A new resolve has been born in Zimbabwe
Dear Family and Friends,
Two young children wearing faded blue track suits ran along a dusty roadside in my home town on a cool spring morning this week. They were pushing home-made wire cars, the wheels made from shoe polish tins, the steering from long pieces of steel wire, their faces alight with glee.
Further on a little boy was rolling an old car tyre down the road; the tyre was almost as big as him and he was being pursued by a couple of other little boys, their shouts of excitement audible over the noise of passing cars.
It’s three days before schools open for the summer term here and while the children play and laugh their parents are stuck in a nightmare situation trying to access their own money from the banks in order to pay school fees.
Hundreds are queuing outside the banks, sitting on the pavements and waiting in the sun and the dust as I write. As it has been many times in the last sixteen years, getting children back into school is about the only normal thing about life in Zimbabwe this September.