Kevin Ndemera © Graham Freer/ Progressio

What is daily life like in Zimbabwe where eight out of 10 people have no work and where shortages of food, water and electricity are biting harder with each passing month? Kevin Ndemera, Progressio's newly-appointed Country Representative, provides a snapshot of daily life for him and his family.

It's hard to make sense of numbers like this. So, what do those figures mean in reality? What is daily life in Zimbabwe like? 

I live in Harare with my wife and have three children aged 9, 14 and 18. I work for the development agency Progressio.

My daily life has changed immeasurably in the last 18 months. Everything that we used to take for granted - food, electricity and water - we can no longer ignore. Things that were just part of an ordinary day - like going shopping, or grabbing lunch - have taken on far greater significance.

The day starts early. Normally I'd have taken a hot shower and had some breakfast before leaving for the office. That's not always possible now. We often don't have water, or electricity, so I can't take a shower. We just get what water we can in buckets and wash with that.

There's no doubt that living without electricity is better than living without water. If there's no electricity, it can be a problem cooking food. People gather firewood and cook outside. You don't have the TV, radio or your computer. But you can manage.

I tell my kids that there's a good side to this problem, because when the electricity is on everyone's watching TV or they are playing computer games. When the electricity's off we have the chance to talk to each other.

You can imagine what they think of that: it makes them roll their eyes. They think I'm just being a stupid old dad.

Living without water however is no joke. You don't know when the water will go off or for how long. Sanitation becomes a problem. Imagine that for a family of five in a warm country. We've learned always to keep a large container of water to flush the toilet.

I'm in a fortunate position: I can still drive to work. Many people simply can't afford to travel to work. There are far less buses and cars on the roads than there used to be and far more people. Many people now walk for hours to get to the office. They arrive late and leave early.

The cost of petrol virtually doubles every day if you're buying it with local currency on the street . Luckily I can often get coupons that allow me to buy it with hard currency. So the price is more stable, but just like here in the UK, the price has been affected by what's happening globally.

Driving to work is a really emotional experience, driving past streams of people walking to their offices. The rush hour is much shorter now. The traffic jams only last about an hour. It's unbelievable. The journey used to take me half an hour. Now it takes me about 10 minutes, because there's so little traffic.

Once I'm at the office I might not necessarily be able to work because of the lack of electricity. I can't even turn my computer on.

A lot of our work focuses on people living with HIV and AIDS. Although the prevalence rate in Zimbabwe has dropped from a high of 33 per cent to 15 per cent of the population, it's still a real concern.

Gaining consistent access to anti-retroviral drugs can be very difficult for patients because the government doesn't have enough money to import the much-needed medication. So I meet lots of people who have had the drugs, but have missed a few days or weeks of medication and so acquired a resistance to their medication.

Having a poor diet really doesn't help either - and eating well is difficult when 80 per cent of the population is unemployed. Food prices have rocketed and often there isn't any food in the shops. People are inventive. They grow what they can and trade between them. But the economics of the country really affects people in all sorts of ways. I see it every day.

We just used to pop to the shops to buy what we needed. Now that's impossible. When we go shopping it's a three-day round trip to Botswana. I have to take time off work to buy what the family needs to survive.

Since my children are away at school, I often make the trip with my wife. It's a long drive and we have to stay overnight at a guesthouse en route. It takes hours to cross into Botswana. It's not so bad during the week, but at weekends it can take as much as four hours to get across.

You have to arrive at the border by 6am in order to be across by 10am. The queues are horrendous. We drive to the nearest town about an hour away, shop all afternoon, stay overnight, shop all the following morning and drive back home. We do this once a month.

We're lucky that we can do this. For most people in the country it isn't an option and I'm always mindful of that.
I can still remember the end of white rule in Rhodesia and the coming of independence. There was so much violence around that time. Perhaps that's why we don't want violence now.

What's my daily life going to be like in a year's time? It's hard to know. It could go so many different ways. Zimbabwe's always surprising.

We have a long history - much longer than news headlines would lead you to believe. If we have a real political settlement that recognises the will of the people things could improve rapidly. All the ingredients are there. But also, without that settlement, things could get a lot worse.

It's hard to think how they could be worse. But they could. At the end of the day I'm just focusing on my children, not on myself. I want them to have a future in Zimbabwe. I want them to feel secure. That's my focus every day.