Zimbabwe has gotten a lot of bad press lately which gives people the impression that it is a dangerous country (not true) run by a crazy leader (true) where all the people are starving (no more than their neighbors) and there is absolutely no fuel (slight exaggeration).

The item that has gotten the most press is the bulldozing of a lot of the flea markets which included the bulldozing of the homes of many poor people. This happened a few weeks before I entered Zimbabwe and was still big news when I got there. Zimbabwe's official line on this action was that it was a good thing because they are building new homes for the people who were displaced which will actually be better than where they were living. New flea market stalls will be built and the government will regulate them better so that there won't be any squatters.

The international media and NGO line is that the removal was bad because it displaced a lot of poor people who were left with no where to go and since NGOs were not allowed access to the people there was no way to help them.

As with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. I have no reason to believe that the government is not building the homes they said they were building -- I saw pictures of them on TV. (Not that that proves anything, really, but they they generally prefer to spin things rather than straight out lie.) And according to travellers who were in Zim when the "clean-up" occurred, it actually made things safer. That said, it probably would have made more sense to build the new homes first and then destroy the old homes. It also would probably have made sense to allow aid organizations access to the people.

After visiting with Isabel I met the Zimbabwe director of the organization through which I sponsor her and asked him about the situation. He said that the organization actually had had two projects running in the destroyed areas which had to be abandoned. (Lots of sponsors were going to be getting some carefully worded bad news in the mail.) The organization has had some luck tracking down the kids and is trying to integrate them all into other projects. Most of the kids and their families have gone back into the country-side where they had originally come from. So, they did have someplace to go, but there were most likely good reasons why most of them left. (For example, the 4th year in a row of drought.)

The reason why no aid organizations went in to help the people was completely political. The director was saying that they would have liked to have gone in to help, but that doing so would have been seen as disagreeing with the government and would have jeapardized all of the organizations projects within Zimbabwe. What eventually happened was that some religious (Christian) organizations went into the area to help out. Zimbabwe being a predominantly Christian country the churches could get away with helping out and then, after they had been there and broken the ice, so to speak, other organiztions were able to begin helping.

Aside from the "clean-up" project the poor political situation in Zimbabwe right now has created other problems, most notably a fuel shortage and money problems of all sorts. It is currently really difficult to get fuel. NGOs apparently have preferential access to fuel, but when I went to visit Isabel, my guide still had to wait on line for what was probably a couple hours. The gas stations that actually had petrol generally had lines of about fifty cars waiting at the pumps. And to buy fuel, it was best to pay in US dollars, a very rare and precious commodity. This of course meant that transport prices were way up -- if it was going at all. You could still get busses between major routes, but less frequently than they should have been travelled. On lesser routes, hitch-hiking was often the only way to go. (And Mom & Dad, not to worry. It wasn't normal hitch-hiking. Private cars would stop and the busstops and bunches of people would get in and the driver would be paid a standard rate.)

And then, there was the money situation. Once upon a time, Zimbabwe dollars used to be worth something. I was talking one evening to a man who used to work in Zimbabwe about 15 years ago. His salary that year was about $30,000 Zim dollars. My dinner the night I spoke to him cost $130,000Zim. The amount of inflation is just incredible. A couple days before I entered Zimbabwe the exchange rate was $17,500Zim to $1USD. By the time I left Zim about 2 weeks later it was $24,500Zim to $1USD. That was the official rate. The black market rate was between $40,000Zim and $52,000Zim to $1USD. That ridiculous amount of inflation is, well, ridiculously bad. The economy is basically destroyed. Saving is pretty much impossible. Even if you save all of this years salary, it probably won't be worth anything next year. And then there is just the problem of the number of bills you need to carry around with you. The highest dollar amount of a bill is $20,000Zim. So, its actually hard to fit enough bills into your wallet to buy things. Despite this, there are still coins floating out there. I actually have a $0.05Zim coin. (To be technical, the highest bill is actually $1,000Zim. A few years ago the government started issuing bearers checks in $5,000, $10,000, and $20,000Zim denominations as a temporary measure until inflation got under control. They are apparently very easy to forge and they also expire. But at this point even the expired bearers checks are legal tender.)

Unfortunately, it is unlikely that any of the problems in Zimbabwe are going to go away any time soon. Perhaps when Mugabe dies a better leader will come into power, but, unfortunately, any new leader is likely to be just as bad. Despite its problems, though, Zimbabwe is a safe country to visit (as long as you don't get caught changing money on the black market) and the people are really friendly.