Only in Zimbabwe...

Damn. Another year is gone. Today I pulled out my list of new year’s resolutions from last December, and was astounded to discover that I managed to accomplish a whopping one (1) item on that list. What a year. If I didn’t have such huge balls I would have drunk poison in February. As it is the amount of testosterone my testes are manufacturing hourly prohibits me from being a wuss and copping out by dying a self-inflicted death. Suicide is for sissies. Although I may not have accomplished many of my year’s resolution, after reflecting on this past year of my life I realized there were quite a few significant things I did accomplish.

Some of you might not understand because you have not been in Zimbabwe for so long that you have done that annoying thing us Zimbos love to do: the minute we land in a foreign country (particularly the US and the UK) we activate our copycat gene, which, amongst other things, allows us to speak fluent American or Pommie English immediately, resets our sense of style to match the local culture, and erases the detailed memories of what life in Zimbabwe is like. Never has there been a nation with youngsters more willing to ditch their culture like a break-time cigarette at the approach of a prefect.

As I look back upon all the days of 2009, all I can say is: good riddance to bad rubbish. I’m not one to constantly focus on the negative (on a Wednesday), but looking back on 2009 I realize there are certain things that we do and say that can be found only in Zimbabwe. For example:

Only in Zimbabwe…

…can one be arrested and tried for saying “our President has failed and must go”. According to The Standard newspaper, one Rashidu Omar of Mutare is in court for allegedly insulting the President after saying those words in front of a ZANU-PF official. True story, read it here: http://www.thestandard.co.zw/local/22613-in-the-dock-for-insulting-mugabe.html.

Now, can someone explain to me how saying someone “has failed” constitutes an insult? To say someone looks like a piece of baboon biltong with spectacles – THAT’S an insult. But this? This is just a waste of taxpayers’ money, and whoever took this guy to the cops should himself be thrown in jail.

Reading this article I realized that it is quite a feat that I have ended the year without being abducted by the CIO and held incommunicado for “distributing subversive material”, “spreading alarm and despondency” and/or treason. (Yes, those are all actual crimes in Zim.) Not that I insulted our president in any (provable) way – I quite like the old man. Perhaps not as president. I think if you look past the alleged murders, the beatings, the sanctioned rapes and lootings, the abductions and disappearances, the starving of his people, the adultery…you’ll find him to be a decent enough chap. In any case, these are all allegations, there’s no evidence he committed or sanctioned the committing of any of these deeds. Well, except for the adultery. We have solid proof of that one. And she goes to a university in Hong Kong.

Perhaps I was saved because, at the end of the day, what shines through my articles is that I am thoroughly apolitical. In fact, you could say I’m ‘apeople’, as I don’t support any form of people. I hate everyone equally. What’s to say the MDC will be better than ZANU-PF in the long run? Who knows whether deep down inside Tsvangirai is a worse dictator than Mugabe? So everyone is fair game in my posts. The only person I support is myself. All others go to hell. On to the next…

Only in Zimbabwe…

…do the local authorities find it perfectly reasonable to levy a single household a monthly charge of $800 for electricity, $1200 for water, and $950 for “rates”. This for a month in which the household enjoyed electricity daily from midnight to 4am, water for zero days of the month, and a weekly dose of amused cackling from a City Council employee each time we phoned to gently enquire about the possibility of having our refuse collected. Look, I understand that our country is trying to resuscitate itself from an economic coma. I didn’t expect it to all become rosy immediately. But if I’m going to pay $800 for electricity, Voltron had better be bringing it from Uranus in a box the size of a car. It had better be such an advanced form of electro-magnetic energy that it does my laundry, shops for my groceries, cooks my dinner, then engages in foreplay with my wife and has the good sense to let me step in at just the right moment to finish the job. (Because, of course, every man knows that foreplay is a necessary evil, a lengthy and ponderous means to an end.)

$1200 for water? For a household of 2 ¼ people? What do these waters do? Are they drawn from the legendary Fountain of Youth? No. As it turns out, the waters are drawn from the equally legendary Fountain of My Toilet. No need to investigate the veracity of this statement. The taste will testify.

Throughout 2009, I steadfastly refused to pay any utility bill I deemed outrageous. An investigation needs to be conducted into who screwed the pooch on this. ZESA and the City Council are starting to review most bills downwards. I instructed my accountant that unless she wants to spend the rest of her days tilling the land hard-won single-handedly by Robert Mugabe, she had better make sure none of my utilities are cut off. It’s not my fault the gentlemen entrusted with working out the pricing models have the reasoning skills of an intoxicated amoeba. Thanks to my Herculean effort through my accountant, none of my utilities were cut off, so I count that as an extraordinary accomplishment for 2009. I refused to be raped. At least not continuously. At least not continuously by the same entity, anyway. Rape me once, shame on me. Rape me twice…I must like it.

Only in Zimbabwe…

…hs txtn bcm e prfrd way of commnctng absltly bldy fkn evrythn. For heaven’s sake, call me! Yes, I know Econet jams its 3G penis up your arse everytime you even THINK about pressing the call button on your cell phone, but really, I can’t take texting anymore. People in Zim are so broke it is a calamity to be avoided at all costs for the SMS they are sending you to exceed 1 message. So they shorten absolutely every word in the SMS until the entire message is just a jumble of consonants requiring the CIA’s best code-breakers to decipher. Don’t do this to me, people. The other day someone sent me one of these ridiculous broken-word SMSes in Shona. Now, Shona is hard enough for people to read on a good day, but how the hell am I supposed to understand this without getting a temple-thumping headache: “Ko mkma mkti mchndiphnra ska hw far cz ndkngmira 2 hr frm u. Plz cl cz zvn hzvna kmira mshe kmba plz plz ndaona mto.”?

If you can’t afford to SMS me using standard shortening of words, don’t bother texting me, I will not read your message. In 2009 I did not assault anyone who had sent me a stupid indecipherable text message, although most times I fantasized about driving to their location, snatching the phone out of their hand, knocking their two front teeth out with it, then shoving it down their throat. What I’m trying to say is: 2009 is gone. Don’t try this again in 2010. I WILL BEAT YOUR ASS.

More to come…

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