The price of an education
Updated on 20 August 2008
Zimbabwean guest blogger, 'Helen' finds unconventional payment for school fees is becoming normal.
"How will you be paying your son's fees?" the school Bursar asked when I arrived at her office this week.
I knew she wasn't referring to the normal ways people pay bills such as with cash, cheques or by bank transfer, so I asked her what the options were to pay for the next three month school term for my son.
I could feel my eyes widening and mouth beginning to drop open as the Bursar gave me the bizarre choices:
- 2000 litres worth of petrol or diesel coupons.
- Foreign currency (South African Rand, American Dollars or British Pounds) to the value of 2000 litres of fuel.
- Cash in Zimbabwe dollars but the price quoted was valid only for 8 hours.
- Meat - the school would accept a slaughtered and butchered cow, or pigs, or sheep or chickens - quantities subject to negotiation but equal to the value of 2000 litres of fuel.
- Tyres - new tyres to fit any of the schools' vehicles - cars, minibuses or buses.
As absurd as it sounds, paying school fees with meat, tyres or petrol coupons has become a fairly normal event in Zimbabwe.
The government has just announced that the official inflation rate now stands at 11.2 million percent - an increase of 9 million percent from last month.
With these sorts of figures its impossible for anyone to cope and so we've had to find new ways of settling accounts and pricing goods and services.
Everywhere you go you see people doing sums - on scraps of paper, the backs of till slips or even with sticks in the sand.
Doing the sums
I was visiting a pensioner this week and she was thrilled that she'd finally been able to get her kettle repaired. The cord had developed a fault and a local electrician had dug around in a box of bits and pieces and found a second hand cable that fitted.
He charged her a packet of rice and 500grams of macaroni in exchange for fixing the kettle!
Among the humour and the absurdities of bartering and trading, we are still engulfed in the confusion of the removal of ten zeroes from the currency a fortnight ago.
Everywhere you go you see people doing sums - on scraps of paper, the backs of till slips or even with sticks in the sand. We have to add ten zeroes to quoted prices to work out how much things cost, or take ten zeroes off to work out how much money we are handing over.
To make matters worse both the old and new currency notes are operating side by side. I had a little wad of 50bn dollar notes in my purse but just couldn't make sense of the fact that they are now actually only worth 5 dollars each.
Like an imbecile I handed them over the counter to the lady in the Post Office this week and smiled stupidly as I asked her to give me as many stamps as the handful of notes could buy.
I laughed and shook my head as she smiled, apologised and handed over just eight local stamps.
"How can this go on?" she asked me, "How much longer?"
I didn't answer because I don't know, I don't think anyone does.
