Of common salt and boiled mice

Original Post Date: 2002-07-03  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 7/3/2002 12:50:41 AM
Of common salt and boiled mice

An official in a troubled central African country’s department of defunct trade, Comrade Cummerbund, has said it will soon be possible for retailers to import salt at $200 a kilogramme and the good news is that they can then sell it at $100 a kilogramme. The precious commodity joins a long list of items no longer available on supermarket shelves in the troubled central African country. The shortages are a result of a revolutionary new form of economics devised by the country’s minister of bankruptcy, comrade Powerless Macaroni. The new economic policy dictates that everything must be sold for less than it costs, thus ensuring massive job losses, empty shelves and a new recipe book that shows new ways of cooking leaves and tree roots.

The new book was brought out after a revised recipe in a schools’ home economics textbook advised children to: In a pot, add 1 kilogramme of (soon to be unavailable.) Four tablespoons of (unavailable.) A cup of (hasn’t been available for months.) Mix in one litre of (you’ll be lucky.) Add a pinch of (also unavailable). Then mix together thoroughly before finding someone who hasn’t been disconnected from the mains before cooking in an oven for one hour. While leaders of the troubled central African country (called chefs because they’re the only people with pantries full of food) knew all along that the plan was to make the people live on a diet of air and revolutionary rhetoric, it was decided not to make the plan too obvious.

So, in future recipe books for the children not too weakened by hunger to attend school will promise such healthy delights as green leaf stew, brown leaf stew, grass seed porridge and boiled mouse. Though admitting that the deprivations of these new diets are entirely the fault of farmers who sabotaged the economy with help from British running dogs of imperialism, the book points to the delights of self-sacrifice and assures its readers that boiled mouse is full of essential proteins and vitamins. “Not only that, but the most equal of all comrades regularly starts his day with a bowl of grass seed porridge, just like those other great revolutionary leaders Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse Tung and that skinny chap who booted the Portuguese out of Angola.”

Of course, the word “regularly” is relative and in the case of the most equal of all comrades could mean once every couple of decades. Not so, said a critic from the troubled central African country’s subdued opposition. “It all depends on your interpretation of the word ‘grass’ because if it’s what I think it is, then it might account for his peculiar behaviour of late.” The opposition member pointed out that a certain foreign gentleman who visited the troubled central African country after it was liberated from the British was a lavish imbiber of grass seed porridge – and its many smokable derivatives.

None of which gets one past the inescapable problem of the scarcity of salt, for in all honesty there are no alternatives to the stuff. Asked why there was no salt in the troubled central African nation, a spokesman for the ministry of bankruptcy said: “The problem sort of snuck up on us. To be honest, when we were warned that there was a problem looming, we took it with a pinch of unobtainable. Fortunately the people of this country are the unobtainable of the earth, so we know they’ll persevere. That’s all I have to say because I must rush now as my wife’s just called to say there’s a queue forming at the tuck shop on the corner and I’d better join it.”

Source:Zimbabwe Standard
Over the Top By Brian Latham
published:Sun 30-Jun-2002

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