The price we pay

Well my return to Zim has been a bit of a baptism by fire this week. Fuel is incredibly scarce and it looks like we will be paying US dollars or the current exchange rate in bond notes/swipe. Everything seems to be teetering on the verge of collapse and the black market is very much in operation. Some people are being enterprising, queueing and then selling fuel to people at a higher price or selling their spot in a fuel queue and then charging round to the back and selling their new spot again. Last night I had a rather hairy experience driving past the Samora Machel/Seventh Street petrol station. There were mini bus taxis pressing in and in the middle of the intersection one of them had collided with two cars. I was so busy taking all of this in, that it took me a while to notice that the place was swarming with riot police. I beat a very hasty exit. Apparently at some garages now armed police are being deployed to control angry motorists who are getting desperate.

I managed to get petrol but had to pay US dollars this week. This means you are currently paying 3.5 times more than if you swipe. I can't really sustain paying that. If petrol officially is sold in US dollars it means everything else will start to be. We wait to see what happens next week. I think we are all a bit on edge waiting. One has to try and remain positive though and not get anxious as there is really not much you can do about it. Also have to remember there are many others who face a much worse predicament and I should be grateful and try be generous to those worse off. You do just wonder though at what point the price of living here is going to just be too great.

School went well, although I am pretty exhausted and on Wednesday was trying to work out how it had only been two days back (it felt like I had never left). I have some very sweet kids in my class. Still a bit unbalanced gender wise, with only two girls and eleven boys. A few of my students suffer from depression and are already on medication (they aren't teenagers yet). I have to be very careful to not pressure them or say things that will be taken very negatively - can be tricky. At least I have a bit of insight from my own experience. We had the word coupon in the vocabulary I set the class and they all knew what that was and said you can use it to get fuel. We then had queue in phonics and I said we weren't going to go into fuel queue stories but maybe can set that as a story topic. This was all relating to the /oo/ sound and so we also had cougar and when they read that it was a type of puma my one boy said, "Oh, like Puma garages?" - um no! Guess what is on everyone's minds.

Discovered my boyfriend is talented at wood work and was given a beautiful easel he made himself for me, for Christmas, so special. I need to get through my marking and doing some tidying up at home but then maybe try do some painting. I better tackle the rest of my marking now.