Every Day Is Special: August 13 - Heroes Day in Zimbabwe

August 13 - Heroes Day in Zimbabwe

(Second Monday in August)

Posted on August 13, 2018

This holiday honors those who who died in Zimbabwe's struggle for independence from Britain and in the guerilla war against the rule of the white minority, when the land was called Rhodesia.

Unfortunately, Zimbabwe didn't become a bastion of freedom at the end of all that struggle and war. It suffered under a single "president" - really, a dictator - for decades. Finally, in late 2017, Mugabe was arrested and resigned. The Mugabe regime was at least partly responsible for devastating economic problems and hyper-inflation and, even worse, the deaths of millions of Zimbabweans.

Here are some happier aspects of Zimbabwe:

Some Zimbabweans call themselves Zimbos. I love that!

Zimbabwe basically gave up having its own currency. This was after a period of hyper-inflation. Regular inflation is when prices go up by an annual rate of more than 3%, but Zimbabwe was seeing inflation rates of more than 30% per year and then - and this is crazy, but true - up to 11,200,000% increase!! I know this is supposed to be "happier aspects of Zimbabwe" - but let's celebrate Zimbabwe's move to use other nations' currency instead of their own (Zimbabweans now use everything from U.S. dollars, to South African rands, Botswana pulas, the euro, Chinese renminbi, Indian rupees, pound sterling, and Australian dollars). And even though hyper-inflation is terrible to go through, at least they have some interesting keepsakes from the experience:

Zimbabwe lost a lot of its tourism with the human rights violation and political instability, but hopefully they will be able to gain it back, and then some. After all, there's the hyper-incredible Victoria Falls...