Zimbabwe in Focus (5 of 5)

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This is the part five of a five part assignment for IOM International Organization for Migration on the rebuilding of Zimbabwe after an unprecedented economic and civil collapse. Photos Copyright ©2009 Austin Andrews / International Organization for Migration (IOM) except where noted. Not to be reprinted or reproduced without permission.

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Last August, Will van Engen (blog link) and I visited Zimbabwe on a photographic assignment for IOM International Organization for Migration, an intergovernmental organisation dedicated to promoting safe and humane migration in high-risk nations. Few countries recently have been in the headlines as much for migration issues as Zimbabwe, a failed state wracked by economic implosion where one third of the population now lives abroad, much of it illegally in neighbouring South Africa.

As a photography trip, it was ill-conceived: IOM organised an itinerary that compressed an entire country’s worth of far-flung project sites into one week of shooting. A Land Cruiser sent us tumbling down some of the worst roads in the world, chasing light and perpetually behind schedule. For every ten minutes spent travelling we’d be lucky to have a minute shooting. But as an experience it was one of the richest and most worthwhile trips of my life. I look back on the photographs below with rose-tinted fondness.

Wrapping up the series, part five takes us through some of IOM’s schemes in place to aid returning migrants with reassimilation.

A woman watches over goats donated to her household by IOM as part of a biodigester distribution scheme to migrants returning to southern Zimbabwe from South Africa. A sustainable biogas is produced by harnessing the methane in the goats' waste, bringing power to regions that previously had none.

A woman watches over goats donated by IOM to households of migrants returning to southern Zimbabwe from South Africa. A sustainable biogas is produced by harnessing the methane in the goats' waste, bringing power to far-flung regions that previously had none.

Animal husbandry.

Biodigester.

Residents of the Caledonia township south of Harare queue for attention from an IOM-sponsored mobile clinic. The twice-monthly clinic is the only access Caledonia's 2000 residents have to medical care.