Becoming The Muse

Coffee with bed bugs

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words. Feel at home, put your feet up.. and be on the look out for the bed bugs.

I have always known bed bugs as part of the sweet nothings added to a goodnight message, “sleep tight, don’t let the bed bugs bite…” But now that we are at war with bed bugs, that saying that lands differently.

A bed bug infestation that begun in Mbare seems to be spreading, with media reports that it might have spread to Kwekwe’s Amaveni and Mbizo areas, although the mayor of Kwekwe dismissed such concerns as the work of mischievous people who blew up an incident that is already under control. When the issue was first reported the government and city fathers launched a fumigation campaign which seems to have been more for optics than efficacy, as it didnt produce desired results.

News reports showed how some people refused to have their places of residence fumigated, while others suggested that the the fumigation, instead of eradicating the bed bugs, only served to incite the bed bugs; that maybe the pesticides used were perhaps over-diluted or under-concentrated, with whispers of corrupt shenanigans in the fumigation tender.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that bed bug problems arent unique to Zimbabwe, but a global problem, Paris had a bed bug infestation in 2023 which got a lot of media attention in the run-up to 2024 Olympics. South Korea even deployed bed bug sniffer dogs at its main airport to reduce the risk of the bugs entering the country; as athletes, officials and fans returned from the Paris Olympics.

If you have made your bed, you must lay in it, even if it has bed bugs and you are asking yourself; why oh why Noah, let the itchy critters get into the ark…

Bed bugs aside, the one bed you do not want to find yourself in, is in a public hospital. Health care in Zimbabwe is not optimal, unless you have premium medical aid and access to private health. I have lost loved ones in preventable tragedies had our public health facilities been better stocked and equipped. A government minister went viral for a social media post about the state of public hospitals when he visited a relative.

While some people praised the minister for calling out the health care, others found it ironic, that it had to take seeing a relative in a public health institution, for them to appreciate what everyone else has been saying for a long time, a worrying realisation, pointing at a disconnect between ordinary people and the elected officials and then there were those who felt it was a calculated display of feigned ignorance given how issues of a health crisis have been in the media for years, unless someone wants to create and loot a Health Care Fund…

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that the Ministry of Health responded with a statement (that scores very highly on the likelihood of being generated by AI) which dismissed unwarranted negative attacks on social media…

Meanwhile after 72 days of detention, a journalist who had been arrested on charges for incitement, after interviewing Comrade Bombshell a war veteran who had called for the resignation of the president, was granted bail…  While people are happy that he is “free” the case exposes a selective application of the law that could be interpreted as muzzling free speech, especially in the wake of World Press Freedom Day…

If you are having coffee with me, I would tell you that Comrade Bombshell’s calls for an indefinite stayaway until the president resigns seem to have fizzled out, with no new updates, some speculate he was bought off while others suggest he was a diversion, a content creator who should refund people for all the data they spend following his 2030 updates.

Is the indefinite thing still going on…?

— ~B 🇿🇼 (@Beatonm5) April 28, 2025

Whats been going on in your neck of the woods?

~B