CATHY BUCKLE'S LETTTER FROM ZIMBABWE!

Dear Family and Friends,

A shameful and very distressing report has just been released in Zimbabwe. This time it does not come from the UN or any other international body, but from Zimbabwe's own Ministry of Public Service and Social Welfare. Research was undertaken and statistics gathered right across the country and included 58 rural districts and 27 urban areas.

The report says that living standards in Zimbabwe have dropped by 150% in the last ten years. Malnutrition in children under 5 has increased by 35% and the number of people without access to health care has increased by48%.

Seeing the percentages in black and white is bad enough but when you seefor yourself the evidence of this dramatic decline, it is truly terrifying. In the last month the basic cost of living in Zimbabwe went up by 47% percent. When you go shopping in a supermarket, everywhere you look people are carrying almost nothing. Finding sources of affordable protein is almost impossible. Meat is a luxury now - out of reach for almost all Zimbabweans. Long, long gone are the days when we would buy strips of biltong to snack on as we walked or when butchers would break off pieces of beer sticks to quieten niggling kids. Now people are buying scraps, bones and something called "shavings" which are the white crumbs which accumulate under the blade of the saws and butchery knives. Cheese is off the menu permanently; eggs and milk are very close behind. This week one single egg is selling for 200 dollars and half a litre of milk for 600 dollars (add 3zeroes for the real cost). A cup of milk or an egg for breakfast is now the height of luxury and when you understand that, then you understand why malnutrition has increased by 35% in young children. It hardly bears thinking how bad nutrition levels must be in the vast majority of our adult population. Adults who, when you ask them if they have had breakfast say they are not hungry because they have had a "very big drink of water" to fill their stomachs - it will see them through till lunch time.

Outside the supermarkets these days there are the usual swarm of street children but if you look a bit harder, in between the hordes, you see the really desperate ones. Old men, skin and bone, bare feet, shaking hands, sunken eyes and it makes you just weep to see the depths we have dropped to. So very many people need help now but so few are able to help anymore.

I end on a positive note with congratulations for our rugby team. Its always very dangerous for me to write about sports because I know so little about it - and understand even less, however this is a story as much about patriotism as of sports. A friend wrote to say he had just watched the Zimbabwean rugby team do a lap of honour in the pouring rain at the end of a tournament being played outside the country. He said the team had lost in the end but they had done Zimbabwe proud. They were fine, upstanding men who had given their all and were so very obviously proud to be Zimbabweans. The Zimbabweans in the crowd were equally proud to stand and cheer thes portsmen from the country that is in such a mess, but that we all love so much. The rugby pitch might be a million miles away from the "shavings" in the butchery but all tell the story of the people in this wonderful country. As hard as it is, we all try to carry on as normal because we know that bad times don't ever last. Until next week, with love, cathy

Copyright cathy buckle 9 December 2006.http:/africantears,netfirms.comMy books: "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears" are available from:orders@africabookcentre.com