Zimbabwe Absurdity

There is something appealing to being able to generate one’s own electricity – especially in Zimbabwe where I thoroughly resent the attitude of the supply authority, ZESA, who seems to turn off the power at a whim and shows precious little interest in upgrading the grid. So it was with more than a passing interest that I asked about the solar panels at my local electrical hardware outlet this afternoon.

The largest costs US$750 and puts out 150W.
In Zimbabwe we pay around 10c a unit (kWh) for our supplied electricity. $750 would thus buy 7500 units.
The solar panel could theoretically put out 1.35 units a day (8 hours of usable sunshine x 150W).
It would take 6944 days at this rate to equal the 7500 units of ZESA supplied power. This is assuming an 80% efficiency conversion to mains power through a battery and inverter; which might be optimistic. (I don’t know if the panel requires full sunshine incident at 90 degrees to generate the 150W).
Now the salesman said the lifetime of the panel should be around 25 years. 6944 days is 19.29 years if the sun shines for 8h every day which of course it doesn’t. Nor have I included the price of a deep cycle battery (around $200) or the inverter (about $150). Do that and the payback period jumps to 28.29 years. And the battery will need to be replaced at least every 5 years! Factor in the replacement batteries and it would take around 49 years to pay back the investment to the equivalent of $750 of the grid electricity.

Why bother?

They say that sex is a universal language. I guess it must be with the world population knocking at the door of 7 billion but in Zimbabwe one cannot go far wrong with music. I have recently finished constructing a music amplifier for my Landcruiser through which I play my MP3 player. I have to admit I’m still at the “enamoured” stage and cannot resist showing it off and yes, honestly, it IS good!

This afternoon when I stopped at a traffic light, one of the ubiquitous newspaper vendors commented to me; “Nice music sah!”  “Yes” I responded, “we all need good music” and we both jived along a bit to Starship’s “Nothing’s going to stop us now” until the lights changed.

Austin was chatting to a nun recently who teaches at a mission school in Manicaland. She recounted an interesting story from the time when various ZANU-PF lackies were doing the rounds getting signatures for our Honourable President’s campaign against the “illegal sanctions” commonly described as being imposed against Zimbabwe and the cause of all our economic problems, but they are actually targeted against him and various other senior unsavories. Groups of heavies even hung out in car parks in town here and intimidated shoppers into signing the petition.

They arrived one day at the school and demanded that the students be gathered so that they could address them. The staff and students duly gathered and the address started. It did not get far before the senior students (secondary school age) started to jeer and mock the gatherers of signatures and then they, the students, led the walkout. There was no comeback.

You have heard of Osama bin Laden and his recent demise. Who hasn’t? In fact I have turned off the radio for the meantime as I am tired of the incessant analyses and reports and interviews of 9/11 relatives. Bin Laden is gone and good riddance but al Kaeda is still alive and will very likely kick back somewhere soon. But wait. Who is Barry Blumberg? Well, I should say who WAS Barry Blumberg as he died on April the 5th with very little fanfare. He discovered the hepatitus B virus and then developed a vaccine (with his team) and when it got little support from the pharmaceutical companies he gave out reagent kits and copies of his patent to any who wanted. Unlike bin Laden there is no estimate of how many lives his work SAVED but it was a considerable amount. Sadly bin Laden will go down in history but here’s my small contribution to Barry Blumberg and his ilk.

The customs declaration on the padded envelope said very clearly that the contents were valued at 150- SEK (Swedish Kroner). It contained electronic kit components for my hobby of building hifi amplifiers, and yes they do work rather well! I cannot think why I did not have to pay duty except maybe nobody was prepared to admit they didn’t know what SEK stood for. I was not about to complain so thanked the official at the central sorting office, picked up the package and continued out to the Tobacco Research Board near the airport to buy some tobacco seed for an order.

On the way back I called in at the cargo handling terminal to collect another piece of electronics that I’d ordered from South Africa some time ago but had not been to collect – after all R240 (about US$30) does not require a special trip. Unfortunately the company in question, based in Jo’burg, will not post items to Zimbabwe so they come by courier to the airport where they are valued for import duty. I asked what the duty would be – US$17. And the handling charge? US$30. So I told them to keep it and walked out.

Monday 18th April was the 30th anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence. Celebrations were held at various places around the country and I am pretty sure attendances were not that good – after all – who wants to hear a politician spouting all the usual slogans on your day off? Aware of this, the organisers use a bit of psychological pressure on the the farmers in the rural areas to donate food in order to attract a crowd. Maybe they think it will help garner votes come election day but I think people have a shorter memory than that.

Comrade Mapfumo, chairman of Gomba District ZANU-PF phoned me last week to ask for “a beast”. I presume that meant a bovine of some description. I don’t farm cattle and had no intention of giving anything else either so said no. Then the letter arrived:

Curiously it is dated 1st April though it was not intended as an April Fool’s joke. I am not really sure what they thought they would put the salad cream on either. This was a little more difficult to ignore so I phoned around to see what other farmers were doing. Unfortunately they were donating so I swallowed my pride and took around 120kg of sweet potatoes left over from a cutting project for an NGO. No doubt Comrade Mapfumo (as he calls himself to me) will have something to say and it won’t be “thank you”.