Dear Family and Friends,
Zimbabwe’s notorious October heat has descended over the country and we are positively wilting under a blazing sky. Respite comes only early in the morning and evening when the liquid, bubbling song of the Coucal fills the air while mosquitoes emerge by the dozen to chase you back inside hot houses! It’s usually the time of year when a kind of madness takes over and 2016 is a prime example.
After months of inexplicable, chronic shortages of US dollar bank notes, October has seen a new madness in the money nightmare. At most banks we are only able to withdraw $50 of our own money a day which isn’t enough to meet any of your needs be it rent, fees, licences, utilities, medicines or other essentials, not to mention groceries.
The banks, who we stopped trusting in 2008 during the last economic collapse, have again resorted to treating their customers with disrespect and contempt. For hours at a time their customers have to stand outside on the pavements exposed to the burning sun with nowhere to sit, no water, no toilets and never, ever even a whisper of apology. The cost to companies, employers and the economy in lost man hours while we stand in bank queues must run into the millions of dollars every month.
October madness, as it has been for the past seventeen years, is nowhere more evident in Zimbabwe than in regard to the land. Oh those two little words: “The Land,” raise the temperatures and temperaments of everyone because the madness just goes on and on, year after year, pulling us further and further away from ever being self-sufficient in food again.