Money Matter

I have been without internet and phones for over two weeks now. The hospital is doing fewer trips into the city because of diesel shortages. I did get an opportunity to send e-mail last week from the local police station. I had to ride a bike that wasn’t functioning properly, it was stuck in one gear and the chain fell off. To top it all off the ride was often in sand. Have you ever tried to ride a street bike in sand, it isn’t easy. But I made the 8 km ride without any serious incident. The police men couldn’t have been more accommodating.

Money matters continues to be a huge struggle. The general hands at the hospital made 5 trillion this month, which sounds really good. The bus ride into town to get your money cost 3 trillion each way. It serves no purpose to save your money, because next week it will have drastically reduced in value. Also, the bank this week was limiting your withdrawal to 3 trillion each day, so you really couldn’t get enough out of the bank to pay your way to town. Many transactions are done in foreign currency, people work with the Rand from South Africa, Pula from Botswana, the Pound from the UK and the US dollar. Conversions from one to another and into the Zim dollar is boggling even for the most astute math mind. Just to add to the confusion people are preferring the old currency to the new currency, I guess you feel richer having 100 billion rather then $10. Even though they are valued the same.

The weather seems to be changing, although the official beginning of ‘spring’ isn’t until Sept. 21ish, temps in the middle of the day often hover around 30 and above, night temperatures still go down to around 14-15 degrees. My kind of ‘winter’.