Zimbabwe Absurdity

Quite often the best place to shop for vehicle spares in Harare is in the old Kopje area; specifically Kaguvi street. It’s mayhem down there – cars parked haphazardly, running repairs and touts hassling passing drivers “You want bearings? Spares?” which are either stolen or dodgy salvages. It’s advisable to maintain a sense of humour and not get ruffled. I once told a particularly persistent tout to F off only to be accused of being a racist. “Fine” I said, “lets’ go and chat to the police about it then”. He sulked off, continuing to mutter.

Today I was looking for tie rod ends (the bits that hold the steering to the wheels). When asked by a couple of touts if I wanted spares or bearings I replied that I did not buy my spares off the street; after all, who would want a tie rod separating at 120km/h? Lots of tears and dead bodies! They saw the joke and didn’t bother hassling me again. Curiously the shop I went into only had the inner tie rod ends. The outer ones were missing out of stock!

The rubbish tip down the road from my house has been alight for the past week, again. This is the third year in succession that it has burnt. Chatting to Mike, husband of Helen who supplies my weekly milk and provides a garbage collection and disposal service to the same site, I discovered that the bulldozers that the council used to spread the waste have not functioned for the past three years. There’s a link here.

It seems that the government, desperate for some revenue, has hiked the price of fuel with a 20% tax! Nothing quite like creating a bit of “real currency” inflation and give the economy a good kick in the teeth while it’s down!

Patsy Short was the most cheerful, optimistic person I have ever met. She was passionate about animals and loved Jenni. I always enjoyed my visits to the ART Farm office where she worked as the bookkeeper and would sometimes just call in for a chat. I last saw her just before she went off to the UK to see her daughter and she was thoroughly looking forward to it.

Patsy died suddenly last week in the UK of a CVA (cerebral vascular accident). I will miss her exuberant waving every morning from her dark green Mazda as we passed on the way to our respective work.

I supposed I was not that surprised – they had only put up the price of used seedling trays 200% in a year (real money terms). I most certainly WAS annoyed! I tried everything including an impromptu economics lesson on getting higher turnover by lowering prices supermarket style and moving more stock but it was to no avail. I needed the trays and that was the price the Tobacco Research Board was charging. The sales clerk even said that these days you had to get what you could when you could; what was the point in planning for tomorrow?

On the way out I went past the propagation area just to check that the trays were indeed there. They were; scattered and piled around together with some left over tobacco plants in close proximity to the newly germinating seed.