The situation in Zim has reduced me to tears. What hurts the most, I think, is that this is not because of some natural disaster, or because of some really serious thing that we couldn't control...

The images of malnourished children coming out of Zim now are so shocking to me. Growing up, we were always told to finish the food on our plates so we didn't become like the kids in Somalia or Ethiopia, because of course that's where those images used to come from in those days. To see that here brings home the reality of that kind of suffering to me, and makes me sick to my core. I just cannot believe what's going on now, and most Zimbabweans can't either. It's as if whenever I stop to have a conversation with anyone, that's what we're talking about: how did we get here?

I can't even talk about the unspeakable situation in Harare without getting angry... Someone told me that if I had plans to visit, I should postpone my trip, because it is truly unlivable there. I know the last time I was there, in May, things were pretty dire. Had gone to a friend's wedding, and they had had no water for a week (yes, imagine that, with children and visitors in the house). All their water was collected from another friend who lived nearby (another suburb), in 25L and 50L water containers; that's ALL the water for bathing, cooking, washing.. Not a drop out of the tap. People in Greendale, Harare, have lived like that for a while... Other areas too. Now it's so much worse that the images on TV are true: people scooping water out of ditches, and where there's been a water pipe burst... Even from a distance, you know that water shouldn't be anywhere near a human being, and more often than not it's children collecting it.

And then the cholera... Dear Lord. That's what makes me a little incoherent. Why, why, why? Something so preventable, something that .. yes, happens every rainy season, to some degree, but could be prevented by access to clean water? And at the very least, is eminently treatable, and yet we have no health system to deal with it? Zimbabwe, that once had such an enviable health system? I last worked in government hospitals in 2002; we had shortages of gloves and saline "drips" (IV fluids) then, but at least we had medicines and health professionals. A true sign of what things have become is that doctors and nurses actually took to the streets two weeks ago and again last week, to complain about the state of things in the hospitals.. Something pretty unheard of here. Never mind the stories I've had from patients about the terrible corruption in hospitals.. From x-ray technicians demanding bribes before you can get an x-ray done IN A PUBLIC HOSPITAL, to paying surgeons in foreign currency (AT A PUBLIC HOSPITAL) before you can have an operation done.. Someone told me about a nurse in Harare who is diverting public patients to a private doctor (who charges USD100, unimaginable money for your average Zimbabwean) for a fee (about USD25). Disgusting.

This is not to spread "fear and despondency"; I think the SABC does that very well. (There is almost a kind of maniacal glee when they talk over and over about an Ethiopian man who visited Zimbabwe and fell ill in South Africa a day later... That I call sensationalism, no matter how true it is). I am intensely irritated by a lot of the idiotic and totally useless rhetoric (including Tutu's, Odinga's, and Sentamu's- you are NOT helping us, or the situation!), but I am reduced to such depths of despair by the fact that I don't know what we ought to do. The situation here is truly, truly dire... And that legendary Zimbabwean ability to cope with anything that's thrown at us (we "make a plan") is not only stretched past enduring, it has become inappropriate.

I am upset, I am emotional, I am angry.