A Country in Trouble

So this is a little off topic from the normal posts about kids and life here.

A few friends from work are living in Zimbabwe and it is just incredible how terrible the situation has become. The inflation rate is 8000% so that you never know how much things cost. The exchange rate is roughly 500,000 Zim dollars for 1 US dollar. Milk is now $12 per gallon, expensive if that were here, but unimaginably expensive in Zimbabwe. Gasoline is $8-10 per gallon. The people who work on our projects are paid in US dollars so that they are less affected by the inflation rate, but they have to take the US dollars out of the country to spend it. So they spend money on gas to drive to Botswana or South Africa to buy things like toilet paper.

Maize, the staple of the country which is used to make a dish called sadza (it is like grits or polenta), is not easy to find. My friend Seble said that she would go to a store, discover that they had sausage for sale, call friends to tell them of her find. The friends would go an hour later only to discover that they were sold out. Getting gasoline is a day long headache. It certain areas the power goes out almost every night in the early evening, making it very difficult to cook a hot meal. It is even difficult to buy stuff on the black market. Days are spent calling friends to find out who has food to sell. Seble did say that you can go to restaurants for meals, but you usually don't need the menu. Often there is only one dish available, the chef's special.

Every time I talk with people about Zimbabwe we wonder how much worse it can get and it does keep getting worse.