Relatives travel to Tanzania to buy food to take back to Zimbabwe

My fiance is Zimbabwean and we live in Tanzania.

Every month one or two of his family members travel to us in Tanzania to buy basic foods and then travel back to Zimbabwe with them because the foods are not available in Zimbabwe. Some products like Zimbabwean-produced UHT milk are available in Tanzania, but not in Zimbabwe itself.

It is difficult to communicate with family in Zimbabwe as sometimes the phones work, and sometimes they don’t.

One relative is working in a shop even though the salary does not even cover bus-fares to work, but because she is in the shop she can buy food immediately when it comes in.

Any monthly salary has to be spent the day it is received as if it is saved for next week it will be worthless.

Another relative had to give up the skilled office-job he held for a decade because the salary was not covering even bus-fares to work, and he is now keeping chickens and farming vegetables in the back garden of their city house.

Personal dreams such as setting up a small business and having good education for your children have to be put on hold as existance is hand to mouth.

If things are this bad for people who own their own houses and have some, albeit difficult, way of accessing food, I wonder what it is like for people who don’t have a room to live in or any way of getting food?

This entry was posted by Sokwanele on Wednesday, October 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.