Because my income hasn’t risen as much as the prices in the shops, we have had to adjust quite a bit. The things that we buy—the groceries at home, the things we get for our two children— we have to buy immediately, as soon as we get the money. We know that if we wait a bit, the prices are going to go up again. If we wait another week, we will not be able to afford anything. People are taking the money out in suitcases or carrier bags. [8]
Zimbabwe’s citizens increasingly turned to other currencies to conduct transactions, even though the Zimbabwe dollar was officially the only legal tender in the country. The Zimbabwe hyperinflation eventually ended in January 2009, when the Finance Minister officially permitted citizens to use other currencies in places of the Zimbabwe dollar.