THE REDUNDANT PAPER CLIP
- 10/ 7/ 2006 <--Prev : Next-->
THE REDUNDANT PAPER CLIP !
I came across a large stash of paper clips the other day, paper clips
that I used to hoard carefully in order to clip the various Zimbabwe
currency notes neatly together. Neat little bundles of 500 dollar
notes, 1000 dollar notes, then later on 5000, 10000, and those
eagerly awaited 20,000 dollar notes.
It was then that ubiquitous paper clip became redundant in favour of
the lackky band (elastic band)
Now we have to bundle our money together in giant bricks. And unless
you are a bank one does not even bother to count the individual notes
anymore.
The queues at the Supermarkets are horrendous, get behind someone
with an unusually full trolly and the poor shop assistant has to
count out hundreds of notes laboriously while your bread goes stale
in your trolly !!
With the brown notes, denomination twenty thousand, a brick is worth
ten million Zimbabwe dollars. First you lakky band a hundred of these
notes together into a two million baby brick, and then you lakky band
five of these baby bundles together with a larger lakky bank to form
a ten million dollar daddy brick !!
Now this Zimbabwe money brick is about the size of a building brick,
you know the sort one uses to build a house, and they are probably
worth about the same in value !
In fact if I were a thief wanting to break into a jewellery shop,
these bricks might just do the job to toss through at the glass to
smash the window !!
A million dollars will buy 5 litres of milk ...... A million dollars
will buy seven loaves of bread !! ..........
A visit to the bank in January 2006 necessitated the production of a
brown envelope to carry ones loot home, in March, a Meikles carrier
bag had to be produced to carry one's spoils home.
Yesterday I took two large strong plastic bags to the bank, they have
to be strong these days. The bank only had brown bricks of the twenty
thousand dollar notes - That gave me enough money to buy my weekly
groceries.
Now HeeHoo and I are Derby and Joan, just the two of us, so I would
hate to think how many plastic bags it would take to carry enough
money to feed a family of five !!
We all got very excited when the purple notes appeared (the fifty
thousand dollar note) so now our purple bricks in elastic banded
bundles were worth twenty five million dollars !!
And just recently A HUNDRED DOLLAR NOTE !! GREEN IN COLOUR appeared
on the scene !! Oh bliss !! Now our green bricks are worth FIFTY
MILLION ZIMBABWE DOLLARS EACH !! (Enough to buy 250 loaves of bread )
My purse which was had become a quart/litre ziploc bag can now go
back to being a pint / 600 ml ziploc bag !!
However on a far more sombre note .... my own personal way of dealing
with a serious situation is to try and make light of it, to take the
flippant stance, just to keep up one's own morale perhaps ?
But it is far more frightening than I am indicating. With our
unemployment running at 90% according to the pundits, that would
indicate that 90% of Zimbabwean housewives will have a purse that is
stone cold empty. Their stomachs are also empty, their children'
stomachs are empty and their hearts are empty.
And with our Cost Of Living rising at 30% per month, the
ramifications are too horrifying to even contemplate.
I seldom use this column as a political platform, but if anyone is
listening, this is a heartfelt cry for HELP for our people of Zimbabwe.
And so back to the paper clip, a real gem of an invention.....what to
do with them all ?
I suppose we could hang them all in a row and use them as Christmas
decorations, also quite useful to hang up the Christmas lights, but
by then, will we be able to afford to pay for the electricity
bill ...........
On the other hand I wonder what a paper clip tastes like ............
