We attach great importance to the solution of Zimbabwe’s foreign debt crisis, the ambassador of China, Zhou Ding, declared when announcing his country’s decision, which was widely reported by the press.

Official statistics put Zimbabwe’s foreign debt at 12.7 billion dollars and its domestic debt at five billion. The sum of both amounts is overwhelming for this country where an unprecedented drought has been devastating crops for years, particularly tea, one of its main exports, and killing livestock.

Other victims of the calamity are the elephants, one of Zimbabwe’s symbols, a hundred of which died recently in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, the country’s largest.

The scarcity of rainfall is such that the iconic Victoria Falls, or Musi O Tunya (the thunder that wets, in the local language) are barely a shadow of their once majestic spectacle due to the almost imperceptible flow of the Zambezi River that feeds them.

jrr/arm/mem/ms