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The situation for citizens in Zimbabwe is becoming dire. I was very recently in Harare and though very calm looking on the surface, just a bit deeper examination yields a different story.

As you drive through the streets of Harare you see long cues of people that sometimes go on for more than a full block. When I asked what people were lining up for I was told, “they are waiting to get money out of the automatic cash machines.” The machines are still set up to provide only 5 million Zimbabwean dollars (ZD) at one time. Since a package of pork link sausages costs over 9 million ZD – each person has to keep putting in their cash card over an over in order to try to get enough money. To make matters worse, the cash machines are running out of money at such a rate that Zimbabweans are desperately seeking the funds they need to survive.

If you can imagine, a teacher’s salary is about 40 million ZD per month. But if one tries to comprehend what little one can buy with that salary today it is absolutely terrifying. This very meager shopping basket will cost you 51.1 million ZD and won’t feed you much beyond one day.

2 kilo of flour – 5 million
1 package of 6 - pork sausages – 9 million
2 tomatoes – 300,000
1 jar marmite – 36 million
1 bottle of water – 500,000
1 banana (yes just one) – 300,000

We went out to each at a restaurant and wanted to order a plate of Pad Thai Noodles. We were told that the noodles would come without toppings. When we asked what this meant, we were told the noodles would be plain. We joked about the “naked noodles” that arrived at the table – but the cruel joke on the Zimbabwean people is the truly naked selves in the grocery. Even if you do have the money to buy, there’s very little available in the stores to actually taken home, and almost nothing available is Zimbabwean produced.

The “official” exchange rate posted at the hotel was 30,000 ZD to 1USD. At check out, they used a 900,000 ZD to 1USD rate. A story reported in the International Herald Tribune on Wednesday, December 5 stated that the Zimbabwe currency “had slumped to four million to the dollar on the black market Tuesday [December 4] on a shortage of Zimbabwe dollar notes.” (A new low in Zimbabwe, by Brian Latham) But the rate on the streets fluctuates wildly from day to day and even hour to hour.

People are buying the scarce goods in the supermarket and turn around to sell it at twice the price or more on the street – sometimes just outside the supermarket door. It seems that people are desperate to find a way to create income with the ever rising costs of surviving from one day to the next.

For many, their link to survival comes from their family members who are living and working in others countries. They send other currencies home that are keeping their families alive.

For those who don’t have family outside, the situation is especially dire. When I was getting on the plane in Johannesburg to make my way back toward the US, I was talking with a South African couple who told me they recently gathered boxes and boxes of canned goods and other commodities as donations to elderly in Zimbabwe who’s fixed incomes have left them literally starving.

It’s hard to believe how the people of Zimbabwe can carry on for much longer under this strain.