Becoming The Muse

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words. I would offer you your beverage of choice and also ask if you would prefer to sweeten with honey… Coffee with honey maybe?

How well do you know your honey? Can you tell real honey from… not so real honey? So, apparently there is a new mafia around that is selling adultered honey containing additives like sweetners, sugar and very little actual honey, known otherwise as honey laundering.

Honey has quite a lot of health benefits and its demand has led to a market which is being infiltrated by fake honey peddlers who can supply large quantities of “reasonably priced” honey. Local bee keepers are are being driven out business by this honey laundering, which is actually a global pandemic.

According to news reports some of the adultered honey is made locally, while some of it is imported from distant countries and people are quick to trust imported products as genuine.

Because of the way the economy is set up, people prefer to buy from the informal traders whose products are usually cheaper due to their low overhead costs but it also means the products are unregulated you can. I know someone who bought a case of cooking oil only to find that it was pineapple juice mixed with other things to look like cooking oil.

If you were having coffee with me, I would ask if you know any methods to tell what genuine honey looks like. I thought one could simply tell by looking at it, that this looks golden gooey so its honey but I have been wrong and was sold syrup. Imagine thinking you are cutting down on processed sugars and having honey as a natural sweetner and instead, its just a golden honey flaboured syrup.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that it felt like the end of an era when I was walking through town and found that a favourite antique shop had closed down business, after having been open since 1975.

It used be to filled with an assortment of things and as it was aptly named Treasure Trove you could find some preloved things that you might never find anyway else. My favourite part of the shop was the book section and if you were a regular, the manager would let you exchange titles for a small handling fee of course.

Given the current state of the economy closure of the Treasure Trove feels like another candle being blown out. In the past week the Zimbabwean dollar value has taken a bit of nosedive… The rate on the black market is all over the place and some shops have now stopped putting prices on goods, while others are now pricing the goods exclusively in USD. You only get to find out the local currency price when you enquire at the cashier which makes shopping a bit of an extreme sport with people fearing a return to the hyper inflation era of 2008.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that government has been trying out a cocktail of measures and threats to try and contain the situation and stop companies from profiteering and speculative prices that lead to inflated prices.

There was also a bit of scare the other week when a document that was said to be communication from banks about how local Nostro balances could no longer used for international use such as MasterCards… but fortunately the document has been dismissed as uncalled for.

The Central Bank has gone to great lengths to dispel the rumours of forex liquidity challenges and to reassure depositors not to worry as their balances in banks are safe. The irony of things like this is that they are a self-fulfilling prophecy, people don’t trust the system and have been burned before …

Anyway from experience when the government makes any statements, we brace for the opposite, they said by June the electricity supply would be stable and am typing this in dark, they said by 2023 inflation would be down to double digits and its speculated to be 4 digits high…

Step One: Rumour

Step Two: Deny Deny Deny Deny

Step Three: No smoke without fire

Step Four: Then comes the fire. pic.twitter.com/4lRX0Wyfkm

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) June 9, 2023

There’s never smoke without fire… Whats been going on in your neck of the woods.

~B

WinterABC2023