Back to school

I have left school shopping to the very last minute, as usual. I dive into a stationery shop. Ten minutes, that's all I've got. Pens, rulers (those brittle plastic ones that will shatter in days), rubbers (There are no rubbers. Sold out. Help. Will have to raid his father's pen tin), gluesticks (ditto). Three other customers are picking up stacks of exercise books and rolls of plastic book covering. They're together, I realise. Teachers, I think. "Are you shopping for your school?" I ask one of them at the counter. The man who is overseeing the purchases, checking items against a list, replies: "Our children are going to be educated. Very educated." He smiles, but in a grim way. "But there are no jobs in Zimbabwe. We are teaching these children for what?"