Francistown — Of the many stories of hardship to come out of devastated Zimbabwe, the plight of its teachers is amongst the most tragic.

Many, who attended the SADC teachers' solidarity games in Francistown last week, told of the hardships that they have had to endure under Robert Mugabe's government.

According to one of the main teachers' unions, the Progressive Teachers of Zimbabwe, 25,000 teachers - almost a quarter of the workforce - have gone abroad in the last year, absenteeism is high, buildings are crumbling and standards plummeting. Many work illegally in South Africa as waitresses and garden boys.

Those who stay face a hopeless struggle to keep going. One of the female teachers who preferred to be called Gloria Ncube for fear of reprisals, related exclusively to The Voice sordid details of how she and some of her colleagues had resorted to commercial sex for survival.

The 44-year old mother of five told of how she and her shop-manager husband struggled to make ends meet on their meagre income.

"We've just had a one thousand percent salary increment as teachers. I earn Z$ 330m and my husband gets a paltry Z$ 150m. I know the figures sound like big money, but we are the poorest millionaires in the world," she laughs.

But her laughter cannot hide the stress that is etched on her face. "I've become old before my time with all the suffering," says the high school teacher from Bulawayo.

"I want you to get the real picture and understand what we are going through. There is little motivation to attend classes, and there were times before the increase when students could go through the whole day without seeing a teacher.

"Why bother to teach when you can get more money selling tomatoes?" She asks.

Gloria relates how she used to tell her husband that she had to go to Harare to visit relatives, but instead she was leading a double life as a prostitute.

"I was prepared to do anything to get extra money to feed my children. I would spend a bit of money to clean myself up and visit nightclubs where I would sit waiting for propositions.

"The competition was fierce and I had only a few customers. With just one meal a day you can't expect a struggling woman to have the sexiest body. Most men were looking for curvaceous and fleshy bodies.

"It wasn't so bad on Fridays at clubs like Chez Mambo and Chez Ntemba because there were more takers, especially 'big men,' many of them from the ruling Zanu PF. They park their expensive cars in front of the hotels and nightclubs and take their 'catches' to lodges for the night.

"It wasn't the best of experiences, but the money was much better. I earned more in one hour than for a month's teaching."

For two years, apart from sex-work, Ncube says she supplemented her salary by doing farm work or cleaning houses. She would use the money to go to Harare and buy cheap clothing. These she exchanged in rural areas for groundnuts that she would then sell in town.

Other colleagues cross the border to Botswana or South Africa, where they buy goods for reselling in Zimbabwe, but Ncube has never amassed enough money to buy the foreign exchange she needed for the trade.

This year, as the economic meltdown continued, she has found herself borrowing more than her salary each month. "I don't have any family abroad to send me money and at times we couldn't even afford one meal a day," she says.

When asked if many of the other teachers at her school were doing the same, she laughed. "I'd say three-quarters."

She says that at the University of Zimbabwe in Harare, students and staff have turned disused offices and storerooms into makeshift brothels as prostitution is the only way they can make ends meet.

She estimates that at the start of term last May, more than three thousand teachers in Zimbabwe did not return to work. 20,000 of them are estimated to be living in South Africa.

"The economic problem in Zimbabwe is real and that is why you see a lot of them coming here, with some engaging in crime. People are hungry and we want change, but only God knows when that may come," she says with a sigh.