If you were having coffee with me I would wish you a Happy New Year (again, if I havent already — I mean can one get enough wishes and blessings for the New Year?) Shall I pour you a nip of whiskey, for medicinal purposes?
I am medicating a cold, could be because I got caught in the rain (we been having some serious rains lately) and am now nursing a cold… Or as I suspect, every time I sneeze, could this be XBB.1.5 the new more transmissible variant of COVID. I attended several events where the world seemed to have gotten back to normal, zero masks, zero social distancing, zero hand sanitising, just vibes and good music. Anyway, alcohol kills germs right? So, bottoms up 🍻
If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that I am also medicating from buslag you know how people get jetlag – well, after a very long bus ride from Bulawayo to Harare I am now “recovering” from the journey. After the Intwasa Arts Festival I decided to stick around in the City of Kings as Bulawayo is also known as and soak in some of the local culture.
The entire time I was there I wanted to capture a selfie next to the statue of Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo affectionately known as “uMdala” or “uMdala wethu“, our elder, Father Zimbabwe a revolutionary who served as Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 1990 until his death in 1999. There were always people around the statue and I felt self-conscious about taking a pic, this one time there were a bunch of police officers there, I even wondered if it was legal to take a picture…
Thanks to the rains I was able to snap off a quick pic 📸 with no one around .. a pity my selfie came out blurry .
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that coffee with Whiskey makes for some pleasant company. Whiskey could be Madelyn Cline’s character from Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery sequel to Knives Out which is my next movie review. Well, I am not famous enough to mix and mingle with upcoming A-List actors, not yet anyway… but I can review the movies they star in.
Whiskey, my Whiskey is a cat by the way… a play on whiskers and whiskey. Whiskey takes care of the rodent problem and tends to be a bit skittish with strangers.
Cats are kinda scary though, don’t let their playful demeanor fool you, them felines are predators and likely rule the world bending us to their feline grace… Who run the world?… gals cats. Did you know there is even playlists with music for cats, who knew they are aficionados of music? Not me, until a Zambian poet Nala shared with me the playlist below. If you have cats try out some music for cats and let me know if the cats respond to it.
Nothing like some soothing music and some VAT 69 Whiskey….. unless of course it is Value Added Tax, then that is not soothing at all…. So with effect from 1 January there’s 0.5% increase in Value Added Tax as gazetted in the Finance Act (No.2), 2022 effective 1 Jan 2023, and the cost just carried down to the consumers as prices of things go up and they stay there.
And the black market rate of the United States Dollar to the Zimbabwean Dollar has started going crazy again… you could blame it on the ending holiday season and people trying to liquidate money for back to school or that government has started paying out its suppliers after halting payments way back in August 2022… Anyhoo, the central bank had tweeted and asked them nicely not to use the funds they got paid out on the black market… I dont think they listened.
If you were having coffee with me I would tell you that the electricity situation has gone back to its usual long hours of darkness, holiday season is definitely over. I saw in the media that our neighbours in Zambia are now experiencing Stage 3 load shedding with 12 hours of no electricity. Apparently their president wants to call our president in a private “family conversation” over the use and management of the hydro plant at Kariba Dam, since Zimbabwe apparently used up all its allocation of water reserves for electricity generation and Zambia is suffering because of it…
If you were having coffee with me I would ask you if talking about such things counts as talking politics? See there is a new album Eureka Eureka by Winky D and some of the tracks particularly Ibotso and Dzimba Dzemabwe have faced some backlash as being politically themed with some quarters calling out for the songs to not be played on the radio. Some musicians who featured on tracks on the album are said to be saying they were blindsided and were not fully aware of the nature of the project which has since caused polarised views across the political divide. Oh yeah, its election year, might as well as brace for more drama.
Whiskey sends his regard, whats been happening in your neck of the woods?
~B
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Becoming The Muse 
ANYTHING can be political. I tend to think it’s the intent behind whatever is being said, and 99.99% of the time they ARE being political. It certainly doesn’t make for good neighbors to go that route though 😦
Good luck with your (lack of) electricity situation…
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Oh reminds of some art sketch where someone says I’m hungry and they are told not to speak politics 😅
Hmmm intent 99.99% numbers never lie and if you add numbers to anything they become facts , and facts are stubborn… Oh don’t mind me, I’m awake when i should be sleeping.
As for the electric situation — they promised that a new coal power station (good luck to the environment) should have been online by now fingers crossed.. -might have better luck learning how to build a home power station 🤔 Let me Google how to go nuclear Powered at home🤡
~B
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I hope you get over your cold soon.
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💯
~B
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Thank you
Appreciate the visit 🍵
~B
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You are welcome.
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I hope you get well soon!
Domino (my old girl) meows in Whiskey’s direction!
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Thank you.
Cheers to Domino…
~B
PS fun fact did you know ‘apparently’adult cats don’t actually meow at each other, just at people.🤔🤣💻not sure how they figured that out but the internet says it’s so 💻
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I’ve heard that. Guess I’ll never know—my cat is super chatty.
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Haha it’s like that science experiment with cat which is both dead and not dead—
Once you are there to observe if it’s true or not that changes everything becuase you are there..
Do you play cat music for Domino?
~B
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Domino HATES music of all sorts. There is cat music?
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There is cat music… well okay its mot music specifically for cats, but its just music that cats seem to tolerate and find relaxing… I think you can search on like a music site even YouTube: Music for cats.
~B
PS Does Domino hunt and bring you dead rodents and birds and lay them at your a tribute???
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I’ll check it out, but I doubt she’ll tolerate it.
Nope—she has always been a pampered indoor kitty…she has zero hunting instincts or desires. 🤣
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Oh wow, there’s a lot going on in your neck of the woods. Do you know why the power from Kariba Dam is so limited? Are water levels in the river low (like many rivers around the world right now), or is there a higher demand for electricity than the dam can handle? Sorry if you’ve discussed this before, my ability to remember things is poor.
And yes, whiskey and coffee together make for some pleasant company! I miss being able to just sip coffee or whiskey with people and chat, but like you pointed out nothing’s affordable anymore.
Finally, as one of your other commenters pointed out, everything can be said to be political. I don’t necessarily see that as a bad thing, but I know that expressing political opinions isn’t well-received in some circles or parts of the world.
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While we have been getting significantly less rains of late resulting in lower water levels. Kariba Dam was built in the 60s and there’s been an increase in electricity demand since then…
There have been plans and promises to develop other power stations as solutions to help ease the demand but for now they remain promises and plans at an advanced stage.
We have presidential elections this year – so its like circus season with a chance of politically motivated violence, so one steps very very carefully.
~B
PS this article from November might give the background story to our current electricity blues
https://becomingthemuse.net/2022/11/29/coffee-with-zesa-gone/
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Sounds like you’re dealing with some serious challenges right now…I hope it turns out for the best, and please try to stay safe!
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They always tease my tribe to say they we cannot wait to say Happy New Year till March. So yeahhhh, it’s acceptable, you can do it till March😅😅😅😅…..Happy New Year once more uncleB.
I hate cats with passion….yoohhh. Our neighbours used to have one and it used to come to our house…i chased it all the time. Haaaii
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