Scavenging for survival in the cities
Blogging on poverty – how do you reach out to the world and paint a picture of poverty that isn’t going to get audiences yawning?
This world of ours with high-speed communications has become immune to the photographs of bloated children, skeletal adults and scavenging dogs. And no wonder. How much sensory-overload does it take to bring on burn-out? How many ‘third world’ tragedies can any one person deal with?
I live in the midst of an unfolding tragedy. Nine years ago, before Mugabe’s militia brought on the collapse of a nation, I would have laughed in disbelief at anyone who would have said that by 2008 Zimbabwe’s currency would be devaluing at 83% per week, that schools would be emptied of teachers, that hospitals would be a last drop-off point before death, our children lethargic with hunger and more than 80% unemployment.
For the city-slicker, Zimbabwe never offered shopping malls, sophisticated high-life, glitz or glamour, but we had a land free of the pall of pollution, wide open spaces, a productive work force, a fairly robust economy, a booming tourist industry, farms fat with produce, healthy exports in a diverse array of goods, bustling litter-free city streets and giggling children whose biggest worry was the next soccer match or the amount of homework they had to plough through.
This was never a rich nation in first world terms, but there was enough to go around.
Now we are all mired in the bog of decay. Our city councils are no longer able to carry out their mandated services. So our suburban skies are permanently smudged with the stinking clouds of burning rubbish. I was fed up with the constant burning so I decided to drop off my garbage at the city dump at the weekend. It was like a scene from a macabre Hitchcock horror movie.
As I drove into the dump, three filthy bedraggled men leapt on to the back of my truck while my vehicle was still moving, and they had ripped open my refuse bags and started their scavenging before I could stop. I didn’t even have time to turn off my key and the 12 giant black bags were already off the truck and there was a frenzy of activity.
Smiling was a once a genuine occupation, but today in Zimbabwe the only smiles are cynical grimaces, or perhaps a brief moment of glee when someone hears that a zpf thug has been taken down, or one has managed to find enough maize meal to last till week end, or for the dump-dwellers, a half-eaten stale slice of bread, mouldy and stinking.
Our collapse is not the result of natural disaster – no it is the devil’s handiwork manifested by a master of evil – Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
