Life in Zimbabwe...AH!!..Zimbabwe,a place little known to a part of the world I live in,heard only as one of the teams playing cricket during international cricket matches..
so..what makes me turn everyone's heads to this little place? answer:
Long before the rooster in their dirt yard crows,a couple are out of bed at 2 20am...they creep past their children sleeping in their one room house and take their daily moonlit stroll to the bank.They were the twenty-ninth to arrive,all hoping for a chance to withdraw the maximum amount of Zimbabwean currency the government allowed last month-the equivalent of just a dollar or two.
Zimbabwe is in the grip of one of the great hyperinflations in world history. The people of this once proud capital have been plunged into a Darwinian struggle to get by.Many have been reduced to peddlers and paupers,hawkers and black market hustlers...eating just a meal or two in a day,their cheeks hollowed,giving a testament to their hunger...
The number of days an average individual has to spend in the line at the bank to withdraw cash to buy them :
a day for a bar of soap
another day for a bag of salt
four days for a sack of cornmeal.
The inflation is an almost unimaginable forty million percent,say economists..
and the Zimbabwean situation is radiating instability to other parts of southern Africa.As the bankrupt government prints even more money,inflation is going wilder and wilder,rising from one thousand percent in 2006 to twelve thousand percent in 2007 to a figure so high that the government has had to lop ten zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation's calculators from being overwhelmed...(had they left the currency alone,one dollar would now be worth about ten trillion Zimbabwean dollars...!!!!!! freaky!!!!)
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation is probably among the worst five of all time, along with Germany in the 1920's,Greece and Hungary in the 1940's and Yugoslavia in 1993.
Cash shortage has the government sending runners into the streets with suitcases of the nation's currency to buy up American dollars and South African rand on the black market-drying up Zimbabwean dollars that would otherwise go to the banks.
Because of this cash shortage,the government strictly limits the amount people can withdraw..even so,Zimbabweans often have to wait in vain for hours at the banks that send away their customers empty-handed.
Economists say that the only thing that can halt Zimbabwe's inflatory spiral is a political solution that takes control over the country's economy out of the hands of Robert Mugabe,the 84-year-old president ,who still maintains a viselike hold on power after 28 years in office. .....and lives in splendor here in a mansion hidden behind high walls...
And here we were getting depressed about our inflation problems...!!!!
so..what makes me turn everyone's heads to this little place? answer:
Long before the rooster in their dirt yard crows,a couple are out of bed at 2 20am...they creep past their children sleeping in their one room house and take their daily moonlit stroll to the bank.They were the twenty-ninth to arrive,all hoping for a chance to withdraw the maximum amount of Zimbabwean currency the government allowed last month-the equivalent of just a dollar or two.
Zimbabwe is in the grip of one of the great hyperinflations in world history. The people of this once proud capital have been plunged into a Darwinian struggle to get by.Many have been reduced to peddlers and paupers,hawkers and black market hustlers...eating just a meal or two in a day,their cheeks hollowed,giving a testament to their hunger...
The number of days an average individual has to spend in the line at the bank to withdraw cash to buy them :
a day for a bar of soap
another day for a bag of salt
four days for a sack of cornmeal.
The inflation is an almost unimaginable forty million percent,say economists..
and the Zimbabwean situation is radiating instability to other parts of southern Africa.As the bankrupt government prints even more money,inflation is going wilder and wilder,rising from one thousand percent in 2006 to twelve thousand percent in 2007 to a figure so high that the government has had to lop ten zeros off the currency in August to keep the nation's calculators from being overwhelmed...(had they left the currency alone,one dollar would now be worth about ten trillion Zimbabwean dollars...!!!!!! freaky!!!!)
Zimbabwe's hyperinflation is probably among the worst five of all time, along with Germany in the 1920's,Greece and Hungary in the 1940's and Yugoslavia in 1993.
Cash shortage has the government sending runners into the streets with suitcases of the nation's currency to buy up American dollars and South African rand on the black market-drying up Zimbabwean dollars that would otherwise go to the banks.
Because of this cash shortage,the government strictly limits the amount people can withdraw..even so,Zimbabweans often have to wait in vain for hours at the banks that send away their customers empty-handed.
Economists say that the only thing that can halt Zimbabwe's inflatory spiral is a political solution that takes control over the country's economy out of the hands of Robert Mugabe,the 84-year-old president ,who still maintains a viselike hold on power after 28 years in office. .....and lives in splendor here in a mansion hidden behind high walls...
And here we were getting depressed about our inflation problems...!!!!
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