- Dear Family and Friends,
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- A month before Christmas the heavens finally opened over
many parts of Zimbabwe. In my home town we had 73 mm (almost 3 inches)
in an afternoon and then another 50 mm ( 2 inches) in the next four days.
After seven long dry months, the wet, the green and the overnight revival
of life and growth are so welcome.
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- With the rains have come a sudden explosion of
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- flying ants and sausage flies, chongololos and beetles
of all colours, shapes and sizes. The snakes are back too and a wonderful
array of birds including big, circling flocks of Abdim Storks, stopping
over on their annual migration from the top of Africa.
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- The rains have also bought back the problems for Zimbabwe
including the nightmare state of most of our roads. During the dry months
many of our residential roads grew in width as vehicles drove first with
one wheel and then two wheels on the verge in order to avoid deep, unfilled
potholes. These unofficially widened roads are now a sea of slippery red
mud and the tar a maze of potholes.
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- Five inches of rain in a week have made many of these
un-maintained roads unusable. Storm drains clogged with silt, litter and
vegetation have caused all the roads to flood and and overflowing water
has scoured deep gullies under the tar and along the edges. There are now
many places in low lying suburban areas where the tar is less than 8 inches
wide - the rest has simply eroded away.
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- I counted 197 potholes in a one kilometre stretch of
suburban road this week. The road leads to a pre-school with 150 children;
a junior school with 500 children and a senior school with 600 children.
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- This week in my neighbourhood residents have had to start
every day with bags of rubble, wheelbarrows of stones, broken roof tiles,
sacks of soil and anything else we can find to dump into deep gullies in
order to make the roads safe to drive on.
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- Despite ten months of repeated requests, appeals and
complaints to our new MDC Municipal council to repair suburban roads, clear
storm drains, fill potholes and gullies and repair eroding road edges,
nothing has been done at all in my neighbourhood and many others in the
area.
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- What could and should have been relatively easy maintenance
tasks for our largely invisible MDC Municipal council in the dry season
have now become major jobs. Everyone is getting very fed up with the inaction
and lack of interest at local council level and saying that not only were
we promised better, but we deserve it, especially after all the huge sacrifices
people made to effect the change and install new leadership.
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- Until next week from a very wet and muddy Zimbabwe,
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- thanks for reading,
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- love cathy
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- Copyright cathy buckle 5th December 2009 www.cathybuckle.com
http://www.cathybuckle.com/
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- For information on my new book: "INNOCENT VICTIMS"
or my previous books, "African Tears" and "Beyond Tears,"
or to subscribe/unsubscribe to this newsletter, please write to:
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