The World's Poorest Billionaires

This Easter long-weekend we hosted one of Matt's old highschool mates, Elijah. Zimbabwean, but based in Gabarone, Botswana, with his family, he was here on a conference near Cape Town and stayed with us for a few days.

It was good to meet him after hearing so much about this "funny, outgoing, beer-guzzling" Zimbabwean guy. He definitely lived up to his description!

Also, a friend of a friend, Irene, who's living and doing research at Wits University in Joburg right now, came down to Cape Town for a conference where she was presenting her paper. I first met her when Matt and I went to Joburg back in September.

So for a while, we had a full house which is always nice. Deep discussions on the delicate state of Zimbabwe, its upcoming Presidential election and how ridiculous it is for so-called billionaires in that country to be queueing up for petrol all day long, flowed throughout the night. Not to mention the wine and beer and port...

On Thursday, we met the President of the Zimbabwe Lawyer's Association with Elijah and over drinks, she showed us a million dollar (Zim) note.

The number of zeroes were not the shocking part; the fact that the note had an expiry date was! As i write this, $1 USD = $30, 137 Zimbabwean Dollars, an inflation of more than 100,000%!! Apparently calculators have been made redundant because it just can't compute that many zeroes anymore.

On Friday night, we went down to Theatre on the Bay to see Ennio, (aka The Living Cartoon), an Italian comedian who's famous for his quirky paper-cartoon costumes, where he "seamlessly morphs into over 50 parodies of our favourite cultural icons backed by a vibrant and eclectic soundtrack." The whole show was very clever and knee-slapping -kind-of-funny.

Earlier that day, we had a Good Friday braai and one of Matt and Elijah's other classmate from highschool, Marius, and his family joined us as well. Marius, a white Zimbabwean is living and working in Cape Town. He brought along his two adorable little boys, Murray and Jack.

Since we don't get much opportunity to entertain young children, Matt and I planned a little easter egg hunt for the two boys. I don't know who enjoyed themselves more, them or us "adults!" But even with their easter baskets full, they were well-mannered and shared their sweets with us.