Posted on 10/12/2008 3:35:52 AM PDT by Clive
Dear Family and Friends,
The October clouds are gathering over Zimbabwe and darkening skies tease us with promises of rain every afternoon. Its a brutally hard time of year. Searing heat, scorched ground and a desperate shortage of water makes it almost impossible to keep anything going. And yet, as the clouds get darker, heavier and lower the time of renewal is almost upon us and the signs of the new season are all around us.
Bright yellow weaver birds with deep black face masks are busy weaving strips of grass into intricate nests which they hang upside down from and try and attract mates. A strand out of place, one disdainful glance or dismissive peck at the nest from a female and the male pulls the whole thing apart and starts all over again. The Paradise flycatchers are back too, flitting around showing off their magnificent, foot long, burnt orange tails and building shallow little cups for nests with grass, roots and bits of spiderweb.
It seems absurd to be writing about the weather and birds when we've got no food, fuel or government and inflation's hit 231 MILLION percent, but its these routines of nature that help take our minds off the insanity of life in Zimbabwe. It's the time of year when there should be a frenzy of activity in preparation for the rains and food growing. Seed and fertilizer should be stacked up in sheds waiting to go out to the lands. Tractors should be ploughing and the lands readied but without the inputs it's not happening. In my home town a large, shiny, 4 wheel drive, red tractor, still with plastic on its fenders, roars around on the main tar roads carrying passengers on errands
I had three questions in mind when I phoned around the main agricultural suppliers in my farming home town this week: Have you got seed maize; how much is it; can I pay in Zimbabwe dollars? I knew I was being optimistic because just a week ago it was reported that there was only enough seed in the country to plant 360 thousand hectares of land. Zimbabwe apparently has to plant at least one million hectares in order to feed itself.
My phone calls were a waste of time. There is no seed maize to buy, not in Zim Dollars or American dollars and we are just a couple of weeks away from the main planting season. I asked one main farming supplier when they were expecting a delivery of seed maize and he laughed and said he didn't think any of their seed orders were going to come at all.
This is such a critical time in Zimbabwe when almost half the population needs food aid and yet, even in their hunger, people are still desperate to try and help themselves. "We need seed!" is the cry everywhere you go. Our old and our new leaders are still too busy arguing about power to hear our calls. Another month has been wasted when these Big Men could, should have stood together; seed and fertilizer could have been bought, fields ploughed and every able bodied man and woman readied to bring life and food security back to Zimbabwe. Many people are saying that neither Zanu PF nor the MDC deserve to be in power if they cannot even help us to help ourselves at this most desperate time.
Until next time, thanks for reading, love cathy
-
Ms. Buckle needs to get the heck out of Zim before planting season ends. It’s going to get even worse there when the harvest fails (which it will).
You don’t want to be around when angry mobs declare “party time” when looking for food.
My son had embarked on a renovation project on our home that involved removing every bit of our possessions and sending me and the XYL away on a vacation to keep us (and especially my lungs) away from the dust and sawdust as he took up all the broadloom and refinished the underlying hardwood floors. He did not want to even visit the place until the dust was gone.
So we have been living in a lakefront condominium on the Precambrian Shield, loaned to me by my cousin. Very relaxing.
Unfortunately, it has no Internet feed. Also very relaxing, I suppose.
Since returning we have been making decisions on a piece-by-piece basis as to what to move back into the house and when to do it.
Ms. Buckle was part of the problem, among the whites who supported Mugabe. A number of years ago, when her stuff first appeared here I was sympathetic, but then her history surfaced. One cannot wish her personally ill, but I can’t be particularly sympathetic so someone who has been a Mugabe enable for decades and who could have gotten out long ago.
You get what you vote for.
P.S. If overcrowding caused poverty, then Japan and Belgium would be New Delhi-like hellholes.
It was the strangest drought in history. It began and ended at boundary fences. Fences between the confiscated lands which were dry and dusty and those not yet confiscated that were green with maturing crops.
Amen to that!
I like reading the updates.
Ms Buckle puts an interesting touch on the news from the area.
However she got in her situation it is interesting to note how others who see whats going on in the country say how bad it is - and then vote to take themselves down the same path.
I’ll start posting the ones that I missed while I was away
“However she got in her situation it is interesting to note how others who see whats going on in the country say how bad it is - and then vote to take themselves down the same path.”
You mean....like the ones who are going to vote of Obama?
Socialist systems can not afford, after the inefficiencies and skim is taken out to pay enough good quality people to do the work. They can get plenty of people in the fields, mucking about, but not enough who know what they are doing. People with that will, work, and knowledge just get up and leave. No different than a chess champion that defects. (It's kind along the same as productive people leaving Massachusetts, New York, Michigan just leaving the slaves and the hustlers)
Power to the People
Power Corrupts
The Story of a Nation
Some People Never Learn. etc., etc., etc.
Amen to that. Cathy Buckle was one of the stupid white people who supported the racist, leftist Mugabe. What on Earth did she and her Leftist friends expect? Probably that they'll be recognized as the enlightened white benefactors and would be called to high governmental functions as advisers of a new Mugabe regime, which would welcome them and lead to a Golden Age. A dangerous delusion, but then again, the Left lives in a delusion.
The current situation had been predicted long ago. I remember the headline from a conservative European weekly when Mugabe took over: "Suicide of a country".
I hope Buckle and other useful idiots repent before they starve. Unfortunately, they'll probably just flee the Marxist paradise they contributed to create, and will be invited to talk about their experience and preach multicultural revolution at Columbia U.
Zim has, according to Ms. Buckle, approximately one-third of the acreage under cultivation necessary to feed the country. The good news is that the stable is maize; the bad is that our own surplus is still being pumped into automobile and truck fuel tanks. No seed, no crops.
Any country with 231 million percent inflation no longer has a functioning economy in any normal sense. Barter and the black market must fill the gaps (I note references to American dollars cropping up with increasing regularity) - but you have to have something to sell in the first place. If that has to come from abroad, the problem never goes away, especially if it comes for free.
I wish I could remember the name of the African economist who when asked how we could help starving Africans replied:"Stop sending us stuff."
L
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