Zimbabwe: change is slow in coming
Updated on 23 June 2009
While Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai and his delegation tour the world trying to raise money to keep Zimbabwe afloat, life is as hard as ever back at home, writes Helen.
Someone stole the oil from the electricity transformer that powers two suburbs in my town. The theft went un-noticed by the security guard who lives in a wooden shack on the edge of the fenced, locked electricity sub station.
The security guard has not been dismissed or even replaced. She is still there digging away in the nearby bush, preparing a piece of roadside land where she always plants beans and sweet potatoes in winter and maize and pumpkins in summer.
The transformer worked for a little while after the theft but inevitably the lack of oil soon burned out the generator and plunged a few hundred homes into darkness.
Now, three weeks later a few suburbs are sharing electricity as the government controlled electricity supplier says they have no money to repair the damage. Sharing power Zimbabwe style does not mean a few hours off at a time. It means a gruelling 16 hours a day, three or four days a week, with no electricity at all.
Going without electricity, cooking outside over a wood fire and using candles to get around at night are all things we have got used to during the years of Zimbabwe's collapse. This time round the electricity collapse has been a lot more difficult for me.
I knew I had done some serious damage to my arm when I tripped and fell on a concrete step in my garden last week. The pain was extreme and it took me a few minutes before I could get up. Not much to see, no pools of blood or extruding bones just grazed knees and hands but an arm that started swelling up almost immediately.
After I had pulled myself together I tried to get some help. Not so easy. The fixed line phone was dead - again. The mobile phone had no signal - again. For some peculiar reason when the electricity goes off the mobile phone signal disappears and you cannot make calls or send text messages.
Nothing to do but wait for help, I laid a lukewarm 'cold pack' on my elbow and cursed the daily 5am to 9pm power cuts which had left everything in my fridge and freezer slowly defrosting and going bad.
"I hear that Morgan Tsvangirai was booed in London for not insisting on fast enough reforms in Zimbabwe. I know how right but also how wrong his critics are."
Six hours later I made it into the doctors office. A hasty examination, comment on the degree of pain and swelling and he said I needed an x-ray as it seemed probable I had a broken bone in my elbow.
The x-ray machine at the local government hospital not working, I headed to a private hospital. The radiographer had to be called and then collected - in an ambulance as there are no other hospital vehicles in working order anymore.
A shocking up front cash payment of US$50 (bear in mind the standard monthly wage here is US$100) for the x-ray and back to the doctors rooms. US$20 consultation fee and I learnt I had broken the tip of my radius right at the elbow. US$10 for 30 pain killers, and then the prospect of a possible surgery in a week's time.
Not a comforting thought because the charges of all medical and surgical procedures are in the thousands of American dollars - anaesthetists, assistants, surgeons, hospital charges, equipment. A friend recently had to find over US$3,000 for a simple eye surgery undertaken in a doctors rooms and another paid US$7,000 for a broken hip.
And now, typing with one finger on my left hand and stone broke, I hear that Morgan Tsvangirai was booed in London for not insisting on fast enough reforms in Zimbabwe. I know how right but also how wrong his critics are.
If I had broken m elbow six months ago I would not even have been able to buy a single pain killer as the pharmacy shelves were empty and having an x-ray developed in my home town was impossible.
Change is slow in coming. But even as I long for electricity to make a cup of tea and to be able to straighten my arm again, I hear I am in good company as Hilary Clinton has also broken a bone in her elbow.
