Currency Haul
Once considered a breadbasket for Southern Africa, Zimbabwe has recently been plagued by rampant poverty, authoritarianism, and more than 80 percent unemployment. Inflation is approximately 8,000 percent. Unofficial currency exchanges regularly see swaps of tens of millions of Zimbabwean dollars for U.S. dollars.
Out of Stock
Shelves stand empty of food—or any products—at the TM Supermarket in Mutare, due to such food shortages as bread, flour, and cooking oil.
Limited Sales
Owen, a salesclerk in a shop in rural Zimbabwe, smiles despite the lack of regular items for sale: sugar, salt, and cooking oil. Now the shop sells just tea, local beer, and condoms.
The Price of Fruit
Because of the rapid inflation plaguing the country, the price of a house several years ago now buys a single piece of locally grown fruit. Here, a banana costs between 25,000 and 30,000 Zimbabwean dollars. Five years ago a banana would have cost approximately 50 Zimbabwean cents.
Bread Line
Zimbabweans often stand in line for hours at supermarkets, such as this one in Harare, for basic items like bread.
The Children’s Cook
Manyunda, a cook, stands in the garden of a church that feeds some 300 orphans and children from poor families.
Far From Harare
Tamaka, seven years old, in her home village in the Mutasa Communal Lands, approximately 136 miles east of Harare. She and her family live in modest housing without electricity or running water and live mostly on millimeal, a local porridgelike cornmeal.
Corn Meals
A woman collects dried cornstalks to use instead of firewood for cooking. She can no longer afford to purchase wood as a result of the economic crisis plaguing the country.
Zimbabwe Zoo
A Chinese tourist looks into an enclosed area for lions, which are native to Zimbabwe, at a zoo outside Harare. Tourism, once a lucrative source of income, has fallen off in recent years because of the economic and political crises plaguing the country.
New Beginnings
After the government demolished a Harare urban slum in 2005, many of its inhabitants resettled in Epworth, where they live among boulders in modest homes.
