Zimbabwe Absurdity

“So how’s it going – saving the world?” I joked to the public health doctor this afternoon.
“Not very well” he replied. “We cannot address more than eight people without having police permission. If we send a person out to educate a group of people on HIV/AIDS he (or she) is immediately seen as partisan to a political party and reported. Our funding only lasts until the end of 2012” he said pointing to the logo of a branch of the UN on the side of his truck “and we are just standing still. There IS going to be an election this year and the (political) temperature is rising.”

I told him that yesterday I’d had a meeting with another branch of the UN which had a project going in rural Zimbabwe and wanted me to quote on a large order of onion seedlings. It hadn’t sounded very well thought out to me so I went along to discuss it. The manager of the project really wanted to get it going quicker than the 8 weeks it would take us to grow the seedlings so I suggested that they did it the old fashioned way with seed beds. I asked why there was such a rush to be told it was to keep idle young hands out of the way of the Devil – metaphorically speaking. I addedto the doctor that the last NGO order we’d done was sent out to the rural areas overnight to reduce the chance of being intercepted and disrupted.

“Why do we have to put up with this?” said the doctor, getting into his pickup. “Why can’t we just do as we like?” he added as he drove off.

“That’s not my change up there, is it?” I said pointing to the packets of biscuits, sweets and crisps on a shelf.
“No” said Christine and giggled. “It’s nothing to do with Forestry Commission”.
I was in the Forestry Commission seed sales office looking for eucalyptus seed to grow in the nursery. They didn’t have the species I wanted as the seed had been sent for germination testing. It seemed that Christine, the officer on duty, was doing a bit of moonlighting to help get by. The civil servants in Zimbabwe are notoriously badly paid so I was not at all surprised.

Earlier I had driven past a vlei in Mount Pleasant where two tractors were busy cutting and baling grass and there was a sign by the road advertisng the bales for sale. It is municipal ground but I couldn’t determine if they were municipal tractors. At least they were making use of the grass which every year gets burnt. Elsewhere there are other people busy cutting and combing thatching grass in the hope that they can sell it. Despite the patchy rains last season the veld is looking good which unfortunately means the fires will be severe and there already has been one at the front of where I live. It was too early in the season to be hot and damaging. That will come later.

I called by Tendai’s office at the end of last week to retrieve a DVD I’d lent him on, of all things, the RLI which is my old regiment. He was fascinated by it! He didn’t have the DVD on him but he did let drop a pearl of wisdom: apparently as of the end of June cars (and other vehicles I presume) older than 5 years will not be allowed to be imported into Zimbabwe. This is quite a blow to those who could get access to cheap, reasonable quality, second-hand vehicles from Japan. It seems that someone thinks we should support the Zimbabwe vehicle assembly industry instead. This is unlikely as they are expensive by any standard. I think we’ll just see ever older and more delapidated vehicles on our roads as few people will be able to buy the new vehicles.

Last Friday night the cooling oil from the transformer at work was stolen. It seems to be a fairly risk free occupation – I have never heard of anyone being caught or electrocuted and it can be sold as a heating oil for stoves etc. There was a proctective cage around it on the pole (this is the 3rd time it’s happened) but of course where there is a will there’s a way and they got around it. Fortunately they felt a bit insecure about the wiring and turned the transformer off – which requires a special fibreglass pole so the transformer did not over-heat and self destruct. I wonder where they got that? Being a weekend nothing much happened from the power authority side (ZESA) but yesterday a phone call got the response that ZESA did not have any oil to put into it. This usually means that the oil is available and ZESA does not have the money to buy it.

There are several premises who share the transformer, one being a golf course and the manager has contacts in high places in ZESA so she told me she would handle it. In the meantime I had to think about how to get water out of our boreholes and into the storage tank from where we can use a diesel pump to get it onto the seedlings. Some years back I had bought a small Chinese made generator though not for this sort of eventuality as we have pretty reliable power. It is also only a single phase generator (3-phase generators are expensive) and is only designed for domestic and small premises. I had serious doubts if it could get the power to the borholes some 300m+ away without a big voltage drop that would stop the motors from running. Anyway it was worth a try. First I had to ensure that the two pumps that are single phase (one is a 3-phase) were on the same phase. That done I opened up the switch box and wired the generator onto the relevant phase and switch. I turned the generator on and hoped. At first I could hear the voltage protection on the pumps kicking in and out as they protected the motors from low voltage but eventually it settled down and we got water!

By 4p.m. the generator was leaking diesel. The cover had to come off and the leaking injector feed was remedied. Getting it all back together was another issue. The cover bolts would not line up with the holes! By 5.30 my patience had run out so it went back together sans a few bolts. Now I have to keep it running long enough to stay in business!

In the US dollar economy that pervades in Zimbabwe change is always an issue. We seem to have got over the problem of dollar notes, though they remain by and large disgusting. Smaller than that is definitely a problem and whilst some outlets use the occasional South African coins it is more common to give chang in items or a credit note at the supermarket.

A couple of days ago I was having a French conversation lesson with my “Professeur de Francais” at an Avondale cafe when the change arrived in the form of half a Cadbury’s Flake (centre of the picture). Apparently it representd 50c. So we shared it and ate it.

We used to find these cape gooseberries (Physalis peruviana) growing all over the forest where I grew up. They don’t orginate here but seem to grow very well just about anywhere. I used to hate the gooseberry jam we got at bording school, it was always very runny and messy! This fruit was from a bush at the corner of the house. It is unusual to find an intact fruit inside the “cage” of the sepals that have partially disintigrated though they do have a very long shelf life.

Mr M has been a good customer over the years – not a very big one but reliable on ordering, payment and collection. This year he has stumbled badly though and we eventually had to throw away his order of 12,000 cabbage seedlings. They had been in the nursery more than 2 months after the due collection and I’d lost any profit on them and they were hopelessly over-mature. True to form he said he was always coming “this week” to collect but he never came.

Yesterday he arrived to see if he could get us to sow another order. He told me that the rains had been so heavy that he could not get into his lands to plant. I told him that when he paid for the non-collected order I’d sow his next one. He asked me if I could not halve the charge to him! I commented that I was not responsible for the rains and we’d upheld our side of the contract. Perhaps he was thinking that I would be happier to get something for my loss rather than nothing and I would be very unlikely to call in the debt collectors. He was right on the latter – I have way to many bad debtors on my books! I should explain that we do tend to try and keep our customers as we are in a competitive market and there is certainly no queue of prospective clients at the gate! He certainly piled on the pressure about how hard things were but I reminded him that when things were good no farmer ever offered to share his good fortune with me – farming is a high risk business with proportional rewards and potential loss. I am in a more low risk business – we don’t charge according to the market forces but I don’t make or hopefully lose as much as he could either.

He went away disappointed that I would not budge. I did tell the senior foreman later that if he phoned to ask if we’d sowed his next order to say that when he gave us a deposit we’d do so but nothing would leave the nursery until his account was up to date. He was right up to a point, I did want to get SOMETHING for the lost seedlings!

Gail remarked that she’d just been caught by the traffic cops speeding in a 60km/h zone but as it was a spot fine and she didn’t have any money smaller than $50 and the cops didn’t have change she was let off. She was lucky; they could have told her to go and pay at the local police station. My senior foreman commented that the traffic police had been told that they had to take in $3000 a day in fines.

They certainly are out in force but they do tend to hang out in the same spots every time. I wonder what they will do if the general public become wise enough that they no longer take in the required amount?