The inflation rate was eventually incomprehensible, and the government Statistical Office stopped publishing the inflation rate. Some creative minds devised a method to track inflation and the exchange rate and termed this innovation the “Hard-Boiled Egg Index.”

It sounds extreme, but we had to calculate the exchange rate and estimate inflation, based on how much ZWD one needed to buy a hard-boiled egg over time. It was generally accepted that the purchase parity of three hard-boiled eggs in most parts of Africa was one dollar US, and therefore this became a reference point. Tracking how much the price in ZWD of three hard-boiled eggs over time would give a fair estimate of the movement in exchange rate and inflation rate.