Sunday, July 25
We drove to Windhoek (windy corner) and took a plane to Jo'burg to spend the night before flying to Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe the next morning. More long hours over gravel roads with a nice lunch stop. To get almost anywhere in southern Africa by plane, you need to go to Jo'burg to make connections.
Zimbabwe is really in sad shape due to misrule and corruption for several decades. The economy has been driven into the ground and this is an actual bill in circulation. You are not reading incorrectly, one hundred trillion dollars. It is worth about 35 cents American. In less than two years, money in circulation went from one million dollars bills to one billion dollars, one trillion and then 100 trillion.
Our hotel at Victoria Falls will not take Zimbabwean currency in payment and asks for dollars, rand or euros. That's how bad inflation is. Unemployment is very high and anyone who has a decent job is considered to be very fortunate - like the people who work at the Stanley & Livingstone where we are staying, or the guides and drivers for the tour companies. There is no public transportation, and most do not have cars, so people walk everywhere, even great distances. The school we stopped at would be condemned in almost any other country as unsafe and unsanitary. It is so overcrowded, it runs two shifts a day. People appeared apathetic and without hope of things ever getting better so long as Mugabe remains in power, but feel hopeless to do anything to change matters. But most houses we saw had satellite dishes on the roof. There is little other entertainment available.
[this is good] The situation in Zimbabwe is so terrible :-(
Posted by: Laura | 08/26/2010 at 02:57 PM