As I brace myself for another job hunt in trying times, I am reminded of the first job I got in Edinburgh. Scouring the classifieds, I came across an advert for a marketing position “no experience required” (that should’ve tipped me off right there) and I duly applied with naïve enthusiasm. On my first day, I arrived early, smartly kitted out in my sharp business suit and heels (yes, I do own a pair). No one was around but I could hear loud shouts and clapping and cheers from the basement. I later learnt that this was a daily ritual to get all the “marketers” psyched before hitting the road for the day. At the appointed hour I was handed 2 large duffel bags and a “minder” to show me the ropes. On the job training, excellent. We spent the rest of the day schlepping our bags around the city, alternating between taking the bus and walking. One vicious old duck on the bus pointed a bony finger at us and said loudly “you’re no better than thieves”.

I made my debut mid-afternoon, when my mentor thought I was ready – or maybe he just chickened out, in a bar filled with merry men that had obviously been drinking for several hours, if indeed, they had ever stopped. I was trying to sell battery operated hopping, optimistic – more of a shuffle really – obviously not related to the Duracell family of bunnies, Easter bunnies – 8 days after Easter. You can let your imagination run wild at this point.

At the end of the day my feet were in agony, so glad to have worn heels, and my humiliation was complete when I got lost trying to get home. I think I started crying as soon as Graham opened the door. Needless to say, I did not return for day 2!

So I feel some sympathy – empathy would be presumptuous – then for the Jehovah Witnesses that go door to door, trying to spread the Good Word. The abuse heaped on them must be truly eviscerating. I went on a tour of Dachau concentration camp, a working camp rather than an extermination camp, several years ago, and learnt many interesting things – the relevant one here: many JW’s were imprisoned at Dachau (amongst opposition politicians, artists, homosexuals, gypsies and academics), and to regain their freedom all they had to do was sign a document renouncing their faith. There is no record of a single JW ever having signed such a document at Dachau. I find that inspiring.

Barack and Mitt rivals for the US presidency will never get to stay in the White House together but in Kenya they will live together. A young mother in Kenya has named her newborn twins Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Some have claimed the mum wants to bask in two-minutes of glory. Some speculate that Mitt will be bullied all his life. What are you views on this?

Imagine making monthly pension contributions for six years and when you try to claim your pension from your insurance company you get a $20 bill on the spot as a once off payment. I was reading with great concern an article published in The Herald of 9 November 2012 on the feud between pensioners and insurance companies. Pensioners in Zimbabwe continue to suffer in silence as insurance companies reap big. The economic meltdown orchestrated by the hyperinflation environment of the 2008 era gave insurance companies some reasons to get away with it. To say that contributions were wiped out by inflation without considering value of the policies pre-inflation era somehow is tantamount to day light robbery. Some of these insurance companies invested in immovable assets, which appreciate in value and for the record, these insurance companies’ own most commercial buildings in city centers and they charge exorbitant rentals.

The paltry payments are not even enough to foot the transport bill for an ordinary person traveling from Gwanda to Harare, where most of these insurance companies are located, to make a claim. With no source of income, and having reached retirement age, most pensioners are left with no option but to accept the peanuts on offer from the insurance companies. This daylight robbery also left depositors penniless when banks failed to account for depositors’ money after Zimbabwe began using the American dollar; up to now it’s still a blame game between commercial banks and the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe.

Two chaps from two totally different backgrounds found themselves back in Zimbabwe in the past couple of weeks.

One was a guy who toiled at the once glorious and well paying NRZ but left the misery of unpaid labour and headed for South Africa a couple of years ago. The other, a wise guy who has seen the world as a journalist, public relations guru, university lecturer and everything else in between and went to Botswana looking for a piece of that Khama wealth.

When the NZR guy came through, he had on his mind returning to his former job seeing he was missing home rather too terribly. He has some job in SA and looking at him, I thought he must be better off than he was back in the day as a railwayman.

He looked fit, his skin was “ruddy” and was generally clean, leading me to conclude that the grass sure must be greener on the other side. But here he was saying he had in mind settling back home and living the rest of his life to the fullest.

He made rounds to meet up with erstwhile work colleagues to get the pulse of what has been happening, who died, who got promoted, who left the country, who ran off with somebody else’s wife, you know the usual stuff old friends talk about.

That’s when his dream of a blissful return to the motherland disappeared.

His NRZ buddies told they hadn’t been paid literally for years and were only continuing with the humiliating and tedious trudge to work because they had nowhere else to go. If you quit this job, where the fuck are you going to get another one seeing it is only the streets doing the hiring? Bulawayo industries have become ghost towns, everyone who is unemployed is selling something, what are YOU going to sell? Thus it was decided that it was better to continue going to work for no pay because one day a miracle would happen and the NZR would give them a year’s salaries in back pay!

If only that were not the apotheosis of naivety.

You see, the railwaymen did not have to tell him he was better off in a foreign land: he could tell this himself, and all the dreams of working for the prosperity of his country disappeared. And so it was that as I write, he is buried in his work somewhere in South Africa working for that country’s prosperity!

Now, to the other fella from Francistown, Botswana.

This chap says he wanted to contribute to the growth of the Botswana economy by registering his outfit as a legitimate potential contributor to the GDP, but Batswana red tape got him steaming through the ears.

He says he was told it was difficult to see how his proposed business would contribute to the Botswana economy, and in frustration, he shook the dust off his sandals and returned to Zimbabwe, rather reluctantly it would appear.

And now back to the motherland, he has to start afresh and chase the American greenback by meeting all sorts of characters he never imagined he would ever meet. Because American greed has landed on these shores and claimed permanent residence, this chap has a lot of navigating to do before his fiscally immoral compatriots fleece him of his hard earned cash and get him on the move again, this time: DESTINATION UNKOWN.

Granted, this chap would rather share his skills with our neighbours where the pickings reportedly come in bucketfuls, but as the Fates would have it, he finds himself right where he started. Yet the two chaps present two narrative strands that converge somewhere on the rainbow. These are patriots who, all things being in order, would earn a living here, watch their children grow, watch them bring forth grandkids and just enjoy being sons of the soil.

But yet here they are as grown men running around chasing the Devil’s coin all over the show like horny cockerels chasing after pullets. There is a lesson there. You figure it out.

I like to hear the sound of form, and I like to hear the sound of it breaking.
- Paris Review – The Art of Poetry No. 95, Frederick Seidel