Everything Has a Price Tag
I could not believe it. Today, the local grocery store offered me a free heavy duty shopping bag. It wants to be counted in the list of businesses that have discontinued plastic bags, to save the environment. That is why this store has gone back to old school brown paper bags. However, the free bag the cashier was offering me is re-usable, very strong.
He could read the disbelief in my face. C’mon, there’s no free lunch in Canada so, he showed me ads on one side of the bag. That is why it’s free. I could not believe it initially, because everything including human beings, has a price tag.
There are fake online employment agencies in Africa and Europe, which are nothing but the stock exchange for buying and selling girls. Girls trust recruiters because they are from their country, speak the same language.
Other girls ‘fall in love’ with strangers online and fly out to marry them, only to find that the marriage is selling their bodies. It won’t stop as long as girls believe that life abroad is better than in their countries.
Political votes can be bought either blatantly or camouflaged, like in countries with a long history of so-called democracy. Money doesn’t have to change hands. It’s a matter of, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
Tourists globally are disappointed. They want to buy things made by local people only to find that most tourist hubs now sell handicrafts and clothes from China, like the Howick Falls market in the KZN Province in South Africa.
Original societies used the barter system before the Queen introduced coins and paper money with her photo. That is also changing. Countries in the European Union collapsed all their currencies into the euro.
That might also be redundant in the future if more people buy goods online. Businesses also encourage us to buy things online, and pick them up at the store. I accepted the bag but I won’t stop being suspicious about ‘free’ things.
By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.
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