Three weeks now in Zimbabwe – 10 days of it in the bush down south, and the rest working for IOM and Caritas Internationalis else ware in the country. I’ve been here to Zimbabwe several times before, but I have to say I’m seeing it with new eyes this time. When I was last here – in July 2007 – it was a different place. Tensions were high then as Mugabe’s government clashed with MDC rivals, and the hapless Zim dollar spiraled into absurd rates of inflation. Supermarket shelves were literally empty – harkening back to the television images I remember from my childhood of the shelves of the Soviet Union of the 1970’s and 80s, where women waited in endless lines on the off chance something, anything, might be available that day.
But Zimbabwe today is different. With the end of price controls earlier this year, and the break from the Zim dollar to a range of stable international currencies, things have improved dramatically. Almost overnight, the shelves were again stocked as merchants could finally make a profit on what they sold. With supply increasing, prices fell, and you’re starting to hear the first signs of what was so noticeably missing the last time I was here twox years ago: optimism.
That said, the rural poor are still struggling mightily. I spent the day today way down south on the border with Botswana, and families there are still facing the full brunt of the economic collapse. Being so close to the border, many in the village of Mbade had left in years past to find any work they could across the border. Many of them left their families behind, abandoned completely to the hope of a new life in a new country. They will not return. That probably more than anything I have seen here is most indicative of the real impact of the crisis the people here have faced in recent years.
But I am struck by one thing about the people of Zimbabwe, above everything else – their unshakable kindness, even amid such hardships. I have seen many countries in Africa, but I honestly believe Zimbabweans are the friendliest of any I have met. It is a lesson for us all perhaps, amid the monumental hardships these people have suffered in years past. I hope, finally, the corner has been turned, but I, unlike the people of Zimbabwe, am not an optimist.
July 21st, 2009 | by David in Travel
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All Material © 2008 David Snyder
