Perspective
Getting Around the City With Kids, When Formal Transit Has Collapsed
In Harare, Zimbabwe, mothers going about daily tasks have few good options for travel. Here's how we make it work.
Getting around a major city with young children can be difficult nearly anywhere in the world, but in Zimbabwe’s capital city, those ordinary challenges are compounded by a tiered, informal transit network; high costs of getting around; rampant sexual and physical harassment from taxi and bus drivers alike; and the knowledge that, in the memories of most residents, Zimbabwe once had a functional, even robust, urban transit system.
As Zimbabwe celebrated its independence from British colonial rule on April 18, 1980, Julius Nyerere whispered to Robert Gabriel Mugabe, “You have inherited a jewel of Africa, don’t tarnish it.”