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Zimbabwean's struggle to survive
BBC Focus on Africa
January 23, 2008

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7203303.stm

Ed (not his real name), 23, a bookkeeper, speaks to the BBC News website via phone from his home in the capital, Harare, and describes how ordinary Zimbabweans like him and his family are suffering.

We don't have anything now - electricity, water, food, nothing. We don't even have power now. They cut us off between 0400 and 2100 local time (0600 and 1900 GMT).

We are struggling. I stay with my father, my mother and my brother and my sister. My whole family depends on me. This morning we didn't have food for breakfast. We just ate bananas. I pay two million Zimbabwean dollars (about $0.80 as per the black market) for my bus to work. That's just one way. My salary each month is just 45m Zimbabwean dollars ($90). It is nothing.

It is not unusual to queue for four hours at a bank in Zimbabwe And when I do get paid I have to wait for about one, two, three, four, five, six... sometimes even seven hours at the bank just to get my cash out. I pay the rent for the roof over my family's head which is 30m Zimbabwean dollars.

I don't make ends meet. I have to take out loans from work. Or I borrow from my other brother to get by. But I can't pay anything back - this is exactly my problem. I have other jobs on the side at the weekend such as selling onions and vegetables that I have grown myself.

Now, can you imagine how we are struggling? It is too harsh. My sister is still at school - she's in her last year of primary school but I don't know how much longer she can stay because school fees have just been hiked to 40m Zimbabwean dollars this term compared to 500,000 Zimbabwean dollars last term... I am yet to pay the fees. And then to top everything, you are not allowed to complain or say anything about [President] Mugabe. Even now I think people are listening. But to think of better times, today was my day to have my once-a-month treat: I had some take-away rice and chicken for lunch. It was so good. I hope that next month I'll still be able to treat myself.

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