Piece Description

Zimbabwe has been making news for years, most often for the bleak realities under President Robert Mugabe’s regime there: political oppression and killings, cholera and AIDS epidemics, and natural disasters.

But the recent power-sharing agreement between Mugabe and the opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has inspired millions within the country to hope, however tentatively, that their country may yet see better days.

The program was originally produced just before the car accident involving MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai.  It aims to showcase the resilient spirit and hard-won optimism of Zimbabweans.  To do that, it features voices from all sectors of society: a newly-installed cabinet minister from the MDC who now works with his former arch-rival Robert Mugabe – and whose hand he had to shake at the swearing-in ceremony; three housewives who share stories and laughter over trying to feed their hungry families; a white farmer whose heart still breaks over being thrown off the land he once cultivated; an elderly woman whose water supply is now filthy; a construction worker who returned from abroad because he believes his country now has a chance to improve itself; a clergyman whose faith in God, and himself, was rattled by ongoing  crises in Zimbabwe.