'A banana costs more than my house'

There has been a wave of panic buying in many shops in Zimbabwe as the government enforces radical price cutting measures to try to tackle the world's highest rate of inflation - more than 3,700%.

One resident of Harare describes how the inflation is making life difficult for everyone, even those who are relatively well off.

Long queues form outside shops when new supplies arrive

At the pharmacy, I wait again in the gloom to have a repeat prescription filled.

It is for Phenobarbital tablets for my partner's mentally handicapped son, who suffers from epilepsy.

The tablets have gone up by 30,000 Zimbabwe dollars ($0.93 at the official exchange rate; $0.10 at the dominant black market rate) in a single day.

Hundreds of people are clamouring around the supermarkets, so I assume there has been one of the rare deliveries of basics like sugar or salt.

There is nothing I can afford.

A single banana costs 15 times more than I paid for my four-bedroom house seven years ago.

One candle now sells at 120,000 Zimbabwe dollars (US $3.70; $0.42).

That is twice as much as the government's stipulated farm worker's wage.

"This isn't living, it's barely surviving," I tell myself, but I know that so many Zimbabweans are not even surviving.

They are dying of hunger, malnutrition or preventable diseases.