[spooky_action]

I lived in Zimbabwe through the hyperinflation era. While true that going through hyperinflation means that your debts are essentially forgiven, there are so many negative knock-on effects in the economy and society as a whole, that you'd have to have a pretty massive debt for that kind of hyperinflation to have a net positive utility for you.

[matt_wulfeck]

Would you mind sharing some stories about what it was like during that time?

[spooky_action]

Some stories:

A friend at school brought a giant stack of $500 Zimbabwean bills to use at our school tuckshop. This stack of bills was probably about 2 feet high. This was in 2007, and at that point a meat pie or coke must must have cost tens of thousands of dollars at minimum at the tuckshop. It had probably been a while since I'd seen someone actually try to use such a small denomination bill... I asked to hold his stack, but as I was holding it, some of the bills started falling out of the middle. This was during our recess/mid-morning break, and there were a lot of kids standing around. Someone saw this money fall on the ground, and naturally came over and started throwing it in the air ("making it rain", like Lil' Wayne) and soon more joined in. The school headmaster just happened to be walking by (a large, grim-faced white man) and demanded to know who was responsible for all of this. My peers pointed me out, and I got corporal punishment the next day.

Power cuts were constant (daily at their peek) and we didn't have a generator, so I did my homework by candlelight. The city of Harare stopped delivering water to our residence in 2007, and AFAIK haven't resumed...

Another memory that sticks out is when my dad said "hey, let's go get some petrol for the car". This was at 7 or 8 pm, so I got in my pajamas, and we drove to the neighborhood gas station, where we waited over night to pour a few litres of petrol in the car. I didn't even think _that much_ of it: I'd grown up in an era of shortages and economic decline, and the situation only became worse in my teenage years.

[matt_wulfeck]

Thank you for sharing your stories. I hope you and your family was able to immigrate someplace more stable.