hard for us. Bertha helped to make it that way. She was ugly, she was rude, mean, hard, aggressive, and everything bad.”

So if the much liked sweet Tati, who is usually out of Bertha’s line of fire could blend her with this whole dress-down, who am I not to describe her with all the gross diction there is, considering that I am that daily witness to the constant mistreatment of our Maureen?

It is not a really bright week for those of us who support our housemate in this reality show after Ugandans decided on Sunday to save Bertha for Lerato. How on earth could you do that? You can load your phone with airtime worth about sh30,000, to show this Bertha that you can throw her out of the Big Brother house alone if no one will help you do it.

That way, we can be sure there is no one suffocating our Maureen with bouts of hatred.

But with the camouflage still in the house, Maureen will not breathe easy at all, not when Bertha still picks on her for a bully victim.

It is just as well that she is up for possible eviction this week, together with the other surviving untouchable, Ghana’s Kwaku, who said last week that Maureen is like a dumb blonde. Let us first cushion our rage on this one. His time is coming after Bertha has become history next week.

Of course Big Brother might want to avert this predictability by having Kwaku leave before Bertha (God forbid). But if the vote that is giving Bertha the boot is overwhelming, I am convinced there will be no way of rigging. So let us vote Bertha out (be good voters this time). Type Vote Bertha and send to 15626 (MTN), 5626 (UTL), 0903015626 (Celtel). You can also vote online at www.mnetafrica.co.za/bigbrother.

As it turned out on Sunday, most Ugandan fans who turned up for the eviction party at Faze2 were shocked that Lerato was the fifth housemate to leave the house instead of Bertha like they all craved.

I later discovered that much as they wished for Bertha to get evicted, very few had voted at all.

And then they resorted to saying Big Brother rigged, which could be true. But if you did not vote, you have no way of getting your allegations justified. This time vote and see what happens. Bertha will leave come Sunday.

Meanwhile, there is a general view that Big Brother might have wanted to show transparency by evicting the housemate of the game’s host country?

That Lerato has been bossy, over-assuming and too comfortable in the house, made viewers accuse Big Brother of favouring her because she is South African.

So Sunday’s dramatic reversal could have been Big Brother’s idea of saying “hey, even our very own can go.” So doesn’t this console us (Bertha haters) that we did not predict badly after all? Of course it does.

The fact that the Big Brother organisation signs the cheque of Alexander Forbes, the company that tallies and verifies the votes, anything can happen. But even then, we had nothing to lose by having Lerato evicted — after all, she did not like Maureen that much either.

It is just that we risked having Bertha stay and become house head if she survives another time, which means she would have the powers to save a housemate and put Maureen up for possible eviction.

In fact we are lucky that Tanzania’s Richard beat them to the house head task of taking basketball shots into a temporarily erected hoop. Richard had 47 seven shots, while Kwaku, who came second, had 43 — thanks to Makerere College that trained Richard in the game.

Of course they did not know that it would help keep the Ugandan housemate in the game. If Kwaku had won, he would have put Maureen up for possible eviction. And who knows?

Meanwhile Richard remained true to The Big Five after the nominations. When asked to save one of the nominated housemates; Bertha or Kwaku, Richard followed in Maureen’s footsteps by not making changes.

So Bertha’s stunt of trying to win him over last week by telling him Code had been talking ill about him did not work — poor Zimbabwean trying to act smart, yet her façade is being seen through. And the crocodile tears and fake apologies will not work too.

We know a genuine apology when we receive one, and the one Bertha gave us last Saturday night did not sound like it. Well, the crocodile tears could have appeared real to an undiscerning person — not to many of us who have devoted eight weeks of analysing her character and what she is made of. She has to go.

Meanwhile, effective today, Big Brother will be screening on DStv Channel 198 and not the previous 37.


Compiled by Nigel Nassar