How to Survive Six Months in Inflation Kingdom

Zimbabwe is a country in decay and in denial about its decay. For the most part, people remember 10 years ago when the World Food Program would obtain grain for starving countries from Zimbabwe, people remember when Europeans bought property and retired there, and the good ol’ days when open heart surgery was done routinely in Harare hospitals. But now bread is scares, fuel is non-existent, medical is next to scratch and basically, Southern Africa’s breadbasket produces 8% of their previous output in 2000.

Like all Zimbabwe residents, we learned the tricks of survival in Harare. We learned to laugh, we learned to be tolerant and we learned that the fake English accent gets you a whole lot more.

1) Spend all your cash as fast as possible. Why would you rush out to spend all your money? Fact is, you must or you’ll lose everything. With the economic crises, your money devalues every week. One week, $1 will get you 10 million Zim dollars, the following week, its 15 million Zim dollars so the trick is once you’ve exchanged cash, spend it buddy or you can’t get nothin’ the next week. When I arrived in Zim in late August 2007, one dollar fetched 170,000 Zim dollars. When I left early March 2008, we were getting 25 million. My family went on billion dollar shopping sprees at the drop of a hat.

2) Eat pizza. It’s too hard to find food. Everyone one else is scrounging around for the same commodities so save the trouble and just eat out. Eating out is cheap, it’s really good for all the empty shelves in the country and it’s less hassle. Our pizzas would range from $3 to $5 dollars a piece, depending on the exchange rate and created excuses to eat it three times a day.

3) Bathe in the pool. Harare’s water systems are both too small and too old. We went three months without a drop of water coming in from the city. You learn to bring in jerry-cans from places that have a borehole and though it sounds disgusting, you bathe in your chlorinated swimming pool. It’s just like swimming everyday and you try not to think about it.

4) Live off generator. Of course this means you have a generator, assumes you have fuel to put in the generator and that it’s wired to your house. Zim doesn’t have hard currency to pay for imported power from neighboring nations, nor the ability to produce their own electricity nor the ability to control the numerous bandits who steal the power lines. Needless to say, it’s not rare for people to have maybe 5 hours of electricity a month. Our longest cut was 38 hours. Often the nation goes down for over 24 hours, the ISP, phone networks, street lights, radio stations, establishments not on generator and newspapers aren’t printed. That can be scary and you feel as if you live in a war zone

All in all, it’s a beautiful place used as a textbook case of success gone wrong. It’s tragic because the beauty wants to remain.