EFL
Zimbabwe’s economic disaster is horrifyingly evident in the morgue at Harare Central Hospital, packed to more than three times capacity with the dead that relatives can’t afford to bury. The morgue, designed for 164 corpses, holds nearly 600. Trays in the morgue often hold more than one adult body, along with the tiny corpses of infants. Others, shrouded in canvas and cotton sheets, lie in gurneys or on the floors of the refrigerated corridors. Some of the unclaimed cadavers are those of vagrants found dead on the streets. Others are the victims of violence kept for as long as three years during police investigations, often delayed by fuel shortages and logistics problems amid Zimbabwe’s worst political and economic crisis since independence in 1980. Many of the corpses are awaiting collection by impoverished relatives, including some who ``just disappear and abandon them’’ in hopes they will be given decent ``paupers’ burials’’ by the city, said Dr. Chris Tapfumaneyi, the hospital’s medical superintendent.
A routine burial — including cemetery and grave fees, a casket and transportation — costs at least $120 at the official exchange rate or less than $40 at the black market rate. That’s twice what the average Zimbabwean’s annual income and is well out of reach of the 70 percent of people here living in poverty. Most rural poor bury their dead on family plots in the bush, following African spiritual traditions. As the Harare municipal cemeteries filled with AIDS victims in recent years, a raft of suggestions — for mass graves, for bodies to be buried vertically, and for cremation — were met with outcry by political and tribal leaders.
Vertical? How is that less work and expense?
| Less land price. Remember, the labor cost is almost non-existent... |
White Zimbabweans of Indian descent favor cremation, but in June, Harare’s cash-strapped city council ran out of imported gas for the furnaces at its only crematorium. Since, private funeral homes have accumulated nearly 100 bodies due for cremation. A few bodies have been taken to the second city of Bulawayo’s diesel-fired crematorium. But diesel fuel, like regular gasoline, is also in short supply, and Bulawayo’s ordinances make it difficult to cremate a person who did not live there. Leaders of Harare’s tiny Hindu community, meanwhile, have said they are considering waiving strict religious rules to allow non-Hindus to be cremated in their small diesel-fired crematorium here.
Things start to improve the day after Bob leaves.
| Sadly untrue. When Bob leaves, I'd guess things'll actually get worse, if that's possible, as his cronies grab off what they can on their way out of the country. Those who remain will be fighting each other for power and we'll see at least six months of anarchy and high death tolls before things stabilize. This being Africa, they'll probably stabilize under another kleptocrat or somebody who thinks he's God... |
|