That’s the latest official Zimbabwean dollar inflation rate. 231 million % isn’t a number I can make sense of or begin to understand, mathematically, but it can be visualised in seeing the misery and starvation throughout the Country.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has revised up the number of people it says need food aid. It now says seven million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid, up from 5.1 million in June. Put into perspective this is eight out of every ten Zimbabweans who need food aid! I’ve taken the current population as less than 9 million from a recent article by Eddie Cross (click on the 24 Jan 2009 article) who is the MP for Bullawayo South. Eddie’s site is well worth reading.

I’m writing this because of the news yesterday, on the BBC, that Zimbabwe abandons its currency. If you watch the video embeded in the article please don’t be misled by how the supermarket in which it’s filmed appears – the shelves are full and everything is normal. That’s not reality for Zimbabweans who haven’t got access to foreign currency.

How do people get access to foreign currency? Salaries are still paid in Zimbabwe dollars and buying foreign currency with your earned Zim dollars wont work – a teacher’s monthly salary would buy 1 US$ at the current exchange rate (with 231m% inflation it probably fell as I typed those words). The US$ prices in the supermarket are about the same as the US$ dollar price would be in a supermarket in Florida, Ohio etc. So you see how useless 1 US$ dollar a month is.

The foreign currency comes from those who have abandoned Zimbabwe in an attempt to live ‘normally’ and are sending money home to relatives. As a generalisation this leaves a large percentage of the population without much possibility of having someone outside Zimbabwe support them – the 25 to 40 year olds who probably have young children. They don’t have children old enough to have left Zimbabwe and be sending money home and their parents (possibly, but unlikely to still be alive) too old to have left Zimbabwe. They may have brother or sisters outside Zimbabwe but there’s only so much money someone living abroad has after paying for their own needs.

Dear Family and Friends,
The ticking of�Zimbabwe’s time bomb�is getting louder and faster by the day. Power sharing talks have again collapsed;�cholera is�spreading and the death toll rising; teachers, nurses and doctors are demanding payment in US dollars in order to report for duty�and the poverty of most families is growing worse by the day.
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There is now�nothing you can buy in Zimbabwe dollars as even roadside vegetable vendors have resorted to selling their wares in US dollars or South African Rand. A handful of tomatoes, a�bunch of onions,�half a� dozen bananas or even a�single, sweet, sticky�mango� – all are�priced in American dollars.�If you don’t have foreign currency you go hungry, it’s�as simple as that. You also go sick,�can’t get a bed in a private hospital,�can’t have a baby, can’t get on a bus, can’t get a passport, can’t�even buy a packet of headache pills.
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The only thing you can do with Zimbabwe dollars,��if you can�get them out of the bank, is�pay your telephone, water, and electricity bills. The authorities running�Zimbabwe continue to refuse to allow the utilities�companies to charge in US dollars and so the services they�provide have deteriorated to the point of almost complete collapse. Stick thin employees at parastatals wearing threadbare suits continue to report for work�while everything around them falls apart. They have no stationery to invoice customers, no receipt books, no ink for computers.�They�have no answers to the increasingly angry�queries�from their customers such as why have�dustbins�not been collected for eight months; when are blocked sewer pipes going to be cleared, when are cavernous pot holes on the roads going to be filled. These civil servants have little�reason to go to work anymore and it seems only a matter of time before they�just don’t bother anymore.���
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For people without foreign currency life has become a living hell. A government teacher I met showed me her December pay slip. Her monthly salary was 10 trillion dollars. The exchange rate on the day� meant that in a month she had earned just one US dollar. I asked her if she would be returning to the classroom when schools re-open and she said no. She said the bus fare to get to her school on the first day alone would cost her�one US dollar, and then how would she get home, what would she have to eat, how would she get to school the next day.�
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Zimbabweans are looking to SADC and the African Union in the days ahead. Surely soon they will have to say: enough suffering, enough death, enough?

Last week Zimbabwe’s central bank began circulating Z$10, Z$20 and Z$50 billion notes – but they are no longer sufficient. They are now going to print 100 Trillion Zim$ bank notes, equal to about �20 today but devalueing fast. Inflation is currently said to be 231,000,000% but many believe it to be greater than this! In a couple of weeks time I expect to read that 100 Billion Trillion Zim$ notes are to introduced.

Zim$ bank notes have a picture of balancing rocks on them; balancing rocks are a feature of the Zimbabwean landscape. Here are a couple of pictures of balancing rocks I took in Zimbabwe. The first picture bears a striking similarity to the rocks on the bank note.