HI All
The flight back from Brisbane via Dubai is a long one taking over 30 hours from door to door. However, Emirates has some of the more modern planes around with comfortable seating and excellent staff to cater for all your basic flying needs. Very little jetlag this time around.
It doesn’t take long for returnees to realise that they are back in their real world – the traffic chaos around the intersection of Robert Mugabe and Glenara Avenues at 6.30 pm brought back memories of the major difference the roundabout on Gaydon Rd made to the flow of traffic – surely, it’s time to start lobbying for a few more circles. There must be a bright engineering type out there who can design a practical one that is not going to cost an arm and a leg.
One of the good things I admire about our city is the way we have so many dedicated individuals doing special things to help their communities. One such person is Sharon Hook who has, for the past 14 years, been organising a cleanup of just about every shopping centre in and around Harare on the first Friday of every month.
I stopped by the cleanup at Helensvale shops last Friday and was very pleased to see so many folks donning plastic gloves to pick up all sorts of litter – very rewarding for all those involved. Great too to see what the BRRA have done with paving to set up a meaningful bus stop outside the garage – imagine the improvement to traffic flow if each of the larger companies sponsored their own bus stops- they surely don’t cost much and take little effort to construct.
Sharon and her team have always gone out of their way to involve the local vendors in these cleanups hoping that they might make a habit of keeping their own little place in order. One of the major issues at all these marketplaces is the lack of toilets and we desperately need ideas with volunteers to rally for them. So sad, also, to see how many guys were drinking alcohol in the streets alongside the markets at 9 am in the morning.
These cleanups only take up two hours of your time so why not diarise 8-10 am on the 2nd of August so that you can take a few of your fellow staff along to the next cleanup – make sure you have your own branded T-shirts and take selfies for your social media pages.
Spar is always one of the major sponsors of these events and their Marketing Rep, Shamie Pfuma, was there to welcome helpers. They have also created a TikTok video showing people how to make a shopping bag out of old T-shirts – click here to view.
NB – watch out for details of the Plastic Free July Launch that will be happening later this week at Unity Square. See you in August. Mike G.
