Zimbabwe Wild Dogs

Category: Uncategorized | Date: Jun 02 2008 | By: zimbabwewilddogs

Hello folks,

I’m still in Harare waiting for the car…  By the end of this week I should be able to collect it and head back to Save Valley and the wild dogs.  Bush bars, roll bars, safari seat and long-range fuel tank - we’ll really be kitted out for some serious work!

I’ve heard from our scouts in the field and they have located what is potentially a new pack of 5 adult dogs. As soon as I’m back, we’ll follow up on reports of that and try to get pictures so we can see where they have come from.  I’ll keep you posted.  We have also collected our collars and the drugs for immoblisation have arrived too, so as soon as the car is ready we’ll be working full-steam ahead to get those collars on.

In the meantime however, life is full of different challenges.  Just surviving in Harare is pretty much a full time job.  I went shopping the other day - to find certain elusive items such as bread, eggs and milk.  I eventually located somewhere I could get these, and bought 30 eggs, 6 bread rolls, 2 pints of milk and two blocks of cheese.  The total bill came to 9 billion, 600 million dollars.  Fortunately I could write a cheque for this, but I tell you it’s pretty daunting writing all those zeros on a cheque!

My next challenge is to try and find some cash to pay our scouts with: there is a major shortage of cash here…  However, things are looking up a bit - until last week the highest denomination note was a 500,000,000 dollar note (worth about 50 US cents), but there are now 5 billion, 25 billion and 50 billion dollar notes out.  Not that I’m likely to see any of those!

Other than these everyday challenges, life goes on, and we are all just keeping our heads down in the run-up to the run-off elections on 27th. 

I’ll be back in touch in a few days when I’m back in the field.

Bye for now,

Rosemary