How far can Zim dollars go?

Zimbabwe: Zimbabweans are starving and inflation is out of sight, but Auntie Paula’s motto is “I can’t say no” | Mark Bergin

Spc. Micah E. Clare/U.S. Army/AP

SEATTLE—The menu for the evening: garlic-crusted chicken breast with artichokes, oven-cured tomatoes, saffron-pine-nut pilaf, lemon, and thyme; or grilled filet of salmon with fingerling potatoes, leeks, fennel, and grain mustard.

Paula Leen found her seat at Table 9 for a recent African charity benefit dinner at the Lynnwood Convention Center in a north Seattle suburb. The 74-year-old missionary to Zimbabwe seemed distant, absent even, as she nibbled at the American feast. On a short fundraising and networking trip stateside, she'd left her thoughts and heart back in Africa, where the current global financial crisis is translating into more hungry bellies and death in hospital lines among the hundreds of orphans and rural Zimbabweans she serves.