CHITUNGWIZA - Its February and there is talk of love as those who are in love and those who wish to be in love celebrate the St Valentines Day on the 14th. However, February for Zimbabwe has a particular significance.
It is the month when the coalition government become operational – raising hopes for young men and women of getting employed. The hopes were, of course, well founded following the introduction of multiple currencies and the subsequent arrest of runaway inflation. In a way the MDC added value to the government. Investor confidence was restored.
Turning back the hands of time to February 2009, there was a sense of renewed hope that was borne out of the compromise between President Robert Mugabe and his bitter rival MDC President, now Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.
However jobs have been hard to come by as industries have taken long to open regardless of the stabilisation of the economy.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) says that only 10 percent of the countrys economically active group are formally employed. This means only one of every able-bodied 10 adults in the country goes to work every day.
The world really wonders what the other 90 percent of Zimbabweans live on. The answer is there for everyone to see: we always find a way, somehow.
Some sell tomatoes while others sell cars, some cross the border to South Africa while some till the land. Some are briefcase business men and women while others fall into different sorts of vice with the pressing objective of keeping body and soul together.
I sell tomatoes and life is indeed better for me because I am getting money that has value. On a good day I can make $20 and on bad days I make $5. However there is no day that goes by without me making some money, said Edith Makore, who sells tomatoes in Chitungwiza.
Thousands of women in Zimbabwe are in the informal sector and they have somehow manage to support their families, with children even going to school.
A cobbler Misheck Bere, also from Chitungwiza, said that the Chinese with their poor quality and cheap shoes have given him more work.
My job is simply to mend shoes. My charges start from 50cents and on a good day I can make at least enough to buy meat and bread for my family. My child is also at school. Most of the shoes that people buy are of very poor quality and that happens to be an advantage to me, said Bere.
In the morning, especially in the cities ghettos where the largest number of people in the country live, it is an opera of voices of women tuned to the highest chord, competing to reach to the ears of customers. Some travel for more than 10 km a day and say that they are at least surviving.
I do not live in Chitungwiza town but in Seke communal land where I have a garden. I wish you would come and see the work that we are doing with my children, said one woman.
Life for many Zimbabweans is far from rosy, and some go to the extremes in order to survive. Many women have fallen into vice and live as commercial sex workers.
I would very much like to go to work but at the moment there are no jobs in the country. I do not have an option but to be a prostitute. For doing this I hate myself but then I have to keep body and soul together, said a woman who only identified herself as Tecla.
Some people in rural communities are now brilliant farmers, and many have started to plant cash crops such as tobacco. The Mombe family in Murewa is one such example of hardworking rural folk.
We are happy to be farmers and we will be more happy when they open the auction floors. Tobacco brings a lot of cash but one has to be prepared to work very hard, said Noreen Mombe.
The list of what Zimbabweans at home and abroad do to survive is endless. We would love to hear from you about how you earn your daily bread. Please email your story and any photos to: news@thezimbabwean.co.uk
Post published in: News