Love Zimbabwe
| Love Zimbabwe Newsletter - February 2009 |
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Here's a summary of what we've been up to in the last few months.
Donations are also welcome with any cheques made payable to 'LoveZimbabwe'. ***Please do not send anything out to the addresses given in the last newsletter as they are no longer valid addresses - hopefully more info on where to send packages soon.*** BORE HOLE FUND - Chinamhora village, Domboshawa In this village near Harare there is no water at all now and no prospect of water in the near future, what is needed is a bore hole in the village - this was estimated last year at US$3000.00, but with the current situation and high inflation, we are looking at approximately US$5000.00. Donations so far:
Martha writes: “We will be filming and photographing the borehole project through its various stages till completion. On our return,we will put together a story board .... with pictures ...”
More donations are still welcome for this cause.
A full report will be available on here upon Martha and Dave’s return in mid-February 2009.
Donations are also welcome with any cheques made payable to 'LoveZimbabwe'. ***Please do not send anything out to the addresses given in the last newsletter as they are no longer valid addresses - hopefully more info on where to send packages soon.*** BORE HOLE FUND - Chinamhora village, Domboshawa In this village near Harare there is no water at all now and no prospect of water in the near future, what is needed is a bore hole in the village - this was estimated last year at US$3000.00, but with the current situation and high inflation, we are looking at approximately US$5000.00. Donations so far:
Martha writes: “We will be filming and photographing the borehole project through its various stages till completion. On our return,we will put together a story board .... with pictures ...”
More donations are still welcome for this cause.
A full report will be available on here upon Martha and Dave’s return in mid-February 2009. A glance into 2008Martha writes :-In April we met with Jane Davidson at the Welsh Assembly to discuss the way forward in Zimbabwe, and our attempts to hold a Fairtrade conference at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare. As a result of this she promised to help us when the regime changes to develop new projects in the country. We were also given the opportunity to hold an exhibition of our goods in the Government building in Cardiff. We attended the Fairtrade conference in Carleon in June to celebrate Wales becoming the first Fairtrade nation in the world and led the samba dance parade finale! We increased our commitment to Fairtrade schools and churches and community events. We have started working with Danielle Johnson and got the tender for co-odinating schools in South East Wales. I (Martha) also gave the prize giving speech for the juniors at Rougemont school in Newport on the subject of Fairtrade. We improved our wholesale services to include several new Fairtrade shops in the UK. We have sold our goods this year at festivals such as Glastonbury, Greenbelt, Abergavenny Steam Fair, Swansea Green Fair, Islington Love your Trees event, Send a cow anniversary, and Abergavenny Carnival. We have also held sales at Oxfam H.Q., The National Trust and Bristol Steiner school. In September we organised the African Green Village as a fringe event at the Abergavenny Food Festival. We have given several interviews for BBC Wales on the situation in Zimbabwe and our experiences of trading with our various projects. Our biggest event of the year came on October 5th when World Trade Fair in Abergavenny became the biggest Fairtrade event in Wales, sponsored by Fairtrade Wales and the Co-op. The event featured 50 stalls selling Fairtrade and ethically sourced goods as well as charities. Also featured was the second 'Bad pants amnesty' organised by Pants to Poverty and we had a guest appearance by 70's rock star Linda Lewis. Since last years tour of Wales, when we visited a different town every day for the two week period we have been extremely busy. On 2nd January we returned to Zimbabwe for 5 weeks to visit family, friends and projects. The situation has never been so bad as it is at the moment. The Zimbabwean dollar has ceased to exist as a currency. We pay all our crafts people in U.S. dollars which means that they can actually buy things that they need. This year we will organise a Fairtrade conference in the University which will be filmed and shown in Wales during FTF. We will also have lots of new film of our producers talking about how Fairtrade works for them and how despite the terrible hardships they have suffered we continue to keep going. David & Martha Holman “supporting trade not Aid” PART TWO - NEWS IN BRIEF ... Life just gets more difficult everyday for the ordinary people in Zimbabwe, the shops are empty, no one is using Zim dollars any more, they are using only U.S. dollars and the cost of food is similar to the States, which means, for example, a loaf of bread is impossibly expensive for most people, if you could find one for sale anywhere. The drought continues and wells and waterways have dried up so even the option of growing food for themselves is no longer there and even the Zimbabwe Police force have been reduced to hunting for roots they can chew on to avoid starvation. CHOLERA "Currently the country is facing an unprecedented outbreak." World Health Organisation Zimbabwe is facing an "unprecedented" outbreak of cholera as a result of the deteriorating infrastructure in the country. At the time of writing, there had been 8880 suspected cases of cholera and 366 deaths. Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, is the worst affected area, where there have been 4697 suspected cases and 108 deaths. The local Ministry of Health has described the outbreak as "the biggest ever in Harare". The town of Beitbridge, which borders South Africa, has also been badly affected, with 2287 suspected cases and 74 deaths, while new outbreaks are currently cropping up in the north, east and south of the country. Médecins Sans Frontières has warned that up to 1.4 million people are at risk if the outbreak continues to spread. Both MSF and the World Health Organisation have teams on the ground in Zimbabwe, which are helping to provide treatment. Cholera is endemic in some rural areas of Zimbabwe, but was relatively rare in urban areas until recently. The last major outbreak was in 1992, when there were 3000 cases. Run-down infrastructure, burst sewage pipes, water shortages, and a lack of trained sanitation workers are forcing people to dig unprotected wells, and defecate in public areas, increasing exposure to this water-borne disease. The onset of the rainy season may flush yet more sewage into unprotected wells. "Cholera, which used to occur in 10-year cycles, has been occurring annually [in Zimbabwe] since 1998," says a spokesman for the WHO. "Currently the country is facing an unprecedented outbreak." www.newscientist.com Extracts from Christian Science Monitor about ZIMBABWE: Critical shortages of food, fuel, foreign currency, and, in some areas, water beset a nation where the official inflation rate tops 7,600 percent. Some analysts believe the real figure is much higher and climbing fast. "We can't get anything now – no bread, no petrol ... nothing," says Shephard Lunga, a truck driver from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city. "If you don't have somebody who's outside the country supplying you with things, you're finished." The country's beleaguered economy has taken a turn for the worse since late June, when President Robert Mugabe ordered all prices cut by at least 50 percent in a bid to slow runaway inflation. The move backfired, causing manufacturers to stop producing their goods. Now grocery store shelves are barren, and people are increasingly hungry. Even a casual stroll through the capital, Harare, shows the consequences of the country's record inflation. Supermarkets that once offered an impressive array of cereals and ice cream no longer carry even the basic goods every Zimbabwean relies upon: things such as cooking oil, bread, and cornmeal. www.csmonitor.com Extracts from One World Projections for the 2008/09 cereal harvest are 40% down on 2007, meeting less than half of Zimbabwe's own requirements. Although imported food is arriving from Malawi and Zambia, Zimbabwe lacks the foreign exchange necessary to feed its own people. Having refused entry to the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme (WFP) in 2006, the government has backtracked in allowing these agencies to return. Their prediction is that, by the peak of the hunger season in March 2009, 5.1 million people will be in need of food aid, about 40% of the population and an increase of 1.0 million over 2008. The UN has already launched a massive humanitarian appeal for 2008 for over $300 million. Malnutrition has inevitable consequences for health indicators, affecting especially the young, old and those living with AIDS. Life expectancy in Zimbabwe may now have fallen below 40 years, possibly the lowest in the world. Child mortality has increased 50% since 1990 with one in eight children dying before the age of five and about a third of all children have stunted growth. The chronic state of water provision and sewage treatment in the two major cities, Harare and Bulawayo, presents a potential urban health crisis. Zimbabwe's economy is on the verge of collapse, although President Mugabe has only recently admitted as much. Unemployment is already over 80%. There are widely differing views as to the causes of the crisis. The government argues that the traditional dependence on agriculture (tobacco as its cash crop and maize the staple diet) has been undermined by years of drought, just as in other countries in the region. And it claims that sanctions undermine economic reconstruction. uk.oneworld.net |