Bulawayo residents have resorted to finding cheaper foods as alternatives to regular diets as prices of basic commodities continue to escalate.
Some residents have replaced bread with sweet potatoes (mbambaira) which is cheaper and also choose to buy maize and taking it to grind mills instead of buying mealie-meal from the shops.
A Bulawayo resident from Nketa 9 suburb, Esther Moyo, told the Chronicle that she is now being forced to make different dishes from potatoes to make them palatable for her kids. She said:
If I buy a bucket of sweet potatoes for 150 or 200 rands, it can last me for almost three weeks and I can feed my family of six. As for bread, I will need two loaves each day, and I cannot afford that.
The children do not like sweet potatoes so I try to spice them up by making fritters, boiling them, cutting them into rings and then glazing them with oil and roasting them in the oven like we do when we make roast potatoes.
That dish is very popular with my kids, but having them eat ordinary sweet potatoes is a struggle.
Prices of basic foodstuffs have gone through the roof since the coronavirus-induced lockdown was imposed as businesses take advantage of a lack of competition from informal traders.
In the past, people could cross to either South Africa or Botswana to buy groceries but the borders are closed as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.