When the country still used its own now worthless currency, the Zimbabwe dollar, robberies were rare.

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On Friday November 14th currency markets ground to a halt after the Zimbabwe dollar tumbled from 14 to one American dollar to 26-to-one.

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The government devalued the Zimbabwe dollar by 24% in August, and promises further devaluation, hoping to boost exports and so raise sorely-needed hard currency.

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Luckily for the world economy this is not the U.S. dollar it is the defunct Zimbabwe dollar and the note has the highest number of zeros ever printed on a banknote.

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The Zimbabwe dollar has crashed, as has the stockmarket.

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And anyway, there's always fun to be had laughing at the bus conductors as they try to work out how much their 750, 000 Zimbabwe dollar notes add up to, and how much change they owe the passengers.

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Since Zimbabwe's inflation is a tad higher than America's, nobody wishes to surrender hard currency at the official rate of 55 Zimbabwe dollars to one American dollar.

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But now, four years after Zimbabwe tied its currency to the dollar and a power-sharing coalition took control, stabilizing the economy and the government, Christensen and many others like him are starting to work again in the landscape they know best and love most.

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He opens his wallet and presents me with a gift: a 10-trillion-dollar bill once issued by the government of Zimbabwe.

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Yet the main cause of such progress has not been good government, but Zimbabwe's abandonment of its worthless currency and adoption of the American dollar, coupled with a massive increase in Western aid that came as a reward for the power-sharing deal.

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