Telling honesty

-  Why didn’t you sell me your pickup?

- What’s wrong with the one you’re driving? I replied, evading the question.

- It’s not mine; I have to borrow that one every time I need to come to town, was the reply.

I’d had an old pickup truck for some years and he was one of several people angling to buy it. I’d eventually sold it to the first person to arrive with the cash. It was running but difficult to start and I’d made it very clear that once out of my hands it was not my problem.

-          So why don’t you go and get one from the second hand car sales places, there must be dozens – it’s a buyer’s market! I said.

-          Yes, but us chiboyi (blacks) are dishonest, we will say anything to sell the vehicle and you find out after 3 weeks that it falls apart. You whites are too honest and tell use all that is wrong with it in the first place!

All hope is lost

- Please may I have time off tomorrow to go to court.
- Why do you have to go to court Gladys.
- Because I was caught chopping (down) wood.
- On ART Farm?
- Yes.
- That was stupid!
- But I was not the only one!

P.S. Gladys is my domestic servant (labour is relatively cheap in the Third World). To me this incident was symptomatic of the Zimbabwe malaise; if someone else is behaving badly it’s OK for me to do so too.

Shopping for spares

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 waste of it all

I was at a different sort of waste tip this morning. We’d just got another nice order of tobacco seedlings so I went out to the Tobacco Research Board to buy some of their excess seedling trays. This time I did not bother going through the marginally cheaper used ones but went straight for the new trays. I’d seen where they were dumped before but that was only a small part of it. The pile we accessed was vast; conservatively estimated at 100,000 trays. Now the maths on that is interesting. That amounts to 24.4 million seedlings (244 cells per tray) or about 1,600ha of tobacco at 15,000 plants per ha. And all the trays were donated by UNEP! I’m sure it’s not a lot of money for UNEP but I do wonder if they are aware of how few of the trays have been used.

Coincidentally

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.

The lore of the lights (or a quick guide to surviving Zimbabwe’s traffic lights)

Surviving Harare’s traffic lights (and by extension this applies to the rest of the country) is not to be taken lightly. Here are a few scenarios and how to deal with them.

1. The traffic pattern implies that all the lights are working. Assume nothing; traffic lights are merely suggestions and red lights are a challenge. Proceed with caution, preferably not as the first vehicle into the intersection. Let someone else be the bait.

2. The lights that you can see are working but you cannot see any others working, they probably are not. Proceed with caution, preferably not as the first vehicle into the intersection. Let someone else be the bait.

3. You cannot see ANY lights working but that does not mean that ALL lights are not working. Proceed with caution, preferably not as the first vehicle into the intersection. Let someone else be the bait.

4. You have come through at least 3 sets of lights that are not working (there was no power at home either) and it looks like this lot is out too. This IS actually the safest scenario as no-one believes they have right of way but don’t take anything for granted. Good luck and may the bravest survive. (This does not apply in South Africa where an intersection with non-functioning traffic lights must be treated like a 4-way stop street).

5. All the lights are actually flashing orange indicating a malfunction. Wow, you ARE privileged! Not many people actually see this fail-safe working so take a photo to prove it to your friends (time it for the flash!)

There are of course other combinations of the above but these are the basics. The best survival technique is to skulk in the shadow of something big enough that no-one else will “dis” it. 7 tonners are good, 30 tonners are the best.

Announcement

Would all readers please note that as from February this year (2009) that all references to “dollars” in this blog refer to the United States currency of the same name. Zimbabwe dollars no longer exist. Officially they have been withdrawn due to “speculation pressure” which begs the question of how they will ever be re-introduced without the same thing happening all over again.

February has been chosen as the “cutoff” date as that is when the revenue authority is opening its books on the real money.

Desperate times

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!

Taken on trust

Phil is a banker so of course I had to ask him how it was going with CABS, his employer. He admitted that very slowly things were improving but a policy change could wreck everything. I knew what he meant; I have been banking some, but definitely not all, my cash takings. I mentioned that so far I’d had no problems withdrawing whatever I needed, but yes, I was a bit apprehensive.

In the past the Reserve Bank has put limits on the amount of cash we were allowed to withdraw and on at least 2 occaisions have raided the FCAs (foreign currency accounts) of companies with failed promises to reimburse the victims. While we all have FCAs these days (well, US dollar accounts anyway) there is no guarantee that they will not raid them again – so just one minor bit of silliness from the government and the trust that keeps the banks in business would be gone – permanently!

In the pipeline

Fuel is short again; specifically diesel.

The vast majority of Zimbabwe’s fuel requirements are imported by the state controlled NOCZIM (National Oil Company of Zimbabwe) whose incompetence/corruption is breathtaking. The fuel comes via pipeline from the Mozambican port of Beira (pronounced Bay-rah) some 460km away. I am not sure of the diameter of the pipeline but it must be at least 50cm or more. Whatever, there’s a lot of fuel in it at any one time. It can be a “mix” of types, separated by a device called a “pig”.

It seems that NOCZIM does not have the money to put any more fuel in at the Beira end of the pipe, so what is in the pipe cannot come out the Harare end. Why they should not have the money is open to question as the various individual importers have pre-paid for their fuel. This makes it sound suspiciously like a Ponzi Scheme (your investment is financing the previous person’s investment – just hope that someone will finance yours!).

In the past various individuals or companies have bailed NOCZIM out. We will have to wait and see if this will happen again.