Of National Awards and Rubbish Hotels II

Yes, I know. I have taken an inordinate amount of time to update my blog. Please stop telling me - I was there when it happened. One reader emailed me and said if I don't update soon she will never forgive me for ruining her Fridays and will never return to my blog again until next month. I filed her email under "Stupid" and continued to not post anything.

I didn't delay my post on purpose, people. I love to spend my time ranting about my experiences to complete strangers, it's what keeps me sane. If I could, I would do it every day. When my posts become erratic, it doesn't mean I no longer give a granny's nipple about my readers. Well, I don't, really. Particularly now - I'm fresh out of granny's nipples. Erratic updates to my blog mean there's something more awesome happening in my life at that particular time. Like the past two weeks, during which I have had the swine flu. It was terrible. Swine flu is the cold you get in Hell. One minute I would be shivering like an MDC minister at a State House function, and the next I would be sweating like a ZANU-PF militia at the inclusive government signing ceremony. Then my joints began to ache agonizingly, sort of like Britney Spears during her comeback concert. Of course, my doctor is not convinced it was swine flu, but whatever. Like I'm really going to trust a University of Zimbabwe class of 2002 graduate. The only opinion of his that is really of any value is how to choose a rock to hurl into a swarm of riot police while teargas-induced rivers of tears gush out of your eyes.

Believe me, I was really sick, and pharmacies these days stock a healthy range of nothing. They're the only businesses in this country that still have bare shelves. It's inexplicable, if you ask me. It's like...can someone explain to me why every new iPod doesn't come pre-packed with an iTunes CD? Am I supposed to recite some secret Silicon Valley incantation for the software that runs the damn thing to magically appear on my computer? Yes, I know it’s available for free online, but I’m on Zimbabwean dial-up, which is slower than a Botswana tortoise on sleeping pills. The file is 65MB, for Pete’s sake. That will take me about 9 days, 13 hours, and 47 minutes to download, at an estimated telephone cost of US$1,324,599.72 at current TelOne tariffs.

Man, I have mastered the art of digression. There should be awards for this.

Back to the lecture at hand - here's the rest of my story:

So upon waking up after an hour of dozing on a linen-less mattress, we thought we would phone the reception and find out how much extra we would have to pay for linen – it was, after all, sold as a bed and breakfast package. No mention of linen. Well, the wife thought she would phone, because complaining is every breathing woman's God-given talent and they instinctively know from 2 years of age that if they don't exercise their Complaint muscle several times daily it will eventually seize up and cut the oxygen supply to their brain, killing them instantly.

As soon as she picked up the phone, she realized that there was no sticker on the phone indicating how to contact reception. Isn't an extension list a basic requirement of every hotel room? We searched high and low for any piece of paper that would educate us – none was to be found. So now, what number to dial? 0? 9? 911? None of these worked, so we had to schlep it all the way down two flights of stairs and, because of the retarded layout of the hotel, what seemed like two kilometres to get to the reception to report that someone had kidnapped our housekeeper.

Rather than call the police and request a helicopter and a team of armed detectives, the front desk girl seemed quite relaxed about the situation. In fact, she came off as distinctly unconcerned, as if this is a regular occurrence. Our housekeeper, as it turned out, hadn't been kidnapped or fallen down a disused well. We were never told where he had got off to. Maybe they could have told us, but then they would have had to kill us. Anyhow, we didn't press the issue, and upon returning to our room, voila! the housekeeper was there. Real world-class hospitality, this.

The following morning, I donned two pairs of socks and a pair of sneakers to shower. I lathered up the soap in my hair and on my face and just as I began to rinse it out, the stream of water from the shower sputtered, spat, then promptly died. I waited a few seconds, eyes tightly shut, hoping the water would return soon. After a full minute, a few enterprising drops of soapy water managed to squeeze their way through my tortured eyelids. Enraged and in pain, I roared like Wolverine for the wife to come hand me a towel, which she promptly did because whenever I roar like Wolverine grown men duck under parked cars and all babies within a mile radius drop dead.

The wife immediately called the reception (we had had to do some serious detective work the previous day to get this number - apparently the front desk girl is hot stuff in the Kariba District Council area because when I asked for her name and the number for the reception she automatically assumed I was hitting on her, notwithstanding that my wife was standing next to me. Or that she looked as if an evil hair stylist had played a practical joke on her. It was almost as if I had asked her for cell phone number and bra size, the way she gave me attitude.)

My wife demanded to know what was going on. By now my eyes were on fire, because I couldn't get a drop of water anywhere to rinse the soap out of them. The best she could get out of the guy at reception was: "Sorry medhem. I'm sending mendainance there now." Thirty minutes later, lying on the bed in my towel, the tears having finally managed to wash out the soap from my eyes, the "mendainance" team arrived. These guys were exceptionally talented, because the minute they knocked on the door, water began to gush out of the the shower. Problem solved without a word. We never did get an explanation for why our room in particular had a water cut.

That evening, our friends convinced us to go on the heavily-touted sunset cruise. Personally, I didn't see the need to pay $25 to see the sun, when I see the sun every day of my life for free. The sales agent then told us that drinks and snacks would be served on board. Quick as a flash, I did a few calculations in my head and concluded that, even if they only had some donkey-piss whiskey like Johnny Walker Red available, and I drank at least 6 shots, which I could easily do in an hour, then I would come out $2 ahead, even if I didn't look at the bloody sun setting. As it turned out, the bitch lied. There were no free (in my mind, prepaid) drinks on board! You had to buy your own drinks. This had us fuming, once more, because we had left our whiskies and Hunters Golds and Savannahs in our rooms, fully expecting to be served like kings and queens on board.

When I had calmed down, I asked the waiter what they had, and he offered me Fanta or Stoney Ginger Beer. I told him not to worry, I wasn't pregnant and would not be operating heavy machinery soon after the cruise - he could tell me what they had. That little bit of wit went over his head like a barber's clippers; only after my friend translated did he offer me Castle Lager.

Castle Lager?

I don't drink bloody Castle Lager! I've got nothing against those who do, I just personally can't stand the taste or smell of beer, nor do I want to trade in my natural six-pack for a beer-belly anytime soon. If I had had any hope that something might crop up to make that otherwise dull cruise enjoyable, that hope was extinguished there and then. Nothing is enjoyable without a good single-malt by your side.

So, apart from almost throwing the waiter overboard, the cruise was an expensive non-event. The sun did indeed set, but one would have thought with 50 or so people actually paying to look at it, it would have done something even mildly spectacular. It didn't even have the courtesy to hide itself from passers-by standing on the shore who hadn't paid a cent. It didn't flash its boobs or turn blue for a nanosecond. Instead, it simply slid silently over the horizon just as it has done over the last three thousand years. Snore. I want my money back.

That cruise is the biggest robbery ever. It's operated by a third party, and it appears African Sun Hotels took great care to choose a cruise company with a similar attitude when it comes to attention to detail. Here are the other little details that cost so little but that annoyed the hell out of me because no one bothered to attend to them before or while I was at Caribbea Bay:

One of their two pools was green. Advice: Don't bother running a resort hotel if you can't ensure your pools stay sparkling blue, because that's the one place people at a resort hotel want to spend most of their time. It doesn't cost much to buy a few kgs of chlorine and pool acid - surely if I can afford it at my home a Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed company can afford it too.

Their dinner plates were too small for a buffet. I put a bream and some butternut on my plate and had no space for anything else. We each had to make two trips to the buffet and get three plates, so that our table had twelve plates, yet we were eating regular portions.

Half the tables in the main restaurant were wobbly. We resorted to stuffing napkins under the table legs just to enjoy our meals without distraction.

The phones in the rooms only work when you don't want to use them. 80% of the time we needed to make a call, the line would be dead. All we could do was wait until the phone decided to work again.

Th only thing that is still good about Caribbea Bay is the dancing guard who welcomes you at the gate. That is still a sight to behold, except I thought we agreed in 2003 that our niggaz don't dance they just pull up their pants and, do the rock-away... Maybe he didn't get the memo.

Anyway, my point is, I'm disappointed in us. We need to get our own basics right and stop yelling at the top of our voices about foreign investment. You don't need US$20 million to fix a wobbly table or properly supervise a housekeeper. If I owned a hotel in Guinea or anywhere else, I would not award a management contract to a company that can't get simple things like that right.

And if it were up to me, I would not award any of these arrogant CEOs any business award. The Dairibord CEO Anthony Mandiwanza is decorated, yet we can't get fresh milk or cream in our supermarkets for love of money or tits. The Air Zimbabwe CEO Peter Chikumba received numerous awards last year, during a time when flying Air Zim meant you had a very flexible itinerary. His planes never arrived on time, and never left on time when they left at all. I could go on and on.

If you ask me, it's better not to give an award when a deserving person cannot be found.

Here Comes the Hate-mail...

I am hanging off my chair with laughter. I FINALLY got my first piece of hate-mail, and I must say it feels gorgeous.

The comment from “Anonymous” regarding my blog in general and my last post in particular was as follows:

“This blog is nothing but an exhibition of prejudice, bigotry, racism, afro-phobia, and other hot air judgements without a shred of objectivity. It is a pity that a person should subject many innocent readers to such trash with impunity. Shakespeare would have called us to tear him/her to pieces for his/her bad verses.”

You know people are taking you seriously when they take time out of their hectic schedules to read your entire blog and then compose a well-written response accusing you of all sorts of things. I didn’t even know the meaning of half the words she wrote (I just KNOW it’s a she, it’s the bigot in me!) and by the time I had hunted down a dictionary I was too tired to be offended.

But seriously, everything she says is absolutely, 100% true. I don’t deserve freedom of speech, even if I’m simply airing my opinion. Freedom of speech is reserved for special people, like Her Highness, who must be given time and space to express her own opinion that I’m a bigot, a rascist, prejudiced, and afro-phobic. And that is NOT a “hot-air judgement without a shred of objectivity”.

A plague o’ both my houses! Shakespeare surelestly turneth in his grave. Never was this my intention, but alas, we must be judged not by our intentions, but by the consequences of our actions. Your Highness, mayst you and your bosom buddy Sir William ever find it within your holy hearts to forgive me? I promise to never again enter your office, brutally tie you to your seat, staple your eyelids to your forehead, then navigate your computer to my blog and subject you to “such trash" "with impunity". So too the many other “innocent” readers who have been abused and have no recourse whatsoever except maybe to, um…er…I don’t know, maybe stop reading immediately and perhaps not return to the blog? Remove me as their friend on Facebook?

What? Stop reading? Remove you as a friend? What shocking suggestions. Instead, why don’t you pay $100 a night for a resort hotel, find pubic hair in your hotel bathtub minutes after checking in, and then simply smile, in order to appear to have a “shred of objectivity”?

Kiss my ass.

Like I said, people are the worst.

Of National Awards and Rubbish Hotels

You know what would make the world a better place? Less people. People are the worst. The last three weeks have contained more insanity than one man can reasonably be expected to take, especially one already living at the point of incipient insanity. I don’t know what’s gotten into people over the course of the last year, but I’ve suddenly found myself surrounded by blithering idiots deep into what was supposed to be my red letter year. If I can’t rectify this situation in the next thirty days, I swear on my left testicle you will be reading about me in the papers. I will find myself a new residence in a quiet corner of the Helensvale shopping center parking lot, where I will spend my days collecting cigarette butts and arranging them neatly in order of size, and biting off the nose of anyone who dares walk past and accidentally kick my collection.

This post is not so much an entertainment piece as an honest-hearted appeal to all intelligent Zimbabweans in the Diaspora. Please, COME HOME! Your country is being run by imbeciles! And I don’t (just) mean the politicians. I mean the workers and the suits that employ them. My staff appears to have been contracted by the Devil to drive me to commit murder most foul. And yet I employ some of the best of what’s available in my industry! But at least my company has some modicum of resemblance to a well-run business, because I have high standards, a short temper and a mean upper-cut, and my staff knows it.

The level of sheer incompetence permeating the ranks and leadership of most Zimbabwean companies at this point is utterly unbelievable. There is no such thing as customer care. To get a simple quotation can take you a week. It’s almost as if people don’t want to make money anymore. The executives are the worst – and yet these guys are constantly giving each other awards for mediocrity. Every other week there’s a damn supplement in one or other of the newspapers detailing an awards ceremony where idiot executives with businesses that are in the toilet are recognized for things like “visionary leadership”. Yeah, whatever. Using their definition, my ass has visionary leadership when it signals my brain that it’s time to take a dump. If it’s not the Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce (ZNCC), it’s the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries (CZI), the Institute of Directors Zimbabwe (IODZ), the Institute of Personnel Management Zimbabwe (IPMZ)… the list of ass-kissing organizations willing to sell their souls for publicity is endless.

I have so many personal examples of this. Now, I’ve never been a fan of people who wash their skid-marked boxers in public, but I must share this particular story. I’m not too worried because most of the readers of my blog are Zimbabwean anyway.

So two weeks ago, as you all know, we had our Heroes and Defence Forces holidays. Like other tried and true patriotic Zimbabweans of similar financial stature, I decided to commemorate our fallen heroes by packing two large cooler boxes of several types of intoxicating substances and travelling to a resort town to spend the weekend forgetting what our heroes did for us.

My wife and I decided to leave the brat at her mother’s for the weekend. Someone should have told me once you have a child, there is to be little sleep, rest, or sanity while it’s alive. And honestly, if I may share a very personal anxiety, I’m not even sure he’s mine. The rascal could be anyone’s, because I know for sure he didn’t so much as dip even a little toe into my gene pool, because my side of the family is all looks and all brains. While this kid may be considered good-looking at the right angle, in the right light, in the right culture, he certainly lacks more than a little in the intelligence department. He’s one year old, but I don’t think he’s normal for his age – if you take your eye off him for a second you’ll find him engaged in every manner of skulduggery imaginable.

He looks for opportunities to wash his hands and face in the toilet, enjoys sucking used ear-buds, and prefers to climb into the oven when the need to take a nap overtakes him. Not normal by any measure, and certainly no such behaviour has ever been found in the history of my side of the family. In my opinion he will be the catalyst that causes the appearance of the world’s first boarding crèche. If you needed more proof that his mother has more to do with his behaviour, here it is: she buys him clothes emblazoned with shocking phrases such as: “Chaos. Panic. Disorder. My work here is done.” and “Trouble is my middle name”. Why? Why would you feed a baby such negative affirmations?

Anyway, I’m digressing. We dropped off the brat at its grandmother’s, and set off with another couple to Kariba, in remembrance of the gallant sons of the soil who may or may not have travelled a similar path. I’ve never been a history buff, don’t email me. Because my work days don’t leave me time to think, I hadn’t realized we were headed into a holiday until the last minute, so the only place we were able to book into was that nauseating pink monstrosity, Caribbea Bay. This hotel is owned by African Sun Hotels. African Sun Hotels used to be called Zimbabwe Sun Hotels, until their board decided it wasn’t enough to pollute only Zimbabwe with their bullshit hotels – they wanted to share their incompetence with the rest of the continent, so they transformed their company into the equivalent of a giant shitting elephant that travels long distances defecating all over people’s feet for profit.

For those of you who have never gone to Caribbea Bay, don’t. To begin with, the hotel was designed by an architect who had either a wicked sense of humour or a serious mental problem, or both. The hotel was meant to resemble a Caribbean villa, but ended up resembling a flowing stream of pink diarrhoea instead. The colour itself is frightening – the building looks like it belongs in Stephen King’s classic clown horror novel, It. At night, I kept expecting to see a murderous clown come bounding out of the darkness with a knife in his hand and evil in his heart, ready to slit my throat and then finish me off with a litany of dry jokes. Seriously, just looking at that building made my eyes bleed.

But let’s not dwell on things of the past. The current CEO, one Shingi Munyeza, may not have been with the company when this tasteless crime of architecture was committed. However, he is now a multiple award-winning director. Organizations are stepping over themselves to heap acclaim on him for his achievements. Mr. Munyeza himself suffers from severe withdrawal symptoms if he is not featured in at least one of our newspapers once a week, waxing lyrical about the expansion plans of his company and how they are a building a training school in Equatorial Guinea and blah, blah, blah.

Equatorial Guinea? What the hell is in Equatorial Guinea? There’s been nothing of any use to come out of Equatorial Guinea since the guinea pig. And if that’s not theirs, then they should just shut down their country and admit that as a people they have failed, they are a useless waste of oxygen, and let us all have the oil for free. It can be like a sort of communal bath, except for oil extraction.

Anyway, so seeing as this guy is in the papers like Jesus is in the Bible, and considering that he's training people in other countries on how to run hotels, I thought, well, maybe this won’t be so bad. It’s a good thing I didn’t verbalize that thought, because everyone who knows me knows I am never wrong, and the shock of this first ever incidence of wrongness would have made their poor heads explode and spoil my Hugo Boss sandals.

I have nothing against Shingi Munyeza, I don’t even know him personally, but I think he should shut the hell up about how great his company is, and all organizations that have given him an award should have their licenses revoked and their executives jailed for exercising such back-assward judgement.

Now I know tourism was low and our hotels in particular suffered heavily over the last ten years. They didn’t have money for capital expenditure. So I won’t talk about the peeling paint on the walls, the battered dinosaur-era non-functioning AC unit, the doors falling off their hinges and other such capital intensive shortcomings. But I will talk about the basics, which cost little or no money. Surely to win “Businessman of the Year”, or some other such award, you must be getting the very basics right, right?

Upon entering the room, I immediately went into the bathroom, because long journeys mess with my stomach like that. While dropping off my friends in the pool, I absent-mindedly began inspecting the room, because there was no literature to otherwise engage my furtive mind. I noticed that the shower curtain which was once completely white, was now a doo-doo brown at the bottom. Not cool.

Then I looked at the bathroom stool in the corner – it had steel legs and a pleather covering which was also a suspicious off-white colour. Maybe it came like that. Nevertheless, it was filthy, with brown stains that also looked like you-know-what. Upon closer inspection I noticed a red streak that may or may not have been ketchup. Since white people have slowly started trickling back into our hotels, it may well have been ketchup from chips that some drunk tourist was eating while clipping his toenails in the toilet. You never know with white people.

Not being a natural at complaining in real life, I thought it best to ignore these housekeeping flaws. I decided to finish my business and then take a bath. There was not a bath plug in sight. Strange, that a hotel that is part of such a large group of hotels and that is led by such a decorated CEO could slip on two basic things at once. Was it a trend at this facility, I wondered? While searching for the bath plug that had gone AWOL, I found something that made me realize that God loves me despite my foul mouth and voracious appetite for anything that tampers with my blood-alcohol content.

Curled in a corner of the tub, trying their best not to get noticed, were three strands of pubic hair. I named them SNE, HNE and DNE, for See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Do No Evil. I am convinced God made the bath plug disappear so I wouldn’t make the mistake of sitting in that tub and developing haemorrhoids the size of golf balls. So, clearly, this hotel has an issue with housekeeping. This was later proved beyond doubt when, the following day, after returning from a leisurely 2 hour breakfast, we found our bed stripped of all linens. We assumed the housekeeper was in the process of replacing them, so we lounged around awaiting his return. We watched TV on the couch, then decided to stretch out on the bed, then fell asleep for an hour, only to wake up and realize that the moron housekeeper STILL had not returned. WTF?

Ok, I’m tired of typing, this story will have to be continued some other time, and if any of you are thinking of bitching again, think again, coz I don’t care what you have to say. Damn, this is why God invented personal assistants.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Ladies and gentlemen, presenting...[drumroll please!]

So I've finally decided to post a picture of myself, so you can get an appreciation of the amazing looks that go along with the amazing brain. Also, if I'm going to be sleeping with your girlfriend, wife, sister or you (if you're a female, that is, don't want to excite any pink-martini sipping, skinny jean-wearing fairy boys in case I have any among my fans - my poop chute will ALWAYS be an exit, just as God intended it to be, you twisted sons-of-...I'm digressing), I thought it would help to know what you're working with. Too bad the law doesn't allow me to show you the ACTUAL goods, but all females that bear no resemblance to Joice Mujuru can come to the showroom for a test drive.

I don't exaggerate, my nuts are about as big as Jupiter, and if you can picture that, it means I don't need to say much about the other key area of my anatomy.Some days, because I'm the boss and 500 people exist solely to serve me daily, I don't even go in to work - I just stay at home and admire my nuts, and then I send an email to my staff inviting any who would like a day off to come to my home and recite a short poem about how impressive my private parts are, and then I free them for the day. It's a win-win, all round. Well, except for the wife.

Then again, maybe that's not really me in the picture. It could be anyone; hell, it could be Bob. Except taller. And not exuding evil.

You never know with me.

Now stop reading senseless shit on the Internet and get back to work.

Let's Fire the ZRP and Start Again

The goddamn city is teeming with traffic cops. If I get stopped at a roadblock one more time I’m going to commit perpendicular vehicular homicide (I don’t know either, dammit. Don’t you listen to music?). But I’m getting ahead of myself. Some people might get the idea that I have something against the police.
The fact is: I do. I can’t stand the ZRP. I know their motto is not “to serve and to protect” (that one is for the LAPD, or NYPD, or both, not sure), but what the hell is the ZRP motto, actually? Do they have one? Isn’t it a travesty that we all know the motto of the NYPD even though 90% of us have never set foot in North America, let alone New York, yet we are hard pressed to repeat the motto of our own national police force, whose members diligently harass us, excuse me, serve us daily?

These guys really get my goat. (I hung out with a white friend this week, can you tell?) I wouldn’t have so much against the ZRP if, for all their pervasiveness, they actually accomplished something. Some yellow-eyed varmint scaled my durawall AND my electric fence somehow last night and managed to steal my borehole pump. Of course, one robbery does not an incompetent national police force make. But these and worse incidences are becoming more common in Harare. Yet, last week I was detained for almost an hour by our boys in, er, vomit green. And my crime? Not having a bloody radio license.

Just writing about this is making my spleen ache. Let me briefly go into this incident in all its glorious stupidity. I was stopped at a roadblock on my way to see my mother-in-law. It is a measure of my abhorrence for our police force that I preferred to rush to that destination rather than stop and chat with the police, as engaging as their conversation might be. After taking my driver’s license and then asking for every piece of paperwork that he could possibly think of, short of my marriage certificate, the idiot cop – who had a strange, spheroid head, navy-blue gums and a suspiciously red tongue that had the amazing ability to continually lick his cracked lips without imparting any moisture to them – then took his time to slowly circle my car and check it for any faults. After realizing that I even had the stupid cut-out reflectors they make us stick on our bumpers (notwithstanding the fact that all cars manufactured after 1980 have built-in reflectors in the taillights) the Devil finally gave him a break and handed him a weekend present.

DIM-WITTED COP (DWC): Eh, mdhara, ko tipeiwo ka license.

ME (ME): Ha shamari, inga ndakupa wani, license rawakabata iro? Urikumbodei?

DWC: Ndirikuita basa rangu mfana, usaite zve rough, hantika? Because kana zva zve rough tese tinozvigona, wazvinwa? Right. Tipe radio license tione?

Deeply annoyed but failing to manufacture a plausible excuse in the heat of the moment, I looked at him combatively and exhaled.

ME: Sha, urikundi delaya, radio license rei, I don’t listen to that rubbish on radio, ndinoridza iPod.

DWC: iPodhi? Ndochii ichocho?

ME: Iyi iPod, (showing him my slick black 16GB iPod) I don’t listen to local radio shamari, so I don’t see why I should finance their programming.

DWC: Ho nhai, tione kanhu kacho (taking said slick black 16GB iPod).

ME: …… (wanting to curse but deciding not to antagonize the idiot anymore since, actually, I had no acceptable excuse for not having the senseless but nonetheless mandatory car radio license.)

You know the saying “trouble comes in threes”? It was written about me. First, I was already late to my appointment. Then, an idiot cop chooses me to help update his shockingly limited knowledge of post-millennial technology. And then…

Just as I began to ask if I could have my iPod back and leave, a white family in a Land Rover appeared to ignore one of the other douche-bag officer’s signals to stop. And this is where I saw that, contrary to popular belief, our ZRP officers learn so much more than how to march and salute at that hallowed training institution that is Morris Depot Academy.

This officer, with my driver’s license and slick, black 16GB iPod firmly in hand, immediately sprang into action. “Sprang” is actually an understatement. George Bush couldn’t have reacted quicker if Osama bin Laden had sprinted across the White House front lawn stark naked in broad daylight. The cop bolted to his twin-cab pickup which was parked nearby (yes, our traffic cops have made so much money that they now report for roadblock duty in their private cars, no lie), with a colleague hot on his heels, and took off in a cloud of dust after the Land Rover. For all the dramatics you would have thought they were setting off in pursuit of one of the most notorious armed robbers in the country.

So here I am, sitting in my car with my mouth agape in disbelief as this imbecile disappears into the distance with not only my driver’s license, but also my friggin’ iPod! How unprofessional is that? I’m beginning to think “Unprofessionalism” is a course they teach at Morris Depot, because all of our ZRP officers are especially talented in this area.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was stuck at this roadblock for an hour while I waited for these conscientious police officers to return with my property. I wasn’t surprised the chase took so long, it couldn’t have been very high speed. After all, the alleged armed robbers (two of whom were under ten years old, from what I could gather) were in a late model Land Rover while our Starsky and Hutch were in a 1995 Mazda twin-cab with an unbelievable top speed of 73 km/h. Seriously, what's the point in taking off on a chase in a vehicle that goes from 0 - 100km/h in...NEVER? It simply defies reason.

While waiting, I had to contend with the bitching of the other two cops who were left behind. As it turned out, just as the one officer forgot to hand my property back to me, the other officer forgot to leave the ticket book, rendering the remaining officers useless for the duration of the time. And boy, could these guys bitch. By the time I left I could have easily gone to police headquarters and applied to become the head of the ZRP Worker’s Committee because I had heard just about every single grievance that exists and has existed in the entire national police force for the past twenty-five years.

This is what upsets me: while our police officers are industriously hunting down criminals who dare to drive on the streets of Harare without a radio license, commuters are riding to work in kombis that have broken turn signals, snakeskin tyres, and rusted floors. Kombi drivers stop where and when they please, Highway Code be damned. Motorists routinely run red lights – in fact, I think if you don’t know how to run a red a light, you can’t get a driver’s licence anymore. Armed robbers are running amok – you are playing Russian Roulette if you are routinely one of the last shoppers in a supermarket in Harare these days. And worst of all unwashed scallywags are scaling our walls and stealing our boreholes!

This means I have to shower with City of Harare water. Again! GODDAMNIT!!

zakeozim@gmail.com

The Cause of the Gay Gene Revealed

This country is going to drive me insane. I have to type this post at double-speed because there is no electricity in the entire CBD. For heaven’s sake, even the fifteen rebel groups that run Somalia are able to come up with a plan to ensure that at the very least, the Mogadishu CBD always has power. And here my laptop battery is about to go the way of Simba Makoni’s political party. This damn new government has enough money to buy our MP’s brand new vehicles but can’t upgrade a single ZESA power station. The bastards should walk, I say. Until we have clean running water and a continuous supply of electricity, MPs should get an allocation of strong Bata sneakers and Cabinet should meet under a tree and drink mahewu. Just the other day my gardener switched from borehole to Council water without warning me and after unsuspectingly taking a shower in it, I realized it had given my chest hair a perm. A few days later my skin developed blotches and I had to rush to the doctor before I turned into Michael Jackson. This is definitely NOT the Zimbabwe I want.

Our government needs to learn to spend money on the right things. We’ve had about as much of this profligacy as we can take. With the way the MDC MP’s have been baying for these new cars, I’m certainly glad I’ve kept my identity hidden, because they would be all over me like a coloured chick on a crate of free beer. They almost castrated Tendai Biti for daring to suggest that they should be allocated locally assembled Mazda vehicles from Willowvale Motor Industries.

Funny how the shoe suddenly fits when it’s on the other foot – I vaguely remember the MDC expressing unending disgust at the excesses displayed by ZANU-PF ministers and MP’s. They suckered us into believing they didn’t want the Mercedes Benzes and the never-ending perks that had become the sole preserve of ZANU-PF officials. Now, all of a sudden, they also want a piece of the cake – MDC MP’s are to be found at all sorts of lavish gatherings these days, some of which have nothing at all to do with bettering the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans. Last month sometime I saw some of them on TV attending the Miss Deaf pageant. Why do our elected officials always seem able to free up large amounts of time to go to beauty pageants and such, but can only dedicate minimal time to visit their constituencies? My new stance on politics is this: I don’t trust a politician farther than I can spit to hit him.

And yes, as difficult as it is to believe, there is actually such a thing as Miss Deaf. I find that mildly discriminatory. Why should deaf people get their very own beauty pageant? While we’re at it, why not have a Miss Cripple? Or Miss HIV? How about a separate Miss Black and Miss White contest for blacks and Caucasians respectively. Ridiculous. I didn’t go to the stupid Miss Deaf pageant, although I can’t say it was on principle. Actually, I’m waiting for the Miss Mute Pageant – my company will gleefully sponsor that one, because there is nothing more appealing to me than a beautiful woman who can’t talk. If I find one, I will divorce my wife immediately and elope with her so I can someday die in peace.

Which leads me to the subject of this post. Five paragraphs later, I know, don’t correct me, I know what I’m doing, I am vastly experienced at this whole blogging thing now. I had what turned out to be a less than civil discussion about the male-female relationship just the other day with a female friend of mine. She and her husband recently moved to a Western country, and she declared on Facebook that she has found that she is slowly turning into a feminist. I countered that in that case, she will soon find that she is also slowly turning into a divorcee. This simple but true observation brought out what must have been all the unshaven, square-shouldered, dildo-hugging feminists within range of the entire Internet. A huge debate began on whether or not I am a male chauvinist pig, a phrase I am convinced is uniquely Zimbabwean, yet whose meaning is unknown to anyone in Zimbabwe. Seriously, do YOU know what the word chauvinist means, without looking it up? And is it chauvinist pig or chauvinistic pig? No one knows, at least not within these borders.

Those of you have read my previous posts will find this easy to believe: Ten minutes into the discussion I had everyone so mad they resorted to typing in ALL CAPS. Man, women can be so unnecessarily sensitive.

Anyway, what made her so mad was that I said women are beautiful beings, but they are at their worst when they're trying to be men. I said women should be content to just be women.

I can right now hear a thousand Zimbabwean women across the world clicking their fingers and gyrating their empowered heads on their necks and declaring loudly, black American style: "Pshh oh no he didn't! I know he didn't jus' say we should JUS BE WOMEN! What the HELL does it mean to JUS BE A WOMAN!" Now, I am not sexist, but I believe...

Wait, a random thought just crossed my mind: can one be mute, but not deaf? Because that future wife I spoke of earlier wouldn't be of much use to me if she can't hear me barking at her to bring me more ice for my whiskey. I'll have to research that.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I'm not sexist, but I believe women should stop trying to compete with men. It's gotten completely out of hand, and someone needs to put an end to this equal rights bullshit. There is no such thing! Women only want equal rights when it suits them, but are quite happy to let the housebreaker bash their husband’s skull in while they cower in the bedroom. Do you know what equal rights means? It means if we are in bed and something goes bump in the night, I have to leave the bedroom and go check out what the problem is. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. If it happens on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday, I stay asleep and you drag your equal ass to the living room to see what’s going on. And if it happens to be a housebreaker, you’d better fight. If you decide your balls aren’t all that big after all, you’d better run in a direction away from me and the rest of the family. That’s what a real man would do.

Equal rights means if I have to put the toilet seat up to take a piss, you should equally have to put the toilet seat down when you want to take a piss.

Equal rights means taking turns to take out the garbage, mow the lawn, replace the oil in the family car, or change a flat tyre on a freezing freeway in the middle of winter. Next time the car dies on the road, let’s have the woman get out and push the damn thing while the husband/boyfriend sits inside with the 3 kids and the luggage.

If I was president of this (once, long long ago) great nation of ours I would have long since banned Generations, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Young & the Restless, Oprah, Tyra, and other similar trash that is poisoning the minds of our once gentle African women.

It's terrible to be a man these days. Women want you to cook, change diapers, mix your own drink, and braai your own meat. What rubbish! This is not the way of our forefathers! Incidentally, that word gives us a hint of a woman's place in the world - have you ever heard anyone talk about "our foremothers"? Men used to be leaders. Bushmen used to go hunting for supper, and didn't have to worry about coming home and being told to wash the bushbaby's little turd-encrusted ass before skinning, cutting and cooking the kudu they would have killed and dragged home all by themselves.

Women want to play rugby and soccer. Why? You don't see us men rushing to learn netball to prove a point. Women want to be soldiers and karatekas and gladiators. For God’s sake, I don't want to lie next to someone I know can deliver a rib-cracking punch to my side, a skull-fracturing roundhouse kick to my temple, then stuff a grenade into my mouth all within 3 seconds just because I turned in my sleep and inadvertently pulled all the blankets from her. This is not my idea of sexy, and men want sexy.

No man wants a stinky, rugby-playing, bicep-flexing domineering woman for a life partner. I don't know what the hell has happened, but Zimbabwean women have lost the essence of what is to be an African woman. No wonder there is such a proliferation of gays; men can't stand it anymore. (Although by that statement let it not be misconstrued that I support gayism; I do not, but that’s a topic for another day).

I always work myself up and can’t complete my posts. And my battery is about to die anyway. Trust me, there will be more on this topic later…

Come One, Come All...

So, here's an exciting development:

I have decided to migrate my blog to Facebook. Anyone wishing to continue reading my senseless rants and then being insulted at the end of it all, please feel free to search for me on Facebook.

Caveat Emptor: By requesting to be my Facebook friend you explicitly and implicitly agree to the following terms and conditions:

1. We are not really, actually friends. Because Facebook does not offer an option to accept someone as a pen-pal, an enemy, or even simply a subject of potential future ridicule, I must unfortunately accept you all as "friends".

2. Everyone will initially be accepted as my "friend". However, if you post a stupid comment, you will be summarily removed. What counts as a stupid comment? Anything that disagrees with anything I say or think. I am so intelligent that the thought that I have made an error in thought or writing should never cross your mind. If you really feel that I have made an error somewhere, go and lie down until the feeling passes. Whatever you do, do NOT mention it to me, because I don't care what you think.

3. If you are a woman, you agree that should I ever request it, you are ready, willing and able to lie down and allow me to have my way with you because not only am I severely blessed with super-galactic intelligence, I also possess literally deadly good looks. Just the other day I took a five minute walk in the CBD to a Nando's and caused a seven-car pile-up when women drivers lost concentration and rammed into each other and parked cars as they stared in disbelief at the flawless work of divine art that is me.

4. If you are a man, you agree that should I request it, you will immediately hand over to me your wife/girlfriend/sister (I will delete inappropriate based on my impeccable judgement upon seeing the candidates) so I can have my way with her, or them (depending). You also agree that if you are such a loser that you have no wife or girlfriend or sister that you will perform gardening services at my place of residence for an indefinite period, because I am such a man's man and you need all the help you can get. You also pledge to me your first-born son, because after a few days in my aura, women will mistake you for a non-loser and you might actually snag one of them.

5. You agree to be insulted by me no end should I flip open my laptop and realize I am in a head-cracking mood. This is usually the case everyday, although on some days my good friend Johnny comes over to soothe me.

If you do not agree with any of the above, do not send me a friend request. Go to the bookstore and find a good book to read, and don't bother me again.

See you soon!

Hell in the Heavens (Part II)

Well, tickle my testicles and call me Nancy. Who could have guessed that a story about an anonymous idiot annoying me forty thousand feet above the ground could garner so much attention? Due to the sheer number and frightening intensity of emails I have received initially requesting, and then demanding that I finish this story, I feel it’s only fair that I preface this post with an apology.

Somewhere along the way, some readers of this blog have gotten the idea that I am interested in what they think. It must have been something I said, and I sincerely apologise for misleading you. The truth is it’s not so much that I’m not interested in what you think, as I don’t give half a damn. Now I know what you’re thinking (because you’ve emailed it to me every waking hour of my life since I started this blog), well, isn’t this guy just as arrogant a prick as ever there was in the history of pricks. And arrogance. My reply to that is: practice, practice, practice. One day you too might become as awesome a human being as I am and then have reason to be arrogant.

People make me so mad. I made it quite clear when I began this blog that there are only two sets of opinions that matter in the world: mine, and those of anyone who pays me a substantial amount of cash. So those that have sent money into my account, please share your views and comments. The rest of you can feel free to shut your faces. And while we’re on the subject of voluntary donations and shutting faces, the last time I checked my bank account the number of people who had wired money to me was roughly… zero. So guess who now has my official permission to shut the hell up? You’re welcome.

Anyway, I think I should explain my absence only because I fear if I don’t I may keep getting annoying, time-wasting emails. The reason I’ve not been updating regularly is that I was being a true black-blooded patriot, a son of the soil as they say, by drafting my own clauses that I think should be included in the new Zimbabwean constitution we are working toward. For example, one of the items I am going to put forward is a recommendation that we change our president after one term, or when he starts to look like a piece of biltong, whichever comes soonest. I remember watching a certain president of a certain African country (I daren’t say his name) on TV campaigning to be re-elected last year, and I didn’t want to vote for him so much as I wanted to cut him up into little pieces and serve him on a platter with ice cold beers at my next braai. With impressive suggestions such as these, you can rest assured that us Zimbabweans who are still in the trenches are going to deliver a concrete, people-driven, forward-looking law of the land for you yellow-bellied prodigal sons in the Diaspora. No thanks necessary; really, it’s our pleasure.

And then, there was this whole business of Michael Jackson dying on us. And our President didn’t even declare a state of emergency. I’ve been a fan of Michael Jackson from the time he was a cute little black boy right up to his death as a hideous crazy white woman. I needed some time to grieve.

Now, to finish off my tale of woe. So, I’m sitting in this plane trying not to scream and bash my head against the window until it breaks or I die, with the latter being the preferred option in the circumstance. I watch Asshole approaching with that frozen smile you get when you realize that what you thought was just a fart you were going to silently deploy is in fact something slightly wetter than a regular fart. And a little bit smellier.
I’m trying my best to wipe the smile off my face but I can’t. He smiles back. He scans the overhead bins for space to put his oversize hand luggage. I say three quick prayers in the hope that he won’t find space. One prayer to God. One to Allah. And I cc: a prayer to all other deities known and unknown. But the Devil is quick, if you didn’t know. He came floating down the aisle disguised as a butt-ugly forty-something year-old flight attendant to Asshole’s assistance. What the hell happened to airlines, don’t they discriminate anymore? Is there not enough space, sir? she says. Here, let me take your bag, I’ll put it up front there’s space there. Go ahead and take your seat.

What?

Bitch. I thought we were supposed to keep our luggage near us at all times. All times! But I guess the spawn of Satan get special treatment on certain SAA flights.

He sits down next to me, takes a moment to buckle his fat belly in, and then turns to me looking like the cat that got the cream.

“Boss,” he says, irritating me no end with the first word out of his mouth. I don’t know, Zimbabwean men have taken to calling each other “boss” a lot lately, a trend I don’t at all understand, since most of them are not and have never been the boss of anything. What’s wrong with “bro”? Or even “ekse”? “I haven’t see you in so long man, are you still in business? What are you doing boss?”

I open my mouth to answer, but I guess in some cultures that’s a signal for the other person to speak some more.

“Boss, you wasted your time all these years in Zim boss. The States is where it’s at. People made crazy money, not this Mickey Mouse money ya’ll was making here.” Yes, he actually spoke like that. Since I left America, I’ve not heard anyone actually talk like that. Ya’ll was..? So now I can feel my blood pressure rising in my eyeballs. This guy hasn’t seen me in years, has no clue what I’ve been doing, but has the temerity to immediately conclude that I’ve been making Mickey Mouse money. I don’t know how much that is, but the derogatory tone of his voice informs me without further explanation that it is certainly not a lot.

“Well,” I say, “you know how Zim is, man. We’re struggling to survive…”

“See,” he interjects, “that’s the problem with you black people. Always jus tryna survive. S’why we don’t never become shit. I was doing my thang in the States, boss, we was making money, till this damn recession started. You wanna know what we were doing?” This far in the conversation I was smart enough to know that that question did not require an answer, so I kept quiet. “You know, we were simply taking out loans to build houses. After building a house, it’s immediately worth twice what you spent to build it! So we would talk to the lenders, the builders, the appraisers, and after doing the deal, everyone would take their cut once the house was sold. We made sick money, sick money, boss!”

I am not exaggerating (this time), this is actually how the conversation started and proceeded, with minimal input from me. In fact this version does not do this idiot justice because I have to summarize. If I had to type everything he said I would suffer from carpal tunnel syndrome the rest of the rest of the year. He just wouldn’t stop talking: “So what are you doing, huh? I know, ya’ll still running those little shops of yours. Boss, you need to up your game. I stopped by one of your shops. Pathetic. Boss, the first thing you need to do is change that logo. You need to brand your business. That logo looks like it was home-made in WordArt. Spend some money on really branding yourself, professionally, that’s how you make money. And the sound in your shops? Boss. C’mon. Invest in a Bose system. Spend that extra cash on your business. I saw your ML parked outside. What do you need an ML for? Sell one of your Benzes, and put that money into good sound systems for your shops. I’m talking about re-branding your business, throughout. What do your customers feel when they walk into one of your shops? Huh? Boss, what do they feel?”

Let me at this juncture inform you, dear Reader, of what I later found out about this guy, just so you can put his comments in perspective. Yes, he lived pretty large in the States for a while. After a few years, however, he was implicated in some type of tax fraud. The FBI and the IRS couldn’t pin the crimes on him directly, so rather than bother with an investigation, they simply served him with deportation papers. He was locked up in a detention center for two weeks before he was flown home. He came home with nothing more than a few bags of fancy designer clothes and a bad attitude (which is duty-free, unfortunately). As we spoke in the plane, he had been back a couple of months. He was living with his parents. He is thirty-five. Wife? Of course not. Kids? Plenty. Money? I’m willing to bet: none.

I, on the other hand, am only twenty-eight. I am married (sorry to disappoint, ladies). One child. I run a company with almost five hundred employees and well over two million dollars in monthly turnover. I don’t mean to brag but…well, actually I do, I love to brag. It appears to me that I’m not the one who actually has Mickey Mouse money, or a Mickey Mouse life, for that matter.

Aargh, you know what, I have to stop talking about this guy, on account of my blood pressure. He said so much more that I don’t have the patience to type. The only reason I didn’t knock him out with the mean end of my cell phone is that I know him. He’s always been like that. And also because I knew he was lying, because there are very few people in the world whose lives are better than mine (Will Smith and Hugh Heffner spring to mind). But above all, I ignored him because I learnt a while ago that most times, the best way to deal with an asshole is to shoot him. But I had already checked in my gun.

zakeozim@gmail.com

My Solution to Save the Inclusive Government

For those of you keeping abreast of the goings-on in Zimbabwe, you will be aware that President Mugabe's refusal to remove RBZ Governor Gideon Gono and Attorney General Johannes Tomana from their position is putting a tremendous strain on the inclusive government. I believe a major problem is that no one has come forward and applied for these positions, so for the sake of my nation, I have written the following letter to the Minister of Finance requesting that I be considered for the position:




Honorable Tendai Laxton Biti
Minister of Finance
Ministry of Finance
Harare

14 June, 2009


Dear Sir,

RE: Application for Post of Governor, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe

By way of this letter, I hereby apply for the post of the Governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe. I am fully aware that technically there is not yet a vacancy for this position, but my submission of this application letter is a resounding vote of confidence in your ability to overcome the misgivings of He Whose Name We Dare Not Speak (I’m sure you know of whom I speak, but just in case there is another Whose Name We Dare Not Speak, the one I am currently referring to was born circa 67 B.C.E., looks and walks like a fossil, and wears spectacles so thick if he squints his eyes he can see into the future.)

I feel I am highly qualified for this position, especially now that our country trades in US dollars and South African Rands. First of all, I was educated in America and lived there for over 5 years. That alone makes me something of an expert on the US dollar. I must admit I could not have dreamed of taking up this post 10 months ago because truth be told I do not know my quadrillions from my quintillions. Now that we are dealing in currencies of sane people, with hundreds and thousands, I think my A in ZJC maths should stand me in good stead. I am so confident of this I would venture to say that given the current level of activity in our economy, a ham sandwich could probably run our Reserve Bank. I assure you, sir, that I am more intelligent than a ham sandwich, except on Friday nights when Johnnie Walker tramples all over my gray cells.

I have vast experience dealing with numbers in a business setting. What’s more, I have proven myself to be an imaginative and visionary entrepreneur, qualities I am certain you are looking for in a Reserve Bank governor. Case in point: A year ago, my brother and I were having a whiskey at the Keg and Sable, admiring the scenery, when we simultaneously noticed that we could see right through the skirt of the girl standing in front of us near the door. I mean, we could see the outline of her entire Netherlands, if you catch my drift. We were appalled, or at least would have been had it been 3 double-shots earlier. As it was I must admit we were mildly entertained.

In our subsequent discussion, it emerged that neither of us could name a single store in Harare that sold petticoats! Can you believe that? All these poor Zimbabwean women were walking around having their nether regions examined by drunk perverts because no one had the foresight to manufacture or import so bare a necessity as a petticoat! We immediately stopped drinking and dashed home to do a bit of research on the Internet, and in no time we had placed an order to China for a consignment of 10,000 petticoats of varying sizes and colours. We paid for it using funds we had externalized the previous year (please forgive me for this infringement upon the law, it was a temporary lapse in judgement, and it only happened a few times.) A week later our shipment arrived and we set about saving the dignity of our mothers and sisters throughout the country and across the political divide. In our first month we sold 2 petticoats, to our maid. Although that may not sound like much, it was an impressive start, and we would have done much more if the current RBZ governor had not jumped out of bed one morning and decided that the country would start trading in US dollars, of which very people had any at the time, according to our research.

Honorable Minister, as you can see, I am uniquely blessed with an unorthodox business mind, which is something every central bank governor should have. My first act as RBZ governor will be to ensure that Dr. Gono returns the Mercedes Benz S600 Brabus that he acquired a year ago using state funds. Yes, I know he says he didn’t buy one, but he should return it anyway because this new government needs to show restraint, and there is no point in buying me my own brand new Mercedes Benz Brabus when there is a perfectly good one available already.

Sir, my second act as RBZ governor will be to donate petticoats to all the women in your home area, to ensure that you are voted in for another term as MP when election time rolls around again, I have yet to do a stock-take, but I think we should have somewhere in the region of 9998 petticoats to distribute during your campaign. You can even take one or two for your wife, Honorable Minister, although I doubt anyone has ever been drunk enough to examine your wife’s Netherlands. Except of course yourself, sir, so consider yourself lucky.

Next, Honorable Minister, I will immediately re-introduce the Zimbabwe dollar. Our economy has never seen such boom times as it did during the heady days of rampant illicit forex deals, illegal mining activities, and overt insider trading on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. This will go a long way in lifting everyone’s sprits as the entire nation is currently in a state of shock and rapidly sinking into a psychological depression from which we may never recover. All civil servants will once again be allowed to resort to corruption, bribery, extortion, and any other nefarious activities they deem fit. In one fell swoop I will have lifted a huge burden off your shoulders because you will no longer need to worry about paying them that $100 a month allowance.

Lastly, I will accompany you around the world and assist you in all your begging activities. I will carry your suitcases and your begging bowl. I also wash underwear as one of my skills. I know we need something called balancing payments support and queues of credit, and I will definitely be an asset in our quest to secure these. I am tremendously gifted in the art of begging because my father never gave us pocket money when we were kids, and we survived 5354 break-times each by relying on the largesse of others. To boot, President Obama is also a personal friend of mine, so I could always put in a good word for our nation next time I speak to him. Well, let me not say next time as I’ve never actually spoken to him as such. He’s actually more of a pen pal than a friend, but I think he should fix the postal service in his country because his replies to my letters never seem to get to me.

I am sure you will agree that my credentials are impressive. I can begin immediately even though I am employed as C.E.O. of a medium enterprise - when my nation calls, I come running. I now eagerly await your positive response.

Yours Financially

Zakeo Zakeo

Hell in the Heavens

Why is it that no matter where I go, there is always someone there determined to drive me to drink with their obnoxiousness? Not that I ever need much of an invitation to drink – I think last year I single-handedly contributed not less than 6.7% to the gross global earnings of the Chivas Brothers Company. I really am doing all I can to stop this recession from spreading to every sector and every company. Well, to one company at least.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I enjoy the occasional glass of whisky (or four). I am refined in my drinking habits and dignified in my drunkenness. But every once in a while I meet a real ISO-certified asshole who makes me want to empty my whisky into buckets and then pour it into my mouth continuously until I pass out. Case in point:

I woke up at 5am this morning to catch a flight to Johannesburg. I suspect those readers that know me are already struggling to believe this story, as on most days I am generally up round about the crack of lunch. I’m known for waking up early about as much as Michael Jackson is known for his insatiable appetite for women. But suspend your disbelief for a moment, will you? This is a true story. Anyway, my driver arrived promptly at 5.30am to pick me up, just as the hardest-working witches whizzed over our heads in a rush to park their brooms before sunrise. It was so ridiculously dark; I think all people who wake up this early as a matter of routine are evil. If your husband, wife, brother, mother or whoever ever says to you, “I just can’t sleep past 5am. I’ve always been a morning person,” I think you should drive a stake through their heart that very evening when they get back from work or wherever the hell they claim to have gone. Trust me, it’s the only way to kill them, I’ve done my research (with a lot of help from MGM Studios in conjunction with Twisted Pictures Entertainment).

I am neither a wizard nor a blood-sucking vampire as far I know because as much as I’m not a morning person, I’m decidedly also NOT a night person. I can’t stay up past 10pm, so I’m really just an afternoon person, which is relatively harmless, unless of course I’m a daywalker, like Blade, in which case I’m even more badass than I thought I was because it means I routinely present monthly reports to my Board of Directors in the morning, hunt vampires and kill lycanthropes during my lunch break, and then come back and review my company’s weekly marketing plan before quitting time. Jeez, even I didn’t know I rock this hard.
But back to the matter at hand. I don’t know what type of plane passenger you are, but I am one of those that loves to keep to himself. All I want to do on a plane is read a book or a newspaper (but not those worthless in-flight magazines – complimentary copy my ass, no one takes those things home coz they’re BORING), listen to my iPod, do a little bit of work on my laptop if I need to, and sleep. I particularly value the sleep part. So it pains me a great deal when I get seated next to another type of passenger: the motor-mouths. These passengers think it is polite to tell you their life story no matter how disinterested you make an effort to appear. Then they want to know your life story, never mind that you’ve been giving them one-word answers since they boarded the plane. Anyway, as soon as I walked up to the SAA check-in line at the airport, I spotted an acquaintance that I hadn’t seen in about ten years. He’s always been talkative, so I groaned inwardly and tried to duck behind this fat woman who was in line in front of me. The problem with assholes is that they can sense fear. He immediately cast his eyes around behind, spotted me, and greeted me with as much joy as John the Baptist must have greeted Jesus at the river that day.

I made idle chit-chat with this guy for about 5 minutes, you know the usual, man it’s been so long, when did you get back, what you up to these days etc, before, thankfully, he was called up to check-in. When it came time for me to check in, I was determined to sit as far away from this guy as possible because having woken up at 5am, I needed conversation on this plane about as much as Kate Moss needs a regular supply of Slimfast. So I asked the check-in lady where she was seating me, only to be told, to my absolute horror and disgust, that this flight was free seating. Free seating?! Since when do you get to sit randomly on a plane? Even kombi drivers tell you where to sit in their long-distance omnibuses these days. But I quickly recovered from my shock and realized that I still had a chance of avoiding sitting next to Mr. Motor-Mouth if I could make sure that he boarded first or that I sat in a fully occupied row. The problem with the latter plan was two-fold, however: Firstly, the plane was not full, so I would doubtless have gotten the look of Satan if I had dared to try and squeeze myself into the middle seat of an occupied row in a half-empty plane. The second problem was that even if by some miracle I could pull that off, there’s no guarantee that I would have found myself in between two fellow guardians of the Seventh Circle of Eternal Sleep Society of which I am an active, paid-up member. The last time I sat next to a stranger on a plane I made the mistake of commenting that I wondered why the game of Sudoku was so hugely popular. Man, that guy spent the entire two hours of our flight educating me on all the technical aspects of the game, and tips and tricks to use to improve my time. I had never played Sudoku, and still have not, and will not. Don’t you hate when people assume that just because something fascinates them to death, it should also leave you in breathless awe?

Anyway, I realized after making these quick deductions that my best chance was to ensure that he boarded first. But as we all know, God has a wicked sense of humour. My acquaintance was held up for an inordinate amount of time by the customs officials, until the runway bus began to board. Now, while I’m on this topic, please indulge me for a moment as I ask a question that has genuinely baffled me no end for years now: Is it really necessary for the Civil Aviation Authority of Zimbabwe to provide a bus to ferry passengers twenty meters from the boarding gate to the plane? A ten month-old baby could casually walk that distance in 9.8 seconds. Incidentally, upon deplaning on my last return trip to Harare we were made to wait for almost ten minutes in the frigid night air for the bus to come and collect us to take us this twenty meters to the airport entrance. When the feisty old white lady standing next to me asked the CAA employee who was engaging in what was quicklybecoming crowd control why we couldn’t just walk to the airport entrance, he told her because it was dangerous. It was quite a hilarious conversation that followed as she refused to let the issue die. What do you mean, dangerous? she quizzed. Because of the traffic, he replied. We all glanced around the dark runway; it was dead silent and apart from ourselves, nothing else moved. We looked back at the cranky old white lady and a hundred eyes implored her to ask the obvious question: What traffic? Unperturbed, he replied ground traffic. What ground traffic? the lady persisted. There’s no one but us, why can’t we just walk? At this point the guy began to realize the issue was not going away. He thought about it for a moment, then a flash of fear briefly streaked across his face as he realized that actually, he had no clue at all why we couldn’t just walk. He only knew that it was not allowed. After a moment he said: Air traffic control regulations do not permit you to walk on the runway. He sounded even less convinced of this reply than of his “because of traffic” retort earlier, but he issued it with a finality that said: I may not know what the hell I’m talking about, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose my $100-a-month-paying job because you idiots want to just walk into the airport. Thankfully for him, the bus arrived just then, saving him from another round of interrogation by Super-Gran.

Now look, I’m for keeping our airport up to international standards as much as the next man, but seriously, I think purchasing a bus and fuel and paying a driver to ferry passengers twenty meters to the three planes that use Harare Airport a day is a waste of resources. But that’s just my opinion.

Now back to the asshole (don’t worry, you’ll soon understand why I refer to him as such). I could not for the life of me fathom what the Zimra customs officials were talking to him about, but our bus left for the long ride to the plane without him. Ten minutes after we were seated on the plane, the bus came back with a handful of late passengers, my unwanted acquaintance among them. I watched in terror as he quickly scanned the plane, found me, and made a beeline for the seat next to me. Resigned to my fate, I steeled myself in readiness for the almost two-hour-long torture that was to follow. And boy, did it come in some style.

Holy crap, I’ve just realized that I’ve mastered the art of digression. This post is already 2000 words long and I haven’t even gotten to the subject at hand. More importantly, I now need my beauty sleep, so since this is my blog and I can do what I like, I’m going to end like this:

TO BE CONTINUED…

zakeozim@gmail.com