The Grocery Store
Guma-gumas and Trillionaires but no Coca-Cola
Don't Know Much about the Situation in Zim?
Salutations Team America! (and Zahir),
For months now, I've been told by EVERY Zimbabwean refugee I meet that I must go to Zimbabwe because the country is so beautiful AND because the situation there is now so terrible. A couple of weeks ago, my natural gumshoe instincts got the best of me and I spontaneously decided to go to Zimbabwe, to see the situation on the ground for myself.
I took an overnight bus from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The lines in the Joburg bus station were full of Zimbabweans with HUGE bags (take your idea of a big bag, multiply it by 20 and that is the size bags we are talking about) full of goods (eggs, cooking oil, petrol, clothes, tvs, radios, dvds, coca-cola, other cool drinks, bread, rice, flour, sugar, tea, juice, milk, peanut butter, you name it people were taking it back) and then there was me, with my school back-pack. I felt very under-packed. After several hours of waiting for my bus and making a few new friends, I was on my way from Joburg, headed for Harare, via the Great Karoo (aka the Great Abyss of boring nothingness and desert bleakness that lasts forever).
8 hours later, we arrive at the border. Making it through customs, with my new visa in my passport to prove it, we cross the Limpopo River at dawn, with baboons on the bridge, crocodiles below and mist rising off the water and the sky a soft peach-pink. It was truly breathtaking. The Zimbabwean countryside was absolutely gorgeous; I understood exactly why every Zimbabwean I talk to talks about how beautiful Zimbabwe is, sheesh. Take your ideal Simba-Disney- tastic-The-Lion-King mental idea of how beautiful Africa can be and that was exactly what the Zimbabwean countryside looked like. Needless to say, it was a pleasant 6 hour bus ride to Harare. That being said, we did encounter 8 police roadblocks along the way which made me thankful I was on a big greyhound bus, I'm sure bribes would have been necessary to get through some or all of them if I had been in a car.
While in Harare I went to hospitals, schools, malls, shops, grocery stores, the museum of natural history, their national library, Zanu-PF Headquarters, etc, etc. It is a country that is empty- the hospitals are empty, they had 10 x-ray machines, only 1 worked. I walked the halls and there were no medicines, no supplies, no gloves, no towels, no surgical equipment, no machines, no IVs, no respirators, no ekg machins, no beeping, no hospital-smell. Just people lying in beds, looking gravely sick. If you want to have a baby, you have to bring your own gloves and towels to the hospital or clinic when you go to give birth.
The schools lack chalk and books and pencils and the desks are broken. You have to pay to take your final exams. Gas stations are empty. You have to buy gas from guys on the black market out of their petrol jugs, they mill around outside the gas stations and the price goes up almost everyday.
The cost of bread on the black market went from 80 Million Zim Dollars the first day I was there to 170 Million Zim Dollars the next. The cost of a Kombi (taxi) ride went from 70 Million to 80 Million to 100 Million while I was there. The shops were virtually empty. There was no coco-cola. But there was a lot of ketchup and baking soda. If you wanted to buy much of anything else, you were out of luck.
I watched the news every evening. There is only 1 state-controlled television station. Talk about a biased perspective but everyone I encountered knew how biased it was. The economy and the terrible inflation was everyone's biggest complaint. Everywhere I went, it just looked as if no improvements or general upkeep had occurred since 1985. It was like the country has been in time-out since then.
I stayed with a Zimbabwean family that just kept feeding me- goodness. Sadza (like Paap in S. Africa or kinda like grits in the US) it was a staple and I ate a ton of it while I was there. They had their own extensive garden and grew their own corn (which they grounded themselves and made into Sadza), vegetables, sugarcane, and sweet potatoes. I had sweet potatoes and tea- a popular pairing in Zim and tried sugarcane for the first time- messy but delicious! The electricity didn't always work, the hot water never works, and sometimes the city water doesn't work at all and when that happens they have to fetch water out of a well. I talked at length to their great uncle (the only elderly man I saw while in Zim, he was probably in his late 60s or early 70s) and the very first thing he said to me, "Things were better under Ian Smith." Damn. To say that things were better under white colonial rule is a bold statement. He was a very wise, very educated man- he was a civil engineer but is now retired. Zebe and Miriam took me all around the city and the countryside and even out one evening to a bar and a local concert. The entire family was soooo kind to me, I will always be grateful for their hospitality.
Everywhere I went there were sooooo many people, on the streets and in the parks, just milling around because unemployment is so high. I always felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of people you would see NOT working from 9 to 5. Most people survive because they have relatives sending them supplies from South Africa or other countries. On every other street corner you would see a policeman or a man in a military uniform. But I was never hassled by them. In fact, EVERYONE I encountered was nothing but gracious, kind and helpful to me. I always felt safe, people seemed to like America and Americans and Obama (Vote Barack team, vote Barack!).
I returned safe and sound to Cape Town a multi-millionaire, determined to visit Zimbabwe again when they have sorted things out. We can only hope that the June run-off elections create a turn in that direction.
This is getting quite long, let me add that some of you may be aware that there is a lot of xenophobic violence going on in SA right now- 40+ people have been killed and over 30,000 people have been displaced. I have been very busy coordinating with other NGOs and refugees to find safe havens and support for the displaced AND have been trying to help direct donations and goods to the places that need them. It is a hectic time indeed. And now Matt is coming so I've got a lot of travelling ahead of me. Oh my.
Keep in touch, I love mail and email and facebook- you can't go wrong.
Best wishes,
Amy K
ps- guma guma is shona for crook
pss- if i had won the National Zim lotto, I would have been a trillionaire! word.
Historical Background:
Over the last few years there has been an influx of immigrants into South Africa from countries in Southern Africa, particularly from Zimbabwe. The actual number of undocumented Zimbabwean individuals living in South Africa is unknown; estimates range from 1 to 5 million. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has stated “there is clearly a humanitarian crisis when so many people feel compelled to leave their country.”1
The political and economic crises in Zimbabwe are worsening at an alarming rate. In 2005, the government-sponsored “Operation Murambatsvina” was implemented to clear urban slums, thereby depriving more than 18 percent of the population of homes or livelihoods and badly damaging Zimbabwe’s informal job sector. Since then, official inflation has risen to over 100,000 percent. According to the International Crisis Group: unemployment is over 85 percent, poverty over 90 percent, over four million persons are in desperate need of food, and thousands are dying every month from malnutrition and HIV/AIDS.2 UNICEF and the WHO both claim that the average life expectancy is now the worst in all of Africa; in 1990, the life expectancy of a Zimbabwean was 60 years, now the life expectancy has plummeted to 37.3
All refugees and asylum seekers have left their countries for two main reasons:
they fear for their lives or they are driven by destitution to seek a life free of
starvation. Upon entering South Africa, every immigrant has the legal right to apply
for refugee status by reporting to the Department of Home Affairs within 14 days
of arriving in the country. Until they have placed their application, immigrants are
illegal and can be deported at any time. The renewable temporary papers issued to all
asylum seekers by the government mean they can remain in South Africa legally for 6
months, while awaiting an official decision.
Don't Know Much about the Situation in Zim?
The Grocery Store
Next time you go to the grocery store, imagine it is empty. There is nothing on the shelves--no pasta or rice or cereal; nothing in the freezer section--no icecream, frozen pizza or frozen vegetables; no fresh produce--no apples, no grapes, no bananas; no toiletries or cleaning products--no soap, no windex, no toilet paper. No gum and candy as you check out. Nothing, not even bread.
If you lived in Zimbabwe, you wouldn't have to use your imagination. For millions of Zimbabweans today, that is a reality.
It has been two years since I went to Zimbabwe but every single time I walk into an American grocery store, I still remember--the emptiness.
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Guma-gumas and Trillionaires but no Coca-Cola
For months now, I've been told by EVERY Zimbabwean refugee I meet that I must go to Zimbabwe because the country is so beautiful AND because the situation there is now so terrible. A couple of weeks ago, my natural gumshoe instincts got the best of me and I spontaneously decided to go to Zimbabwe, to see the situation on the ground for myself.
I took an overnight bus from Cape Town to Johannesburg. The lines in the Joburg bus station were full of Zimbabweans with HUGE bags (take your idea of a big bag, multiply it by 20 and that is the size bags we are talking about) full of goods (eggs, cooking oil, petrol, clothes, tvs, radios, dvds, coca-cola, other cool drinks, bread, rice, flour, sugar, tea, juice, milk, peanut butter, you name it people were taking it back) and then there was me, with my school back-pack. I felt very under-packed. After several hours of waiting for my bus and making a few new friends, I was on my way from Joburg, headed for Harare, via the Great Karoo (aka the Great Abyss of boring nothingness and desert bleakness that lasts forever).
8 hours later, we arrive at the border. Making it through customs, with my new visa in my passport to prove it, we cross the Limpopo River at dawn, with baboons on the bridge, crocodiles below and mist rising off the water and the sky a soft peach-pink. It was truly breathtaking. The Zimbabwean countryside was absolutely gorgeous; I understood exactly why every Zimbabwean I talk to talks about how beautiful Zimbabwe is, sheesh. Take your ideal Simba-Disney- tastic-The-Lion-King mental idea of how beautiful Africa can be and that was exactly what the Zimbabwean countryside looked like. Needless to say, it was a pleasant 6 hour bus ride to Harare. That being said, we did encounter 8 police roadblocks along the way which made me thankful I was on a big greyhound bus, I'm sure bribes would have been necessary to get through some or all of them if I had been in a car.
While in Harare I went to hospitals, schools, malls, shops, grocery stores, the museum of natural history, their national library, Zanu-PF Headquarters, etc, etc. It is a country that is empty- the hospitals are empty, they had 10 x-ray machines, only 1 worked. I walked the halls and there were no medicines, no supplies, no gloves, no towels, no surgical equipment, no machines, no IVs, no respirators, no ekg machins, no beeping, no hospital-smell. Just people lying in beds, looking gravely sick. If you want to have a baby, you have to bring your own gloves and towels to the hospital or clinic when you go to give birth.
The schools lack chalk and books and pencils and the desks are broken. You have to pay to take your final exams. Gas stations are empty. You have to buy gas from guys on the black market out of their petrol jugs, they mill around outside the gas stations and the price goes up almost everyday.
The cost of bread on the black market went from 80 Million Zim Dollars the first day I was there to 170 Million Zim Dollars the next. The cost of a Kombi (taxi) ride went from 70 Million to 80 Million to 100 Million while I was there. The shops were virtually empty. There was no coco-cola. But there was a lot of ketchup and baking soda. If you wanted to buy much of anything else, you were out of luck.
I watched the news every evening. There is only 1 state-controlled television station. Talk about a biased perspective but everyone I encountered knew how biased it was. The economy and the terrible inflation was everyone's biggest complaint. Everywhere I went, it just looked as if no improvements or general upkeep had occurred since 1985. It was like the country has been in time-out since then.
I stayed with a Zimbabwean family that just kept feeding me- goodness. Sadza (like Paap in S. Africa or kinda like grits in the US) it was a staple and I ate a ton of it while I was there. They had their own extensive garden and grew their own corn (which they grounded themselves and made into Sadza), vegetables, sugarcane, and sweet potatoes. I had sweet potatoes and tea- a popular pairing in Zim and tried sugarcane for the first time- messy but delicious! The electricity didn't always work, the hot water never works, and sometimes the city water doesn't work at all and when that happens they have to fetch water out of a well. I talked at length to their great uncle (the only elderly man I saw while in Zim, he was probably in his late 60s or early 70s) and the very first thing he said to me, "Things were better under Ian Smith." Damn. To say that things were better under white colonial rule is a bold statement. He was a very wise, very educated man- he was a civil engineer but is now retired. Zebe and Miriam took me all around the city and the countryside and even out one evening to a bar and a local concert. The entire family was soooo kind to me, I will always be grateful for their hospitality.
Everywhere I went there were sooooo many people, on the streets and in the parks, just milling around because unemployment is so high. I always felt a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of people you would see NOT working from 9 to 5. Most people survive because they have relatives sending them supplies from South Africa or other countries. On every other street corner you would see a policeman or a man in a military uniform. But I was never hassled by them. In fact, EVERYONE I encountered was nothing but gracious, kind and helpful to me. I always felt safe, people seemed to like America and Americans and Obama (Vote Barack team, vote Barack!).
I returned safe and sound to Cape Town a multi-millionaire, determined to visit Zimbabwe again when they have sorted things out. We can only hope that the June run-off elections create a turn in that direction.
This is getting quite long, let me add that some of you may be aware that there is a lot of xenophobic violence going on in SA right now- 40+ people have been killed and over 30,000 people have been displaced. I have been very busy coordinating with other NGOs and refugees to find safe havens and support for the displaced AND have been trying to help direct donations and goods to the places that need them. It is a hectic time indeed. And now Matt is coming so I've got a lot of travelling ahead of me. Oh my.
Keep in touch, I love mail and email and facebook- you can't go wrong.
Best wishes,
Amy K
ps- guma guma is shona for crook
pss- if i had won the National Zim lotto, I would have been a trillionaire! word.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Don't Know Much about the Situation in Zim?
Over the last few years there has been an influx of immigrants into South Africa from countries in Southern Africa, particularly from Zimbabwe. The actual number of undocumented Zimbabwean individuals living in South Africa is unknown; estimates range from 1 to 5 million. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has stated “there is clearly a humanitarian crisis when so many people feel compelled to leave their country.”1
The political and economic crises in Zimbabwe are worsening at an alarming rate. In 2005, the government-sponsored “Operation Murambatsvina” was implemented to clear urban slums, thereby depriving more than 18 percent of the population of homes or livelihoods and badly damaging Zimbabwe’s informal job sector. Since then, official inflation has risen to over 100,000 percent. According to the International Crisis Group: unemployment is over 85 percent, poverty over 90 percent, over four million persons are in desperate need of food, and thousands are dying every month from malnutrition and HIV/AIDS.2 UNICEF and the WHO both claim that the average life expectancy is now the worst in all of Africa; in 1990, the life expectancy of a Zimbabwean was 60 years, now the life expectancy has plummeted to 37.3
All refugees and asylum seekers have left their countries for two main reasons:
they fear for their lives or they are driven by destitution to seek a life free of
starvation. Upon entering South Africa, every immigrant has the legal right to apply
for refugee status by reporting to the Department of Home Affairs within 14 days
of arriving in the country. Until they have placed their application, immigrants are
illegal and can be deported at any time. The renewable temporary papers issued to all
asylum seekers by the government mean they can remain in South Africa legally for 6
months, while awaiting an official decision.
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the political and economic situation in zim has created 3-5 million refugees...
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