THE grocer is apologetic. "I couldn't save you any mealie-meal," she says. "The CIO were here, in front of my counter. Five of them. They were checking I sold every sack, right in front of their noses."
My hopes of getting a sack of maize-meal – needed for the family's daily breakfast of bota (porridge) – were dashed.
Secret service officials made sure the grocer sold the mealie-meal at the official price: 50 billion Zimbabwe dollars (about 12p)
for a 10kg bag. No wonder the queue stretched up the road.
How do you survive in a country where there's very little food and almost no cash to buy it with? The answer: you have to find secret sources and other ways of paying.
"I'll introduce you to Stacey," a friend says. "She's a bit nervous so she won't serve you if she doesn't know who you are."
Stacey has good reason to be nervous. She was arrested last month for selling South African biscuits, peanut butter and spaghetti from a private warehouse for US dollars – a crime under Zimbabwe's strict foreign exchange laws.
Well-connected friends (there are whispers of a link with a cabinet minister's family) got her out of cells on payment of a £1,000 "facilitation" fee.
Zimbabweans working in South Africa and Europe are propping up relatives back home: Zimbabwe's "diaspora dollars" are forecast to total £360 million this year, double last year's amount.
Milk is a problem. Deliveries from the government-run Dairibord company are unreliable. One pint costs 240 billion Zimbabwe dollars, payable in cash only. Banks are limiting daily withdrawals to 100 billion dollars. I'd have to queue for three days to be able to buy a pint of milk.
Then there's the barter system. I needed sugar. Via a contact,
I handed over four eggs (bought from an illegal pavement vendor) and – bingo – I got an ice-cream tub half-full of sugar.
• Jane Fields writes from Zimbabwe for The Scotsman. For her personal safety, we are unable to use her image
The full article contains 348 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
