Hope Deferred

Finished April 13
Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives compiled and edited by Peter Orner and Annie Holmes

This collection of narratives includes experiences of a wide variety of people: black and white, male and female, urban and rural, from a variety of economic and educational backgrounds, aged from 14 to 63. What all of them have in common is the destruction of their lives. These are people who lost everything, many of them were tortured, many lost people close to them, and most are still struggling to find their way forward. Some are still in Zimbabwe, some are exiles. They have seen Zimbabwe change from a country with a good economy, a country known as the breadbasket of Africa to a country that imports almost everything its people need, with 90% unemployment and a valueless currency.
But most of them still have hope. Hope that their country can recover, hope that they can return, hope that their families can better their situation, hope for a Zimbabwe they can be proud of.
Many of the experiences recounted here are difficult to read, especially those involving torture, but I am glad that someone took the time to go and find these people and interview them and tell their stories, so that we can all hear them and know that these lives exist alongside our own.