North Thanet`s MP, Roger Gale, has been where no other British MP has been in recent months. Travelling in a private capacity on a humanitarian mission as a charity worker he found himself deep inside Zimbabwe. Here is his report.In Zimbabwe even the country's newly-issued one hundred trillion dollar bill is all but worthless. It will, this week, just about pay for a loaf of bread or a newspaper.

Those with South African rand or American dollars in their pockets can buy fuel for cars and can eat and drink well in hotels and restaurants.

Virtually everything else is bought in from across the borders. Those without hard currency ("forex" or foreign exchange) can purchase little or nothing.

A living has to be scratched out of the bare ground. A few home-grown vegetables can mean the difference, literally, between life and death.

Even in credit crunch Britain that has to be a sobering thought.

I entered Zimbabwe on a properly acquired visa as a charity worker, not as a Member of Parliament. I travelled with The Society for the Protection of Animals Abroad. Our mission was to assess the current voluntary programme of care to promote the health and welfare of donkeys and to establish what further assistance was needed and might be provided to help to keep these animals on the road.

Why donkeys? Why not people?In much of Africa the donkey and the mule are the car, the tractor and the delivery van. They are the means of livelihood upon which an extended family of perhaps a dozen people will depend.

The chance of survival may rest upon the health of one beast of burden. It matters.

A two-man team, funded by SPANA, is out most days around Bulawayo examining the animals pulling "scotch carts".

These two-wheeled carts carry all manner of goods and firewood and are generally desperately overloaded.

They work from dawn until dusk under the heat of the African sun.

In a land where everything is scarce and unaffordable what passes for harness is made out of old wood, worn out car tyres and wire.

Over time the wooden shafts chafe on the bodies of the donkeys and the wire cuts into the shoulders, neck and throat. Open sores are attacked by flies.