- Dear Family and Friends,
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- Headline news on the propaganda mill one day this week
was that three trillion Zimbabwe dollars had been raised for President
Mugabe's 84th birthday party. I thought about what you could do with that
much money but before I could work it out I had to check in a dictionary
just exactly how much a trillion was.
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- My sources say that a billion is a thousand million and
a trillion is a million million. This means that for the President's birthday
celebration being held in Beitbridge, there is a pile of money which on
paper is a 3 followed by 12 zeroes. Even in Zimbabwe's collapsed state,
3 trillion dollars is a huge amount of money. It didn't take long before
my kitchen table was littered with bits of scrap paper covered with handwritten
sums. Why didn't I just use a calculator you might ask? That's simple,
there are too many digits and so this sum had to be done by hand.
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- The calculations took some time to perform and the results
were shocking. For three trillion dollars I could buy three million kilograms
of maize meal at the present Grain Marketing Board price of a million dollars
a kg. This, of course, is assuming that the GMB had any maize meal for
sale, which they say they haven't. Allowing half a kg of maize meal per
person, 6 million Zimbabweans, half the population of the country, could
have had one decent meal with the President's birthday party money. A friend
who is far more mathematically minded than me, and had more patience with
all those lines of zeroes, worked the figures out a different way. 85 trucks,
each holding 35 tonnes of maize, could have been filled with the three
trillion dollars of birthday party money.
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- Moving away from the dollars, I went in search of ingredients
usually found at a birthday party. Three major supermarket chains which
have outlets all over the country were visited. The cake came first on
my list but there was no flour, sugar, margarine, baking powder, milk or
eggs in any of the supermarkets. Puddings and sweet treats were next on
my list but there was no jelly, instant pudding, custard, biscuits or tarts
to buy. Sandwiches, I thought, they are good for parties but there was
no bread or rolls, no spread, cheese, cold meats or sandwich fillings to
buy. What about a hot meal I thought but there was no maize meal, rice,
pasta or potatoes and so that idea was also a non starter.
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- The shopping list and the search for ingredients was
a pointless exercise but at least it was easier than trying to understand
the latest official inflation figures. In January 2008 inflation was one
hundred thousand, five hundred and eighty percent - it is the stuff of
hellish nightmares and the reason why we parents can't sleep at night.
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- Trying to understand three trillion dollars was utterly
absurd for an ordinary mum in a collapsed country. Hardest of all though
was knowing that half the population of the country could have gone to
bed tonight on a full stomach if the birthday party had been sacrificed
for the suffering, hungry people of a country whose 84 year old ruler has
been in power for almost 28 years.
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- Until next time, thanks for reading,
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- love cathy.
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- Copyright cathy buckle 23 February 2008. www.cathybuckle.com
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- My books: "African Tears" and "Beyond
Tears" are available in South Africa from: <mailto:books@clarkesbooks.co.za>books@clarkesbooks.co.za
and in the UK from: <mailto:orders@africabookcentre.com>orders@africabookcentre.com
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