Today I get my first piece of proofreading work - and it's fairly big. This is quite exciting, although I am quite nervous about it at the same time. It's to proofread a book and obviously I want to do a good job.
In the evening, we hear that the government has suspended the use of Ecocash. If this is true, it will have a devastating effect on everyone. Everyone in Zimbabwe is dependent on Ecocash. It is a way of paying using your mobile phone. You have an account on your phone to which you can move money from your bank account or by someone sending money to your phone number. because we cannot get more than the equivalent of a US dollar out of the ATM each week in cash, everyone depends on using Ecocash. In developed countries, most people will use their cards to make even the smallest of payments, but here the informal market is so large, that having a card is quite useless if you wish to pay a vendor or to buy something that is being sold privately by someone. Some shops, particularly the smaller ones, don't take cards either so, if you ca't use your card and you don't have cash - you need Ecocash!
At the moment it feels as though the government is stumbling from one stupid plan to another, like a drunken elephant, crashing its way through the bush, obliterating everything in its way. They refuse to see that they need to deal with the corruption at the heart of the system; instead, they blame everyone else but themselves.
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