- Dear Family and Friends,
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- Zimbabwe has limped into another year with almost all
aspects of normal life completely gone. Every day has become incredibly
tough with an ever growing demand for an increasingly dwindling supply
of food, bank notes, electricity and water. Many thousands of Zimbabweans
have used the Christmas and school holidays to pour out of the country
in search of mental relief and in order to procure precious essential supplies.
How absurd it is that a so called land revolution has left us scouring
shops across our borders in all four directions to get basic supplies that
Zimbabwe not only produced but exported just a decade ago.
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- This great food trek must surely be cause for monumental
shame and embarrassment to the party that have ruled the country for the
last 27 years. For the past seven years they have found one scapegoat after
another to blame our hunger and poverty on, but the facts out there on
the roads leading to the border towns cannot not be spun - no matter how
clever the propaganda.
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- Gone are the days when you could take a break at a lay-by
on a road journey. Now all these stopping places within 150 kilometres
of border posts are fully occupied, some of them on an apparently permanent
basis by Zimbabwe's mobile population. Draped over the remains of fences
and hanging on shrubs are tattered grey blankets. Shirtless men sit around
in groups tending fires in the lay-by's.
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- Some are cooking pots of maize porridge, others
are just keeping
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- the fires burning - ready to warm the people who will
be coming,
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- waiting, and then moving on to cross the border under
cover of darkness. In some lay-by's women and children are already waiting,
their bags piled and ready for the transport that will come in the dark
to carry them to the border. At other lay-by's the people traders are so
established that they have erected small structures within sight of the
road - sticks and plastic providing primitive shelter and protection from
the weather.
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- With stopping at lay-by's not advised and stopping at
garages and shops pointless as there is neither fuel nor food and refreshments
to buy, the journey into and out of Zimbabwe is long and gruelling. The
roads are fast falling into a state of collapse as a result of the incessant
stream of trucks and transporters pounding the tarmac as they haul food
and fuel into our once rich country. In many places along the main roads
the edges have become seriously cut away and eroded making pulling over
or stopping very dangerous.
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- Road markings are rare, signs and warnings of hazards
are non existent and all in all it is a shocking advertisement to tourists
and visitors to the country. For at least two hundred kilometres on the
road approaching the border post into South Africa, the highway is strewn
with enormous potholes, some are many centimetres deep and two metres wide.
There are many places on the road where these holes are unavoidable and
everywhere you see people stopped, repairing punctures, changing wheels
or waiting for help.
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- To exacerbate the situation is a season of very heavy
rains and although it is good to see rivers filling and flowing, the impact
of so much water on a crumbling infrastructure is devastating. Water, water
everywhere but not a drop to drink - a well known saying which is more
appropriate today in many parts of Zimbabwe than ever before. We've not
had a drop of water in my home town for the past three days and so we are
collecting rain water in buckets for drinking, washing, cleaning and cooking.
It is a grim way to begin 2008 and we hope and pray that this is the last
year we ever to have endure such deprivation because of politics.
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- Until next week,
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- thanks for reading,
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- love cathy.
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- Copyright cathy buckle 5th January 2008. www.cathybuckle.com
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- <mailto:cbuckle@mango.zw>cbuckle@mango.zw
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- My books: "African Tears" and "Beyond
Tears" are available in South Africa from: <mailto:books@clarkesbooks.co.za>books@clarkesbooks.co.za
and in the UK from: <mailto:orders@africabookcentre.com>orders@africabookcentre.com
To subscribe/unsubscribe to this newsletter, please write to: <mailto:cbuckle@mango.zw>cbuckle@mango.zw
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