Monopoly money and ketchup

I told you that Sunday night we taught some of our friends Monopoly. It was interesting to play with them - of course they insisted on having a blackmarket! As a kid, you feel all thrilled that you get to hold a $100 bill or a $500 bill. Of course, now these notes seem quite small. John was actually commenting that it would be cheaper to use Zim money than to replace the monopoly money. In Zimbabwe, a $10,000 bill won't buy you too much these days (if you can find anything to buy!) I carry around $100,000 - just in case. Imagine! Money is scarce these days though - it's hard to find, and maybe this is the government's way of trying to stop the blackmarket. It feels so unsettling though - first the food was gone, and now cash is going. I must say, I am impressed by how shops are attempting to make their shelves full. We went to one shop that had this massive, beautiful display of ketchup. And there's still a lot of toilet paper. Trust me - you can use toilet paper and ketchup to give the illusion that your store actually has goods! Someone suggested we join a sugar queue this morning, but they were saying we'd have to stand in line for 4 hours to get sugar - and we had to come to work. Ah, life is interesting here...