Of Coffee With Tomato Purée

If you were having coffee with me I would be happy to have you visit my tangle of words and offer you a seat, and a beverage of your choice, it never has to be just coffee by the way, the coffee is figurative. For instance it could be my new favourite beverage; honey and ginger tea…

Except for one tiny tiny detail, someone emptied a can of tomato puree into what once was a jar of ginger infused honey…. And unfortunately, I did not get the memo. So, the teaspoon of what was supposed to be ginger and honey was instead tomato puree and I brewed for myself a very awkward tasting beverage.

I pretended that I knew exactly what I was doing, to keep up appearances… Its an interesting phenomenon isn’t it on how we pretend everything is ok so the world thinks everything is under control. As someone put it, we have grown into a sad generation with happy pictures.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that over the weekend the was a concert at the HICC which featured some GOAT Zim artists, everyone is arguing who deserves the title of Greatest Of All Times. While I missed out on attending the concert, I was stuck by how all the footage shared from the concert showed almost everyone on their phones… Did they really have fun or were they just taking photos and videos to prove how much fun they were having.

So a bit of tea on whats been going on in this teapot shaped country. Sometimes I wonder if those in charge of running the country economy even fully understand what’s transpiring in our kingdom of funny money. You may see our currency referred to as the RTGS and then see our esteemed economic practitioners trying to explain that RTGS is not a currency.

RTGS ordinarily refers to the Real Time Gross Settlement transactions doing a transfer between bank accounts. On our streets its become a pseudo-currency unto itself, money in the bank and cash-in-hand are like two train tracks which never meet. In some instances, goods and services are even priced differently, a price for bank transfer or swipe using card, another price for mobile money payment and of course a price in United States Dollars (which usually carries a “discounted” price)

In the past couple of weeks prices have gone up rather spectacularly and not in a good way.  This is especially when compared to the prices of salaries which tend to remain the same. The government has authorised a salary increase of 100% for civil servants, but given the current economic trajectory such an increment is a drop in the ocean. The government says civil servants have welcomed the increment.

Meanwhile, medical practitioners advised that from 20 June they would be going on strike. This is definitely not the week for one to have a medical emergency if one cant afford private health care. Teachers unions have also expressed their intention to down tools citing incapacitation and its was still just another Monday.

If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that somethings are looking up, Zimbabwe will be launching a Satellite next month, ZimSat-1 which would make us the 14th African country to enter space. 🥳 The Zimbabwe National GeoSpatial and Space Agency in collaboration with JAXA are launching the satellite from the Japanese KIBO module on the International Space Station.

ZimSat-1 is an Earth Observation CubeSat in the small satellite category. No exact details are currently available but its suppose to be help with our environmental watch; droughts, map human settlements, disease outbreaks, as well as improve mineral exploration.

And speaking of environmental watch, have you run into the tragic story of Human-Wildlife conflict that has been trending in India? A woman got trampled to death by an elephant and it later showed up at her funeral, trampled her body, then called for its flock who destroyed the woman’s house and few other surrounding houses in the village. Everyone is trying to understand what the woman did to the elephant(s) or if it was just a freak coincidence.

Of course, it has also generated various memes such as the one above with Oprah enquiring what transpired and the one which took me a while to figure out, with an elephant wearing black Airforce Ones. Apparently, there is a street stereotype about Black Airforce Energy; violent type thugs, criminals and gang affiliated peeps have a penchant for these… Something about the shoes not being conspicuous, particularly at night, and they don’t show (blood)stains easily.

I rather like black sneakers but I am almost sure I would never be in a violent attack, see how social media already making me question my choice of shoeware….  

Whats been going on in your neck of the woods?

~B

Week 4 Stories Of Our World