The New Year Benefits!!

      12/1/2023       Next-->

A New Year in days gone by was always filled with trepidation solely because of those antiquated darn cheque books. Thank goodness they are a thing of the past in most countries. In the USA one still uses cheques (oh yes they do!) Not frequently thank goodness but it's sometimes a good 'fall back' in case all other payments methods fail.

Today we have our phones, our credit cards, our blessed Apple Pay, internet banking and PayPal, amongst a host of others. Sweden is basically a cashless society so the locals have a payment method called Swish and dear old Zimbabwe had Ecocash, thanks to dear old Strive Massiwe, long before most countries were out of nappies (as the old saying goes).

Mind you Somalia and Kenya had Dahabshiil long before many countries woke up to the benefits of money moving!! And the Bush Telegraph works amazingly in Zimbabwe too. My Horticulturalist sends money to Rennin, the bus driver on the Maphisa route accepts cash for school fees, which he takes to a tree on the 56km peg along the road, where a fellow is waiting to accept the cash. Honourable as the day is long, and it works and always has worked!!

But getting back to those cheque books!!

HeeHooMustBeObeyed, loved his cheque books. He banked with Rhobank, they then changed their name to Zimbank, His Bank Managers through the ages would groan at the sight of one of his cheques passing through the Burrows machines at the end of the day cashing up!! His writing was pretty illegible at best of times, but on the cheques it became worse for some reason. He was even known for having a cheque returned for being written in pencil. Life was exuberant in those days, on a couple of occasions he even wrote his birthdate instead the day's date!!

But I always dreaded the new years as he always wrote, out of sheer habit, the wrong year! It took almost until February for cheques returned by the bank to cease!!

In addition remember those the copious piles of Zimbank bank statements, all in envelopes, all stamped or franked and all delivered to the home letterbox by hand by the trusty postman. There were piles of them on every counter top, drawers full of them, unopened and virginal.

I tried filing them when we first got married, but soon ran out of those awful black and grey speckled Lever Arch files!



WATCHDOG

School Fees for Orphans

First Term is loading again and kids go back to school on the 9th of January 2023 , we are once again finding ourselves having to hit the ground running , in the year 2022 we had an increase of over 300 more orphans and underprivileged kids in desperate need of school fees in the rural areas and towns around Zimbabwe , previously these kids were usually chased out of school for non payment of fees on the first week of school.

Some well wishers and organisations have kindly helped us and paid for some of the kids tuition and arrears over time but due to budget constraints cannot commit to long term payments for these poor kids.

It has also come to our attention that a lot more girls are dropping out of schools which is really heartbreaking as some take on roles as mothers to younger siblings... to keep food on the table.

We would love to keep helping these orphans to stay in school , in the coming term their fees is now pegged per child to 27000 RTGS, approximately 30 US per child per term in some schools

If anyone would like to sponsor some orphans in rural communities for the coming terms (2023) please get in touch, some of these kids are being looked after by elderly grandparents who cannot even afford one US dollar.

Let come together and keep these kids in school.

Together we can make a difference

Our contacts +263772241552 . +263714787455 ( Business WhatsApp)



From Roger Stringer
textpertise@gmail.com

I've recently finished working on a book by Geoffrey Bond, who was Keeper of Geology at the Bulawayo Museum, 1946-1960. He wrote it before he died in 1983 and it had been commissioned by Louis Bolze for his "Men of our Time" series but was never published. His family "resurrected" the typescript, and it's now been published with the Weaver Press imprint. There's interesting info in it about the Museum and the people who worked there.

It's on sale in Bulawayo at the Orange Elephant and is apparently going well! It's also on Amazon in Kindle and paperback versions, so you can see more about it here:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1779224222