If we had our own edition of Sesame Street here is Zims it would probably end like this:
"Sesame Street Zw has been brought to you by the letter 'C' and the number 17.5 quadrillion."
Just about everything I take for granted here has become a source of both stress and amusement. Take for example this couple, friends of mine with 2 great kids. The little boy, the older of the two, attends a great, but pricey, primary school in Harare. He recently won some poetry recital and speech contest held at his school. So naturally he was looking forward to the schools end of term prize giving day when he would recieve the reward for his accomplishments. And naturally mom and dad looked forward to attending this event,with a camera in hand to capture the moment their sons name is called to the stage. The problem came up when it became apparent that, for all his oratory skills, it seems the boy could not stir the hearts of the school board, enough to get them to actually buy him a prize. A few days before prize giving his dad was suprised to receive a message from the school asking him to ...um....buy a book prize for the boy and then hand it to the school. They would then hand it to the boy as his prize. of course the boy must be blissfully unaware that the gift is not actually from the school.
Needless to say dad and mom were not amused with this setup, but this is life in Zimbabwe: nothing is ever simple, at least not any more. 
We are in the middle of a cholera crisis here and the situation is really bleak. With the major hospitals closed and the water delivery infrastructure in a sorry state,(there was no council water in Harare for two days almost two weeks ago)the words uttered by our health minister (in an apparent bid to take the lead in dealing with this crisis) were not the most encouraging. At the time when cholera was on the increase and water was not available in Harare and hospitals were closed and the little water people had access to was not clean enough.At a time when the national water authority had no chemicals to treat water (hence the reason for shuting down city water supplies) and people had no money to buy bottled water and there was often no electricity to boil water and firewood was too expensive, the minister is rumoured to have said that people must
...refrain from shaking hands.
