On Thursday, my coworker and I ventured out of the office in search of some lunchtime snack. We would have started at the bakery on our side of the road, but it’s been closed for months – no flour and no power. So we tried the bakery over the road, but they hadn’t had power all day, so there was nothing on their shelves. We tried the TM, where the most plentiful item was loo roll. At $110 billion per roll, one roll was more than the daily cash withdrawal limit. If you’d paid cash for the loo roll (as opposed to using a bank swipe card), that would have worked out to about US$4 at the rate a friend of mine had changed her cash just days before. So then we tried the farm stall around the corner. I settled on some ground nuts – $18 billion. And my friend settled on what the vendor said was a “stylised goat.” Small, plump, cute, with a gorgeous smile, the painted wooden goat has provided endless entertainment in the office. All that for the third of the price of one roll of toilet paper.

Today, five days later, the cash withdrawal limit remains $100 billion. Transport from a Harare high density suburb like Mabvuku into town is now $50billion – one way. And the cash queues aren’t getting any shorter. So, imagine you’re one of the few remaining employed Zimbabweans. Your daily cash withdrawal from the bank is completely gone, just on transporting yourself back and forth to town. And, during the hours you’re meant to be at work, when are you meant to find the time to queue each day to take out the cash that you need just to get back and forth between work and home? Never mind trying to eat something during the day. Much less getting some money to buy some vegetables from the vendor to take home for supper.

When the price of loo roll outstrips your income, it’s no wonder you turn to using bits of newspapers or leaves in the toilet. In the short term you feel out of options, but in the long run doing this clogs your drains and wreaks havoc on the plumbing. What is the psychological equivalent of what surviving this economy is doing to each of us? In the short term, we find any number of ways to cut corners, make a plan, overcome, and feel a bit of triumph in enduring the adversity. But down the line, where is it all going? And what damage does it do in the process?

This entry was posted on July 15th, 2008 at 8:29 am by Amanda Atwood and is filed under Shortages and Inflation, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.