If you were having coffee with me I would welcome you to my tangle of words and ask how you have been doing and if you have any great expectations for this year…
Did you ever read the classic novel Great Expectations by Charles Dickens? The thing with great expectations is that sometimes they might not work out as expected. I studied Great Expectations for my secondary school literature class and I recall my mum summing it up in a mouthful of English that it should have been titled “Great Expectations that amount to nought“
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that’s been 2 weeks since schools were supposed to re-open but the school calendar was deferred indefinitely due to the disruptive pandemic. Sometimes I worry about what will become of the current crop of students in a world where connections seem to matter more than education. Then there’s the shocking statistics of the incidence of teen pregnancies and the rise of drug abuse….
I am still reeling from the fact that crystal meth found its way into our streets, thought it was a drug from TV and episodes of Breaking Bad. Colloquially meth is known as guka, mutoriro or dombo; teen drug abuse has become another pandemic….. coupled with idle minds…… when school eventually start running on schedule there will be many empty chairs in the classroom.
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that not unexpectedly our soccer team got eliminated from the Africa Cup Of Nations even though they surprisingly won their last game… a first win at AFCON matches since 2006. I know a lot of people (me included) hadn’t expected them to win and didn’t even tune into the match ….. and guess what they won!!!! I think there is a life lesson on unexpected expectations somewhere there.
And the day The Warriors (that’s the Zim Soccer team) won their match against Guinea, Tuesday 18 January will go down as a landmark day in Zimbabwean sport because that’s also when The Chevrons (Zimbabwe cricket team) won a match against Sri Lanka and The Zimbabwean Women’s Hockey team won against Uganda on ‘Day Two’ of the 2022 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations Hockey tournament in Accra, Ghana.
But of course, before you start jumping around with joy celebrating these great expectations, the soccer team proceeded to get eliminated from AFCON, the cricket lost the next match against Sri Lanka thus losing the 3 Match ODI series and the hockey team lost the match for the bronze medal to Kenya in the semi-finals. The hockey team’s performance was still an impressive run because since 1998 no other senior team has reached the semi-final stage in the Africa Cup Of Nations.
The announcement the Ladies National Hockey qualification into the Hockey Africa Cup of Nations had caused some social media stir as people questioned what kind of criteria was used for selecting the team with allegations of racism, elitism and bribery being levelled against the selection process. If there any lesson to be drawn from this, its that the ministry responsible for sport must pay attention to resource allocation for supporting sport not only at grassroot levels but even at the national team level….
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that speaking of government institutions fully supporting sport, shocking reports have emerged that the former cricket captain Brendan Taylor might face an ICC cricket ban over allegations of a match-fixing scandal, with the former captain having issued a social media statement on how he had been blackmailed with a video taking cocaine to accept a bribe and at a time when the cricket team hadnt been paid for 6 months.
If our government officials paid as much attention to lining their private pockets as they did in making sure that sportsmen representing the country didn’t feel like they were all alone, perhaps we would have more wins… I wonder if there is a research into the correlation between an economically sound country and its level of sporting excellence….🤔
But then again the government’s solution to solving problems is TAX!!!. It appears the wheels are turning and soon bloggers and other online businesses will be taxed!!!
I haven’t been able to find the actual article which the above caption is from (so take it with a pinch of salt) however, I did see the government gazette notice on the government partnering with Daedalus World Limited of Tortola, British Virgin Islands to assist the Republic of Zimbabwe by providing a revenue collection service through taxing qualifying companies that provide digital advertising, content, cloud computing, e-commerce [and] gambling
I cant even imagine how they would make this work, do they imagine we make a fortune of money? Do they even empower us to make this money… Just now I have seen a notification that my mobile network provider is going to Review prices with effect 25 January 2022.
Meanwhile, if they can be trusted, the power utility company says they have completed their upgrade to the power generation hardware and load-shedding should ease up… Great expectations, although I am rushing to post this before my laptop battery runs out because there’s no electricity right now….
And for some interesting expectations, the main opposition party under Nelson Chamisa has changed its name to Citizens Coalition for Change, CCC adopting yellow as their colour…🟨 New Values, New Standards, New ideas…Everything NEW!
Whats going on in your neck of the woods, any great expectations?
~B
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