Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Resolution: no oreos for 2008

Back to life in Harare... yesterday at lunch we went to the shops to check out the situation. We were delighted to see that some of the shelves had food on them (pig heads, chicken parts, powdered milk, laundry soap, cookies, cheese - not bad, not bad!) but the prices were incredible. The equivalent of $12US for dish soap or $22US for a box of oreos (and these are US equivalents at the parallel rate!) But one shouldn't complain - at least these items are back on the shelves, right?

We came back to some new bearers' cheques (like cash, but not real currency) - $250,000 bill, $500,000 bill and $750,000 bill. A loaf of bread is $2.1 million now, so I'm thinking we need some higher value notes. But what do I know about economics?

Oh, and our backyard is a jungle. It has been raining like crazy and the grass is so tall. Our corn is getting tall too, though, so that's exciting. To me it's so sad that there is drought in parts of the country and flooding (declared a national disaster) in other parts. Couldn't God distribute the rain a bit more evenly?

No comments: