5 years, I think, since I was last in Zimbabwe, and here I am again. Came in from the airport sort of looking for signs of the collapse of the country, thought I’m not sure what exactly I was expecting to see. The small street vendors are still at work. The dusty lots are still filled with the beautiful stone carvings of the Ndbele people. The hotel I stayed at in 2002 is still here, staffed by white-uniformed staff serving drinks to a smattering of poolside guests.
It’s only my second day here but I suspect I’ll find many more signs and symptoms of the great ills in the week ahead. The money situation is ridiculous. The inflation rate here is now at 3,700 percent. The gap between the official exchange rate and the much more commonly used black market rate is astounding – 250 Zim dollars per one US at the official rate, 195,000 Zim dollars per US on the black market. That’s not a misprint. I just finished a dinner of chicken cordon bleu, with an appetizer of friend holoumi cheese and two Cokes – in the hotel restaurant – for the equivalent of $3.40. It is an oddly removed existence in the insular world of white travel in black Africa. Pools and bread and steak breakfasts when most Zimbabweans hesitate to change money each morning for fear the rate is 50% better in the afternoon.
I did spend the day at a project sire where the real face of one perhaps Zimbabwe’s main crisis was everywhere evident. 100 orphaned children who came together for some games and a free lunch at a local NGO site. With all the news of Zimbabwe’s financial freefall, you hear little of the country’s estimated 1.6 million AIDS orphans – this in a country of only 11 million people. It is the highest percentage of children orphaned by AIDS anywhere in the world, and to see the faces of children by the scores who will have only thin memories of at least on of their parents, if not both, makes you realize how absolutely devastating the AIDS pandemic is in Africa. It’s a runaway train that makes Zimbabwe’s economy look well run by comparison.
August 11th, 2007 | by David in Uncategorized
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
