Zimbabwe’s Rural Families Paying Hospitals with Goats and Peanuts 

SOS Children's Villages in Zimbabwe
SOS Children's Villages in Zimbabwe

December 22, 2010: According to the New York Times, rural households in Zimbabwe are offering their crops and animals in exchange for health care.

Although Zimbabwe’s inflation has plunged to a modest 3.6 percent from an astonishing peak of 500 billion percent in 2008, this landlocked nation northeast of South Africa remains one of the world’s poorest. Poverty and AIDS have combined to lower Zimbabweans’ life expectancy from 61 to 47 over the last 25 years.

Rural residents, who make up most of the country, have little to no cash, so barter what they have in order to receive medical attention. At the remotely located American mission hospital featured by the New York Times, doctors accept peanuts, chickens, goats, and other family-raised food and livestock.

The hospital uses the food to help feed the 6,000 patients a month seen by its two doctors and 15 nurses.

SOS Children’s Villages Provides for Zimbabwean Children and Families

An estimated 1.7 million Zimbabweans are in need of crop and food assistance despite increased food production resulting from government and international assistance programs, according to the UN News Service.

In this landscape of dire poverty, SOS Children's Villages has been providing warm homes, food, education, and medical care to needy children for some 25 years. Working from three Children’s Villages—in Bindura, in Waterfalls (a suburb of the capital, Harare), and in Bulawayo—SOS does more than raise children.

Giving Kids a Chance

Zimbabwe SOS Family 2010
An SOS family working in their vegetable plot outside of the SOS Children's Village in Bindura, Zimbabwe

SOS gives boys and girls who would otherwise have nothing the means to leading a productive life. Apart from the many kindergartens, schools, and vocational training centers SOS operates in Zimbabwe, nine miles from SOS-Bindura the charity has been running a farm that produces food and trains youth in agricultural skills.

Through its family strengthening programs, which aim to keep households intact, SOS bolsters families affected by HIV/AIDS by offering counseling on health, parenting, and small business skills, and providing food assistance as needed.

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