Tearfund worker Karyn Beattie has just returned from her homeland. Here's her account of what life is like in Zimbabwe.
`I was last home in September, not that long ago, but the changes in that time are almost unbelievable.
The rains have transformed the countryside. Everything is green, rivers are full and you can’t help feeling that the farmers must be pleased.
I expected the water shortages to be over in the city of Bulawayo. But neither the farmers nor the residents of Bulawayo are happy.
The rain has been too heavy for crops that have no fertiliser – there’s been none available.
And Bulawayo’s supply dams are nearly full but the city council has no chemicals with which to treat the water.
Economic meltdown
So inspite of the downpours, the taps remain empty and the predictions for next harvest are bleak.
Across Zimbabwe, the situation is bleak. The country is in meltdown.
There are queues outside banks as people wait to withdraw their own money.
There is no maize meal, the staple food, in shops. There isn’t even any on the black market.
Clinics have no medicines, schools have no teachers, businesses have no electricity.
Small miracles
One pastor told me that the death rate has increased sharply. I asked him why and he said, ‘It’s a combination of AIDS, no medicine and no food. People have nothing left but to come home to die.’
But in the middle of this hopeless picture, there were some incredible stories.
A number of people told me that they really don’t know how they make ends meet.
Every month, they look at the money they have and know it’s not enough but somehow, they survive - small miracles perhaps?
And our partners are so positive in the middle of this crisis. They shake their heads and say they don’t know what’s going to happen but they trust God.
Feeding hope
They are expecting change. They have hope.
You can even see this among our beneficiaries as they collect their food.
People picking up food provided by Tearfund partners. Photo: Tearfund
You see the smiles and the relief. You can see the hope. They laugh when I show them the photos I have taken, faces lighting up as if we aren’t all in the middle of a crisis.
Zimbabweans still have a sense of humour. We laughed at the piles of money needed to pay for lunch.
Laughter
We laughed at how hard it is to work out how many $750,000 notes you need when you’re trying to pay for something (at that stage, $750,000 was the highest denomination but you still needed two of those to buy a loaf of bread).
It’s not really funny, but if you don’t laugh what else?
With all the talk about the chaos, I keep thinking about something a colleague said to me a while ago:
Why is it that we all focus on Mugabe and the politics when what we should really be talking about is the resilience, courage and remarkable dignity of a people who are still surviving, still keeping the peace and still hoping in spite of everything?'