Zimbabwe Absurdity

I wrote on this topic some time ago in the Zimbabwe dollar days but now the government is broke again in US dollar terms.

Shelton is my professeur de Francais who I am paying to brush up my conversational French in preparation for a June visit to Europe with Sybille. He taught me French in the local Alliance Francaise a few years ago and I bumped into him again on the flight to South Africa in March. Each hour’s lesson costs me all of $10 and we got on really well.

I asked him yesterday if he was getting paid by Air Zimbabwe. He said “occasionally”. It seems that he relies on infrequent work at the Alliance and teaching the likes of me to survive. No wonder he is looking elsewhere.

Chatting to the various Saturday lunchtime drinkers and “thinkers” at the Gallery Delta just now I heard that the IMF has predicted 0% growth in Zimbabwe next year which is quite an achievement given the hole we are in. It all makes me a bit nervous about the money I’ve got in the bank – the government has raided the foreign currency accounts in the past – but there is only so much I can put “under the mattress”.