Of Coffee In A Fuel Queue

If you were having coffee with me I would greet you very merrily and say “compliments of the festive season” as I ask how your holiday season has been.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you its the eve of the eve of New Year’s eve and I practically woke up in a fuel queue.

Curious fact: how old where you, when you realised that the eve in lets say New Year’s eve did not necessarily mean evening but the whole day before an important event/date……

If you having coffee with me, I would tell you that fuel, particularly of the petrol(gasoline) variety has been in short supply; in fact, a whole lot of commodities have practically been scarce, as the economy runs on fumes.

This festive season hasn’t had much in the way of festivities, when you cant even find a soft drink. Imagine it a Christmas without Coca-cola, its the signature holiday refreshment, almost seems as if the coca-cola company single-handedly created Santa.

I picture Santa Claus; after a hard day riding his sleigh, delivering gifts to the good kids drinks Coca-Cola and now you cant help but imagine that either……

Coca cola invented santa claus

The Christmas lights might have been turned on but there isn’t much of any cheer

harare city Christmas lights
Harare City Christmas Lights First Street

If you were having coffee with me, would you believe it, if I told you that we queued up at Fuel Service station, “on a rumour” that a fuel tanker might eventually deliver a load of fuel.

Random strangers would drive by and ask if we had heard any “official” tip off and we would laugh as we told them we had nowhere better to queue up….. “so here we are.”

Funny enough people came and joined up in right behind us


and some sneaky few, even silently asked themselves if they could join up in front of us too …

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that you know the struggle is real when you learn to read “the code” written on the fuel tanker trucks and you can tell which one is petrol(gasoline); diesel; Liquified Petroluem Gas(LPG) and paraffin (kerosene)

3y 1203 Petrol Hazchem  placard
\
Hazchem 3Y 1202 Diesel fuel placard
Hazchem 1075 2ye placard LPG
Image result for 3y 1223
Paraffin


Well the fuel delivery eventually arrived but just in time for service station to close at 7pm sharp and our car was locked in the queue, so we had no choice but leave it there…

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you its difficult to get a good night’s sleep when you keep wondering if the car you left by itself is safe. What if a someone steals it? Well, at least they cant drive it far, since it doesn’t have fuel ha!

Anyhoo the car was there in the morning, in exactly the same state we left it whoop whoop and I pa

You know things are a bad when people congratulate you on getting petrol in your car, because it’s an actual mission, requiring certain level of persistence, faith and a dash cold hard stubbornness as you defend your position in the queue..…
If you were having coffee with me I would ask you if you think getting fuel is an ordeal then do not fall sick in this country because getting medical treatment is could be a literal life and death ordeal.

The cost of medication and medical procedures is staggeringly high and finding yourself in a govern/ment hospital with nothing but faith and prayer because doctors are on strike (demanding they get their salary in United States Dollars because the local surrogate currency, the bond is losing value by the day even though the governments insists its 1:1 with the USD) can really humble you.

Anyhoo the government, being as it is, deemed it best to unilaterally
issue an ultimatum that all striking doctors go back to work or be on immediate suspension, well they didn’t go back to work and here we are and here we are, a nation without doctors

whatever you don’t try not fall ill or injure yourself stay healthy you life depends on it
If you were having coffee with me and ou were wondering how our free fall economy is doing as we close the year, well here’s fun informative snippet from a cartoon the captures the doom and gloom in a way that does not cause too much alarm and despondency

But hey we still sat down together as a family this holiday season and once again my mum managed to feed us a miracle since nobody knows how she got Christmas dinner done and that is why we say Grace before every meal, to bless the hands that put food on the table.

Christmas Dinner
Christmas Dinner

Here’s wishing you a prosperous New Year

~B

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9 Comments

  1. Hi Beaton. We at least had a chance to learn about this back in the early 1970s when our president Carter and the sitting government of the time tried to declare facts of our economy into existence and succeeded in creating fuel queues across the US. Our doctors were too powerful for Carter to mess with them much, but Obama managed that feat much more recently.

    My friend would it not be nice to be able to study such things from a warm home, with full full pantries and refrigerators and tanks of gas in our cars in case we have need to take an emergency trip to the hospital – instead of learning about them by living them?

    I don’t want to compare the mess of the US with yours, but California itself is not far behind except we have a couple of cash cows (Silicon Valley & Hollywood) that allows us to hide most of rotted economy.

    Where do you get the time to write? I hated being in the fuel queues back then because it was so hard to get anything done.

    Stay safe Beaton. I pray for a better 2019 for your country and its families. I think you’ve had your not-so-fair share of broken government. Blessings.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Funny you ask about getting the time to write, I actually carried my laptop with me to the queue so I would have something to do while I waited and when the laptop power eventually ran out, I read a food old-fashioned book……
      I remember reading this thing about how not learning from history dooms us into repeating mistakes we could have otherwise learnt from instead of having to learn by oursleves but then again, it seems sometimes the only why we can learn something is a mistake is to actually do it then look back an say, yep, I could have handled that better and now I know …. also it works best i you have a fallback plan you can hide behind and a cash cow looks like a good thing about now!!
      thanks for dropping by
      Happy holidays
      ~B

      Liked by 1 person

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