LUSAKA, Zambia — Behind the humming highway, with its foreign chain supermarkets, take-away franchises and cellphone stores, lies sprawling Misisi township, one of the poorest districts of the Zambian capital.
Here, Foster Katoni, a 52-year-old widow, sits in the dust all day selling bags of crushed salt, a cold wind cutting through her ragged cotton shift and light sweater.
Like nearly three-quarters of this nation's 11 million inhabitants, she survives on less than a dollar a day. She has buried her husband, who died of an unknown illness, and eight of her 10 children, half of them killed by AIDS. She supports six people, including two grandchildren.
"Yesterday I tried to sell some salt but I couldn't, so we slept hungry," she said. "Some weeks we only have meals on two days. Other days we go hungry. Life has become very unpredictable. I can't say what will happen on any day."
On paper, the Southern African country is a success story for foreign debt forgiveness, having corralled its inflation rate and restrained its government spending.
On the ground, it is withering under the very fiscal restraints set by world lending authorities as conditions for the debt relief. And as Zambia faces an election Thursday, there is little hope for significant change.
"I am sorry, but there's no cause for celebration because it's debt relief that has come with huge costs," said Jack Zulu, a policy analyst at the Jubilee Trust, a British charity that has campaigned successfully for debt relief for African nations, including Zambia.
"Restructuring of the economy cost tens of thousands of jobs," he said. "Livelihoods were destroyed. In Zambia, each worker has a chain of dependants." Children will not be able to attend school and pregnant women will not have access to healthcare, he said.
"Forty-two years after independence, we are failing to provide a decent level of education."
Misisi is the real Zambia, Zulu said, not Lusaka's paper-thin veneer of prosperity.
On school days in Misisi, children hang around in the narrow streets looking for odd jobs. Few can afford school fees.
Many people do not know in the morning whether they will eat that day.
Zambia is one of the poorest and least-developed countries in Africa, ranked 166 among 177 countries in terms of development, the United Nations said.
