What is going on?

So life back home is three steps away from hell it seems. My Grandfather’s younger sister just died today. But the back story is what really gets me. Apparently she collapsed on Thursday. She was in the rural areas (village, what we call kumusha in my language). She went to the fence between her place and the neighbor’s and called the garden boy so she could borrow matches. He brought them to her and as she was turning around to leave, she collapsed.

They took her to some hospital in the capital and the nurses said there were no doctors available to see her right away so they put her on a stretcher in the hallway. It was around 7 p.m. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Still no doctor had seen her and she was lying in a coma on the stretcher in the hallway

5 a.m. Five in the bloody morning! That is when they saw her. She had been lying in the hall for the night without any attention. A woman in a coma. No doctors they said. Finally they got her a bed

Sunday my grandfather, who is an Anglican priest and her brother, went to see her around ten in the morning. The nurses stopped him at the door and said he could not go in. He was arguing with them, saying that he always goes in to pray with the patients and this was his sister for goodness sakes. The matron came and said no, you cannot come in. They said that there were so many priests these days, they didn’t know who was for real and who wasn’t.

She died today. Two hours ago. Kidney failure they said.

My point? There were no doctors at one of the big hospitals in the capital city of the country. NO DOCTORS. None available.

What has my country come to? This place I was born and raised. This place I think about everyday. That I want to go home to someday. What is there to go home to? Our inflation at the moment is 1140%. Do you even know what that MEANS? I sure as hell didn’t.

That is Z$350,000 to US$1. That means bread is Z$130,000-150,000 per loaf. A chicken is Z$1.7 million. It costs Z$18 million a month to go to the high school I graduated from. Our house is worth billions.

And the disparity between prices and salaries? Well, let us begin at the bottom of the barrel with the maids and garden boys (common in my country, practically everyone has one of each, or at least that is the way it was when I was at home) who make Z$2.7 million a month. That translates to about US$77 a month. School is not free at any level for anyone whatsoever and the government schools (what Americans refer to as public schools) are around Z$5 million per term. So tell me, if you are taking home Z$2.7 million a month and you have children or one child even who needs to go to school and you have to eat and live and wear clothing, what in hell do you do?

My dad and his colleagues have not been paid in months. MONTHS! Because the government “says” it has no funds.

And yet every minister of parliament demands a new car, a Mercedes no less, and they go on holiday out of the country, a luxury normal people cannot even fathom. They go to see the doctor in bloody South Africa! That is why when something like this happens, they don’t care. They do not try and fix the situation at all. They do not try and make sure their doctors are paid and not on strike. Or are just THERE!

How can there be no doctors? DOCTORS? My country was known as the “Breadbasket of Southern Africa” not so long ago. The Z$500 bill was the biggest denomination when I was home three years ago. Now we have a Z$100,000 bill. In three years. We were unsurpassed by everyone except South Africa.

My entire age group, the ones lucky enough to have money for a plane ticket out, is non existent in the country. All the professionals live in Australia, the UK, America, China, South Africa. Our doctors are treating Americans and Europeans. Our businessmen and women are making money for foreign countries. Our lawyers defending western criminals. Our educated elite, cleaning toilets in London for lack of an otion.

And the poor bastards left in the country are dealing with inflation, western sanctions, no doctors and no fuel, which when there, costs an arm, a leg and half your kidney. And let us not forget AIDS which has claimed three lives dangerously close to me.

My country has gone to the dogs, literally and no one is helping. We are drowning right there in front of the world’s eyes and no one is paying attention. They are focused on getting Mugabe (our president) out BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY and are blind to the pain and suffering of the lay people who did nothing to bring this damnation upon our heads.

I am one of the lucky ones. I live in America, going to university with money my parents do not really have. I pine for home every single day, but what would I be going home to? The country I was born and raised in, the country I love more than any other place on earth (and, mind you, I have been to many places) has gone to the dogs.

And I am disgusted.