Stop! Thief!
I hate thieves. There’s nothing like working hard to get something that you really want, valuing it with the sweat that it’s worth, and then having someone come along with the audacity to snatch it away from you with their grimy hands. No doubt we’ve all had a share of this experience at some point in our lives: our money, our property, our livelihoods – all stolen from out of our unsuspecting grasp. Unfortunately, I too have a recent example of an act of robbery against me to tell.
Just this Saturday, I was a victim of a theft I believe was induced by the sorry desperate state of our nation and its people. After an excruciatingly long week of hard toil at work, I decided to treat myself by buying a six-piece box of fried chicken from a popular take-away chain that recently slashed its once over-inflated prices.
“You’ve earned it,” I thought to myself, imagining how good the food would taste back home, once shared with family.
After the characteristically long wait in the take-away queue, I made my way through the Harare city streets, quite excited about my recent acquisition – it’s not everyday that people in Zimbabwe buy take-aways, you know! Wanting only to get home and feed my own hunger, I thought nothing of the voracious pairs of eyes I noticed lustfully undressing the maroon box in my hands. But, as I stood along a wide-tarred street, waiting for the traffic to thin out, my worst fear was realised. Noticing that my concentration was more on the road than anything else, a man in dirty clothes simply came up behind me, snatched my box of chicken, and then ran like his life depended on it. Read more
Your vocabulary can feed the hungry
What if just knowing what a word meant could help feed hungry people around the world? Well, at website called FreeRice it does. Go to the site, and you’ll see a word and four definitions. Choose the right meaning and the site’s advertisers will donate 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program, a United Nations agency that is the world’s largest humanitarian organization. Keep on guessing (the quiz gets progressively more arduous, not to mention vexatious), and for each correct answer 10 more grains of rice will head to people who need it. Now, admittedly, 10 grains is a piddling amount. But the totals have grown exponentially. Over 56 billion grains of rice have been donated to date through this innovative program.
If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.
-Mother Teresa
- Kubatana.net
And meanwhile Zimbabweans starve…
ZIMBABWEANS STARVE AS THE POWER-SHARING TALKS GO ON AND ITS LEADERS AND THE WORLD LOOKS ON WITH INDIFFERENCE
Some rural folk in Zimbabwe are now relying on wild fruits which are quickly running out. Quite a number of them have died from hunger and starvation. If only the goevernment had not banned the NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations) who were donating food to the poor the number of deaths would not be that much.
The townsfolk have not been spared from this hunger and starvation mainly because of the low bank withdrawal limits set by the Reserve Bank Governor which make it immpossible for them to buy the highly priced food items as and when they need them. Read more
Terror in a time of sadza
The story on NewZimbabwe.com two days ago about a woman on an Air Zimbabwe flight who almost beat up an air hostess when she felt it was sadza time had me laughing hard.
The not so funny side is that I don’t think that this woman realises that in an age such as this, her misdemeanour can be classified very easily as an act of terror and filed in the archives of history on the same pages as activities by Bin Laden and company. Read more
Waking up to Harare
It’s getting more and more difficult to wake up each morning. I think about the Z$500 I got at the bank yesterday. It wont buy me much. I think about the amount of money left in my account. It won’t last a week. I’m thinking of quitting my job (I hope my boss doesn’t read this- but I don’t think he will because he’s really afraid of computers). Maybe it’s time I also left Zimbabwe. Read more
