So after some discussion with Jenny and some persuasion on Graham's behalf we decided to stay for one more day in Masvingo and spend some extra time with the Nish's. I helped Kerry make eggs for breakfast this morning, cooked with onions and served with toast. They were delicious!! After breakfast a couple brought their female jack russel aroind to mate with Kerry's jack russell. Laura had a couple of exams today so I offered to take her to school so that Kerry could stay and talk to the couple who were trying to get their dog pregnant. Poor Laura is sitting her O level exams, and Declan is sitting his A levels, and they both have a frightening amount of exams. It makes me really truly glad that I have now finished university and I never have to sit a pointless exam again :D Hurray!! Our drive to school took us through a really large police road check, but thankfully on the way there and on the way back they let me through without an issue. Having a foreign registered car in Zimbabwe does seem to cause a lot of attention and hassle!
When I got back the couple had left to run some errands in town and were coming back later to get their dog. They breed in jack russell's and already have a few buyers for the puppies they may have. I decided when I got back that due to the issues we have been having with the front tire and because it has two reasonable size cuts in it that are concerning us, the we should switch it out for our brand new spare and have it as our spare instead. Thankfully, because I married a strong and handsome boy, I sat back and watched him change our tire in the hot sun :D When he was done he switched into his swim trunks and took a dip in the Nish's pool to cool off.
We took today really easily, we had stayed to spend more time with the Nish's so we just chilled for the afternoon, drinking beers in Dan's case :D he watched a little of the local cricket on TV while I unpacked and repacked our bags, we had let them get into quite a state! Kerry was very kind and told me that she knew of a pharmacy that would sell the treatment for malaria over the counter! Nothing like that would ever happen in the UK, the pharmacists are probably so scared of being sued, but this could honestly save either my life or Dan's life, if we pick up malaria in a remote area. The $28 that the two treatments cost us is well worth it in my opinion, sort of like insurance, it's a "waste" till something terrible happens and you really need it!
While in town I also picked up a reflective safety vest to appease the police at all the bloody road blocks. They will find anything to pick upon it seems. We found this out on our way to Masvingo when one stopped us, asked to see our triangle, fire extinguisher and vest, and when we produced them he spent the next five minutes inspecting our break lights and tires and eventually let us leave after telling us "next time you come to Zimbabwe you need to have a long reflective strip on the back of your car, you are lucky I didn't fine you $10". Such lies, as we read up extensively on what we needed to get through Zimbabwe with no hassles and the only reflective car thing we needed were four small reflective rectangles, white and red, for the front and back bumper, which we have! There is so much corruption here, it is incredibly frustrating to put it very mildly.
When I got home Dan and I finished packing our bags and the car. Kerry had organised to cook fillet for dinner, a real treat for us because in the UK you would spend around £35 per kg, so needless to say we don't eat it often! It is a lot less expensive here but just as tasty! She made a delicious mushroom and onion sauce to go with the fillet, as well as creamy potatoes and green beans. It was really such a divine meal, and I certainly ate too much :D We moved inside and sat in their new extension and had a look at all the old Zimbabwe dollars they had kept when they became defunct. Even though I have been around enough Zimbabweans and lived in Africa for a lot of my life it still blows my mind to hear about the effects of their hyper inflation first hand.
Graham and Kerry own a supermarket and petrol station, and they were explaining to us how up to three times a day they would have to phone the bank to find out what the current exchange rate for the Zim dollar was and adjust their product prices accordingly. By hand. Three times a day! The value of items was doubling every 30 hours, and at its peak a tin of Coke was $7000000000000 which is seven TRILLION Zimbabwe dollars!! They had originally pulled them out because Dan wants to make a Monopoly board personalised about our epic adventure inmAfrica and wants to hopefully use the old Zimbabwe notes. Because Kerry and Graham have such a large selection of notes from $1000 to $50000000000, we can't use them for the lard until Dan works out what denominations we need and how many of each. They very kindly gave us one of each of the notes in any case, for interests sake :) We all retired to bed, Dan and I had a quick bath first and then went to sleep for the last time in the Nish's house.
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