The following story is from a letter from Zimbabwe, above the name of Cathy Buckle:
One night this week the usually pitch black view from my window was disturbed by a brilliant but un-natural spotlight. The light came from the direction of a nearby cemetery and I didn’t stay to inspect it, rapidly closing the curtains and praying that the light was in fact coming from further away. Goose bumps covered my arms as I thought about the latest horror story in Zimbabwe. At night grave robbers are descending on cemeteries and digging up newly filled graves. They are removing the corpses and taking the empty coffins for resale. I don’t know if this appalling practice is being conducted by money making entrepreneurs or just by desperate people trying to get enough money to stay alive.And this is from a report on the state of tourism in the same country:
It is a ghost town. The few tourists on the streets – Japanese, German and South African and a sprinkling of Britons – are followed by polite hawkers with wood carvings. “Give me some business, please, I haven’t eaten today.”Hat tip to John Abeles for the first story. John recently forwarded me an email circular coming out of Zimbabwe, headed ‘Grimbabwe Newsletter’.