Well, here I am in my beloved Zimbabwe and there are so many things about it that I love – and there are so many things that make me laugh.
Arriving at the airport I was truly amazed. 10 years on and they’ve finally put a roof on the airport building! I was amazed at the progress that had been made. In the meantime while they are building the new airport terminal which of course is for the masses of tourists coming to Bulawayo, the temporary terminal is in use. What this involves is landing on the (one) runway and then being bussed (imagine that, a bus instead of having to walk on the tarmac!) to the temporary terminal which is a converted corrugated iron aircraft hanger – no joke. The sign proudly proclaims “ Joshua Mqabukwe Nkomo “Temporary” Terminal” to all and sundry who arrive. Inside there is dry walling to separate customs and immigration from the waiting area and it’s about 100 degrees in there. Your luggage arrives through a whole in the wall and gets packed on a shelf and you retrieve it yourself. Just as well, because when there isn’t power, conveyer belts wouldn’t work anyway.
Another pleasant surprise greeted me when I left the airport tin shack - they have actually tarred the road leading to the airport – a vast improvement on the rutted and pitted dirt road that you used to have to drive on. Wow!
The potholes here are unreal – they are everywhere. To drive in Zimbabwe you need a PhD – a qualification in Pot Hole Driving. All the cars, which are going at a snail’s pace, wind over the road lurching like drunken sailors. If you see someone driving straight, you know they are drunk. And frequently dodging some of the larger potholes means swinging right onto the other side of the road onto oncoming traffic – which mercifully isn’t coming at you very fast. Half the robots (sorry, traffic lights) don’t work and even worse, some of them work only on one side so even if you think that the light isn’t working and you have to give way to your right, you better be careful that it isn’t green for the other side. The opportunities for accidents are limitless and yet they hardly ever happen.
Then the best thing ever. My mum and I were leaving to go to tea at a friend’s house and she shouted for Trust who is our houseboy / domestic worker / servant (I have no idea what’s politically correct anymore – he’s worked for us since I was a child). I asked her what she needed him for and she said that he had to come and check for rats in the car before she would get in. I thought she was joking, but apparently the rats come and hide in the engine overnight and chew all the wires, sometimes getting into the car. She found a dead one once under her seat and given the smell, it had been dead for some time. Only in Zim!
Trust has 6 children now and my mother keeps shouting at him that he mustn’t have more. They are Prince, Angela, Blessing, God Knows (yes God Knows), Alexandra and I can’t remember the name of the youngest. But the best is the story of how child no. 4 got his name. My mum asked Trust why he had named his son “God Knows” and Trust responded by saying “ Madam, I am not sure about that one, if he is mine.”
Everything here is available now which makes a vast difference to the last time I came here a year ago. The reason for this is that now everything can be paid for in foreign currency. So at every shop and petrol station there’s a sign with the rates for rands, US dollars, GBP sterling and pula. It makes a hell of a difference to be able to pull up to a petrol station and actually get fuel instead of the ubiquitous “No Fuel” signs that were dotted all over the city. You may have to queue for a bit, but only 4 or 5 cars instead of queues that stretch for 4 or 5 km. Apparently you have to shop around because the rates differ from US$0.95 to $1.10 but at least you can get it if you have the cash.
No rubbish gets collected because no one pays their rates any more - they are just too high. This morning when I went for a shower, the water pressure was so bad it took me ages to rinse the shampoo out of my hair because the water was just dripping from the showerhead. At least it was hot - but it turned out later that the water had been switched off. Never mind no power, no water is WAY worse. In the end there was a burst pipe down the road and they turned off the water to fix it (wow – on the same day! Highly unusual.) Dad initially thought they cut the water because he hadn’t paid – but at least it wasn’t that.
Even funnier, in town the parking meters don’t work because of course, there are no coins and they would never be able to cope with different currencies. So the town council came up with what they thought was an ingenious plan. You would have to go to Revenue Hall and pay for parking vouchers (standing in yet another interminable queue) and then display that on your car. If it had expired, or if you didn’t have one, they would clamp your car and you would have to pay a substantial fine to get the car released. The problem was that the clamps were the old type and they didn’t cover the hub of the clamped wheel, so motorists would simply jack up the car, take the wheel off, put the spare on and drive away. In the end you had loads of motorists with a clamped wheel in their boots and the city ran out of clamps. They gave up that idea and parking is free now. Only in Zim.
The weather here is gorgeous with long sunny days around 28 degrees with cloudless blue skies that are a shade of blue to be found nowhere else on earth and the nights are chilly. Even though most of the surrounds are overgrown with man-high grass (lack of rate-paying again) so many gardens and the outer border of the houses are well kept and beautifully maintained with emerald green grass that I have never seen anywhere else. Zim might be a crazy place, but it is beautiful.
I still have lots of friends here so it is really nice to be able to catch up and listen to the craziness that is my home. There’s nothing much else to do here but kick back and relax which is exactly what I am doing. At the moment I am halfway through my third book. I’m sure that because I am staying here for a month, I will have more funny stories to add whilst I continue to work my way through the library here at home and ponder my state of (un)employment, so watch this space!
Soundtrack for the day: Eminem feat. Dr Dre and 50 Cent - Crack a Bottle
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
1. On Being Gainfully Unemployed
As I write this I consider my state of employment – which is to say that I am unemployed. Taking away the thought that I have no idea where my next pay cheque is coming from, it’s really great fun and quite relaxing not to have to be at work and all the stresses that come with that. All I need to do is potter around the flat, make the odd phone call and get my life into order. Add to that the fact that I am going to my beloved Zimbabwe on Saturday to sit on my bum for a month and it’s perfect!
I am going to Zimbabwe for several reasons. Firstly, if I am there I am not spending any money (and sponging off the folks). Secondly, there is nothing to do there at all so I will be forced to kick back and relax. And also I will have a good opportunity to ponder my future and what it really is that I want out of life. It’s a great chance to catch up on my reading – most of which will be recreational but some of which will be to look into what I am planning to do with the rest of my life. Or at least the next five years of it.
Plan A, which was to find a rich husband so that I can have some babies and never have to work again isn’t going so well, given the lack of supply and the crap quality of that supply here in Cape Town, so it’s Plan B that I will be focusing on. If Plan A happens to materialize in that time, fantastic. Plan B involves looking at whether or not I plan to change career direction. Right now, it’s definitely headed that way as I really don’t think I could stomach more of the same and the financial industry is KAK right now. I think I’ve had my fill. Most of us in the industry are always saying “Five years and I’m out of here.” Well, that time has come for me, it’s a bit earlier than most, but I’m out. And now for the rest…
All my life I’ve wanted to fly helicopters. Since I was about two years old in fact. I did look into it but needing R200,000 and trying to get a loan with that amount is nigh impossible when you’re unemployed. Another plan of action is to become an airline pilot, something I am seriously considering. I found out that SAA is offering a 2 year cadet training course in the form of a training bond. What that means is that you train for 2 years and afterwards, if SAA offer you a job and you don’t take it you have to pay back the training costs. It’s the only way to do it without putting up a large cash outlay at the outset. Other airlines I have looked into have discontinued the training programme and are looking for experienced pilots which doesn’t help me much. What is worrying is that all one requires is a matric and needs to be preferably up to 25 years of age. At 33, I am pushing it, but it can’t hurt to try.
Other options I was looking at were becoming a firefighter or training as a paramedic. Firefighting in this country doesn’t pay well and places like New Zealand are not recruiting at the moment so that’s out the window for the time being. Even though I am a volunteer wildfire firefighter it’s only the city and building guys that have paying jobs so I’d need to retrain anyway. Paramedic training is relatively cheap and doesn’t take that long to do but given the strikes that have been going on in this country it doesn’t seem to be a good paying job. My other plan was to train as a paramedic, work in the UK for 2 years, to prove that I have been there and qualify somehow for the EU reduced university rates so I can go to med school and train to be a psychiatrist. I think that might be Plan C if the airline pilot thing doesn’t work out.
As you can see I have a lot to think about and that’s where I stand at the moment. Things do change and maybe some of the reading I will do will shed more light or open more avenues. I am reading a career book called “What Colour is Your Parachute” - the 2009 edition about finding jobs in hard times that looks like it will be a great help. In the meantime, even though we are in the middle of a recession, it’s exciting to be taking this leap into the unknown and embarking on a new adventure. If nothing else, it will provide fodder for for this blog!
Song for the day: Everyone’s At It – Lily Allen। Fantastic lyrics and a seriously catchy tune।
I am going to Zimbabwe for several reasons. Firstly, if I am there I am not spending any money (and sponging off the folks). Secondly, there is nothing to do there at all so I will be forced to kick back and relax. And also I will have a good opportunity to ponder my future and what it really is that I want out of life. It’s a great chance to catch up on my reading – most of which will be recreational but some of which will be to look into what I am planning to do with the rest of my life. Or at least the next five years of it.
Plan A, which was to find a rich husband so that I can have some babies and never have to work again isn’t going so well, given the lack of supply and the crap quality of that supply here in Cape Town, so it’s Plan B that I will be focusing on. If Plan A happens to materialize in that time, fantastic. Plan B involves looking at whether or not I plan to change career direction. Right now, it’s definitely headed that way as I really don’t think I could stomach more of the same and the financial industry is KAK right now. I think I’ve had my fill. Most of us in the industry are always saying “Five years and I’m out of here.” Well, that time has come for me, it’s a bit earlier than most, but I’m out. And now for the rest…
All my life I’ve wanted to fly helicopters. Since I was about two years old in fact. I did look into it but needing R200,000 and trying to get a loan with that amount is nigh impossible when you’re unemployed. Another plan of action is to become an airline pilot, something I am seriously considering. I found out that SAA is offering a 2 year cadet training course in the form of a training bond. What that means is that you train for 2 years and afterwards, if SAA offer you a job and you don’t take it you have to pay back the training costs. It’s the only way to do it without putting up a large cash outlay at the outset. Other airlines I have looked into have discontinued the training programme and are looking for experienced pilots which doesn’t help me much. What is worrying is that all one requires is a matric and needs to be preferably up to 25 years of age. At 33, I am pushing it, but it can’t hurt to try.
Other options I was looking at were becoming a firefighter or training as a paramedic. Firefighting in this country doesn’t pay well and places like New Zealand are not recruiting at the moment so that’s out the window for the time being. Even though I am a volunteer wildfire firefighter it’s only the city and building guys that have paying jobs so I’d need to retrain anyway. Paramedic training is relatively cheap and doesn’t take that long to do but given the strikes that have been going on in this country it doesn’t seem to be a good paying job. My other plan was to train as a paramedic, work in the UK for 2 years, to prove that I have been there and qualify somehow for the EU reduced university rates so I can go to med school and train to be a psychiatrist. I think that might be Plan C if the airline pilot thing doesn’t work out.
As you can see I have a lot to think about and that’s where I stand at the moment. Things do change and maybe some of the reading I will do will shed more light or open more avenues. I am reading a career book called “What Colour is Your Parachute” - the 2009 edition about finding jobs in hard times that looks like it will be a great help. In the meantime, even though we are in the middle of a recession, it’s exciting to be taking this leap into the unknown and embarking on a new adventure. If nothing else, it will provide fodder for for this blog!
Song for the day: Everyone’s At It – Lily Allen। Fantastic lyrics and a seriously catchy tune।
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