It's been incredibly hot. It is difficult to sleep at night and there is little relief from the heat. Sometimes it feels as though we are being hammered in all directions. Without municipal water, we swim twice a day. I am not a keen swimmer but even I am in there as soon as I get home from work.
I feel like we have been bobbing up and down in a bath full of water from which the plug has been taken. We were initially pulled gently towards the plughole, but now we are in the stage where the water is swirling round and round and we are about to go down. It has become impossible to live here without huge amounts of money. We are actually grateful for the power cuts as we cannot afford the electricity. In Zimbabwe, prices don't just go up a couple of cents once a year; they triple on a weekly basis.
The electricity is so erratic now that we no longer ask Eunice to come in on a Monday. Monday used to be our 'free' day, but it was off yesterday.
John has taken to making his own bread and his own yogurt. The bread is successful and the yogurt generally so. John and I don't eat red meat, but we do eat chicken and fish. I can't remember the last time we had fish and chicken was at least two weeks ago. We are now almost completely vegetarian. John is a fantastic cook and does his best to come up with some great vegetarian food, but Ellie is now asking for chicken and Sian would like some 'normal' vegetarian food like macaroni cheese. Anywhere else, macncheese is an average, everyday dish; here, it is on a par with caviar and pate de frois gras. I feel like Bob Cratchett from A Christmas Carol, going out into the world every day to bring back a couple of coins so we can a bowl of gruel. At least Bob Cratchett didn't have hyper-inflation to deal with.
No comments:
Post a Comment