The $1 billion infusion from foreign nationals into Zim

Tuesday

Zimbabwe made the news again yesterday as a headline rolled across the TV noting that President Mugabe for the first time said there was famine in his country. When I told 16-year-old Pfummy the news, he laughed. Of course, there is. Why, after all, are people like Pfummy needing to get out?

The Mail & Guardian newspaper in South Africa has a feature this week about how Zimbabweans who have left the country are using any means possible to get money and goods back to their family and friends. “For basic necessities, there are buses that leave at 3 p.m. each week day from a bustling depot at Park Station in Johannesburg’s CBD, carrying “Big Five” bags stuffed with groceries, toiletries and money – rands, not Zim dollars,” Zahira Kharsany reports. The road trip can take up to 18 hours, and one Zimbabwean who sends his family supplies for “a variety of food groups” every month said the bus drivers do not steal: “They are honest drivers. I trust them.”

For the Internet savvy who can afford to pay in British pounds, Internet sites provide a means to send goods home. “At YesZim.com, online shoppers can pay in advance for their friends back home to have a meal at a restaurant in Harare,” Kharsany writes.

The article includes an info graphic that shows what hyperinflation has done to Zimbabwe. The annual inflation rate is more than 100,000 percent. (You read that right.)
In Harare, a roll of toilet paper costs 8 million Zim dollars, a can of sardines 30 million and a banana one million. An asterisk in the info box says, “Had three zeroes not been taken off the Zimbabwe dollar in 2006 a banana would cost Z$1-billion.”

In 1980, when the Zim dollar was introduced, it was worth a third more than the U.S. dollar.

Elections in Zimbabwe are less than 3 weeks away, but around here people are not optimistic about seeing any change.