Zimbabwe Absurdity

I have just, come from the bank where I deposited 660 billion (about USD20) of the local dollars in mostly 50 million dollar notes. It took about 3/4 hour and the biggest challenge for me was staying awake. OK, so the teller was not the fastest around but I can not even guess how much it cost the bank to count the money; certainly less than its face value. Feeling in need of a cup of coffee and some sustenance I wandered around the corner to my local WiFi cafe that actually does good coffee and muffins too and anyway, I needed to check on the email. Walking past a notice board advertising air fares to London (and other places) I noticed that a business class fare to the UK was all of 15 trillion. I will save you the bother; it’s less than USD500! The catch of course is that the airline is Air Zimbabwe and is not overly reliable but my aunt recently flew to the UK and she said business class was fine but definitely don’t fly economy! I commented on the price to the proprietor of the cafe and he said just wait until Monday when it will be the equivalent of 200 US dollars as they are always slow to update their prices. A plan is forming here…