Noticed: King Leopold on one hundred trillion dollar bill

No, I'm really not a fan of K'naan, believe me, but I like this recent video. Notice the Zimbabwe currency with King Leopold superimposed over the Dzimba dza mabwe which subsequently bleeds after being shot.

Packing up

I've been running around Lusaka trying to get stuff done before leaving on Tuesday. As Louis likes to point out, the Canadian International Development Agency only funds development between July and February leaving the rest of the year to the free market (jokes) and so I go. I'm taking the train east to Dar armed with a tent, a swim suit and Tanzanian multiple entry visa.

The photo is of Soweto market last week. It's one of the biggest markets in Lusaka and only blocks away from the financial buildings on Cairo road. By comparison, the week before in Harare I went to their largest street market in what was apparently a township slum (it looked like a London council estate). Not only were the streets paved but our Zimbabwean friend pointed to a three square meter puddle and gave a soliloquy on just how far our once great country has fallen.

In a different conversation, with a Zimbabwean web developer, I mentioned that it's nice to be in a country (Zimbabwe) where the cops aren't carrying guns and that in Lusaka they all carry AKs with shoelace shoulder straps. "Yeah but that's Africa," he said conflating Zambia, the DRC and Sudan into one homogeneous northern mass." I told him, you realise the entire BBC/CNN watching world thinks your country is in the middle of some Rawandodarfurian death match to which he just looked puzzled.

Windhoek and Swakopmund

I'm just now realising the wonders of resizing one's photos before attempting to upload them on a dodgy satellite connection. It does make them a little less pretty but saves me hours of failed upload attempts.

Although my friends who've lived there will, I'm sure, call me naive, entering Namibia from Zambia felt a bit like entering the European Union. The border crossing at Katima Mulilo involves a sweaty shoving match in a concrete hut on the Zambian side but complete serenity on the Namibian side. The building above is not the border but a church in the seaside resort town of Swakopmund. So are the next few.

I was excited to see curbs in Namibia but bike lanes?
This is central Windhoek, probably the cleanest most inoffensive city I've ever encountered anywhere ever. Of course, that's through the tourist's lens and I'm sure someone will correct me. This church, by the way, stands at the confluence of, I think, Robert Mugabe Avenue and Fidel Castro.
I traded this man, who by the way is a Namibian of German descent if it isn't obvious by the moustache, one hundred billion Zimbabwean dollars for one Zimbabwean cent. Though economists will tell you both denominations are equally worthless as money I think I got the better deal.

My Christmas Vacation

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Cholera is gross

As I read about the Cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe I realised I had no idea what it was except that some how water is involved. Then I came across this old New Yorker article. omfg:

Cholera is a horrific illness. The onset of the disease is typically quick and spectacular; you can be healthy one moment and dead within hours. The disease, left untreated, has a fatality rate that can reach fifty per cent. The first sign that you have it is a sudden and explosive watery diarrhea, classically described as “rice-water stool,” resembling the water in which rice has been rinsed and sometimes having a fishy smell. White specks floating in the stool are bits of lining from the small intestine. As a result of water loss—vomiting often accompanies diarrhea, and as much as a litre of water may be lost per hour—your eyes become sunken; your body is racked with agonizing cramps; the skin becomes leathery; lips and face turn blue; blood pressure drops; heartbeat becomes irregular; the amount of oxygen reaching your cells diminishes. Once you enter hypovolemic shock, death can follow within minutes. A mid-nineteenth-century English newspaper report described cholera victims who were “one minute warm, palpitating, human organisms—the next a sort of galvanized corpse, with icy breath, stopped pulse, and blood congealed—blue, shrivelled up, convulsed.” Through it all, and until the very last stages, is the added horror of full consciousness. You are aware of what’s happening: “the mind within remains untouched and clear,—shining strangely through the glazed eyes . . . a spirit, looking out in terror from a corpse.”

You may know precisely what is going to happen to you because cholera is an epidemic disease, and unless you are fortunate enough to be the first victim you have probably seen many others die of it, possibly members of your own family, since the disease often affects households en bloc. Once cholera begins, it can spread with terrifying speed. Residents of cities in its path used to track cholera’s approach in the daily papers, panic growing as nearby cities were struck. Those who have the means to flee do, and the refugees cause panic in the places to which they’ve fled. Writing from Paris during the 1831-32 epidemic, the poet Heinrich Heine said that it “was as if the end of the world had come.” The people fell on the victims “like beasts, like maniacs.”

Not to sensationalize the Zimbabwe situation or anything. Apparently in modern times Cholera is amazingly easy to treat just by rehydrating victims. However, considering "you know who's" attempts to take Zimbabwe out of the modern world, things aren't looking so good especially with this rainy season now upon us.

First Week Notes: Fifty Billion Zimbabwean dollars

I saw a fifty billion dollar Zimbabwean note yesterday. No, that isn't a mistake: 50,000,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars. A five and ten zeros. I thought I had a pretty good idea of what inflation was, but this completely baffles me. Something that cost one Zimbabwean dollar before is now fifty billion times more expensive? What does that mean? Are Zimbabweans fifty billion times poorer than they were before?

Could someone better versed in economics please explain this to me?

Another baffling thing, this time Zambian, is the price of living in Lusaka. According to the United Nations Human Development Index, 94 per cent of Zambians live on less than two dollars a day. I spend more than two dollars a day on local minibusses. The cola I'm drinking just put me back a buck fifty and my meal of cornmeal and chicken another two.

Someone told me, on good authority, that Lusaka is the fortieth most expensive city in the world and I believe it. Lusakans drive mostly late model Japanese cars if they aren't four wheel drive Land Rovers or shiny pickups. The shopping malls here feel ominously like home but most insane is the price of gas: almost double the Canadian average.

What I'm not seeing, of course, are the large townships, or “compounds”, spreading westwards from town. The ones that if you zoom in on Google Earth contrast with the genteel grid of eastern suburbs because of their anarchic streets and d.i.y. rooftops. Here people can survive, I'm told, on 5000 kwacha, worth of corn meal with a smattering of fresh vegetables and dried fish or chicken for protein. That's less than two dollars.