In an industry dominated by men, more women are emerging as leaders, earning top dollar and employing teams of miners. But even as their numbers grow, they say their claims are often challenged by men who want to mine the same areas.

From the economic crisis to mental illness, Zimbabweans are seeking help from a variety of apostolic sects, many of which blend Christianity with traditional beliefs. One point of difference between sects is on the appropriateness of seeking revenge.

A popular skin bleaching cream was banned in Zimbabwe in the 1970s because of the health risks it posed, but now, new creams are being brought in from other countries and are sold without being licensed or tested.

Medical doctors warn Zimbabweans against taking the advice of traditional healers, but those healers continue to provide a core service for most people. Now, with an ongoing economic crisis, pastors are urging people to seek healing in church, where there’s no charge to pray.

In Zimunya township of Mutare District, Zimbabwe, Collin Sithole uses sandpaper to put the finishing touches on a drinking glass that he has made from a wine bottle. Sithole makes the glasses in his backyard from recycled bottles, using a piece of rope, water and sandpaper.

Since an outbreak in typhoid was reported in late December, nine deaths have resulted from the disease, according to a report released by the Ministry of Health and Child Care. Uncollected garbage, sewer bursts and contaminated water are cited as the major causes of typhoid.

In Zimbabwe, some are turning to Tara Rokpa, a Buddhist form of psychotherapy, to cope with challenges like living with AIDS or raising a disabled child.

Kudzai Chomo, a clown, paints the face of Patience Nkomo at the annual Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo. This event, held April 25 to 29, promoted local and international businesses in Zimbabwe and featured many activities for families to enjoy.

Obrian Shumba, of Gwanda High School, drinks water between rounds during tryout matches for the Matabeleland South provincial boxing team in Zimbabwe. The team will represent the province at the annual National Youth Games in Hwange, a city in Matabeleland North.

Authorities in cash-strapped Zimbabwe are pushing for business transactions to be conducted through debit cards instead of hard currency, but the shift is causing problems for small businesses. Buying swipe machines would harm their bottom lines, customers are used to dealing only in cash and few Zimbabweans trust the local banks, vendors say.

Songs on a new album encourage people to consider how asking for or paying bribes hurts the country. People are so used to paying bribes that they don’t realize they are part of the problem, one artist says.

Heavy storms in January left a trail of destruction in the nation, especially in low-lying suburbs like Chitungwiza and in other areas where homes were poorly constructed or illegally built on wetlands; the devastation was multiplied by bad or nonexistent drainage systems. Zimbabwe has high standards for development and maintenance, but those standards are often not enforced.

Mercy Zveushe, 39 (foreground) and Brenda Munetsi, 26 (in blue shirt) fetch water from an open well in Southlea Park, a section of Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city. Some people who live in the settlement say they don’t have access to the tap water that elsewhere is provided by the Harare City Council. Many residents dig their own wells, but many of those wells dried up during a recent drought.

Wishes Mukungurutse, in the driver’s seat, prepares to transport customers in a decorated commuter bus in and around Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city. Commuter bus operators often decorate their vehicles to display their trademarks and attract customers.

The organization aims to boost survival rates among preterm tots by donating specialized equipment to hospitals and essential items to needy mothers. Last year, the group gave three machines to help premature babies breathe and a machine to treat jaundice to one of Zimbabwe’s largest public hospitals.

Demand is up among women who crave this peculiar dish and the number of vendors in Bulawayo is rapidly increasing. One local man, Prince Ndlovu, digs up and sells a wide assortment of colors and flavors.

Bongani Ndlovu, left, digs holes while his brothers Themba Moyo, middle, and Silas Ndlovu, right, plant maize by dropping the seeds and using their feet to cover the hole with soil. The brothers’ field, pictured in January, is located in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city. People plant maize during the rainy season, which generally takes place between November and April, using naturally treated organic seed. Genetically-modified seeds aren’t allowed in Zimbabwe.

Some sculptors in Zimbabwe express dismay at the low prices negotiated by overseas and local dealers for their works, saying that inadequate copyright and pricing laws make them vulnerable.

Small-scale and artisanal miners produced more gold than large-scale companies in Zimbabwe in recent months. Proposed changes to the nation’s mining laws to recognize and support smaller operations could boost production even more, small-scale miners and their advocates say.

ZBC TV is lauded for recently introducing broadcasts in more indigenous tongues, making the total 13 out of the 16 official languages. But some believe the way forward is for the government to license independent, community-based stations that would reflect broader, more diverse views and offer greater airtime to marginalized groups.

There’s a widespread belief in Zimbabwe that vaginal growths, locally called “sare,” cause infertility, miscarriage and the deaths of healthy newborns and even older children, and women pay traditional healers to cut away the growths. Doctors caution that the procedure can be dangerous when done by those without medical training and may cause infection and long-term problems, but happy mothers believe it has worked for them.

Sarah Hungwe, 67, crochets a bag using old cassette tapes. As part of a project called Friendship Bench in Harare, Zimbabwe, people are taught to make bags from the tapes as a treatment for depression. Hungwe says she became depressed after her husband and daughter died within the same month in 1999. Friendship Bench has helped her to keep busy while earning income from making the bags, she says.

The cash shortage in Zimbabwe has only partly dimmed the locals’ consumption of cow’s feet, which traditionally carry a reputation as an aphrodisiac and performance-enhancer. The cow’s feet are typically prepared as part of a stew with beans, sometimes accompanied by sadza, a Zimbabwean staple, and flavored with herbs that some also consider a boost to sexual desire and performance.

Vendors and the city government of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, clash over access to the city center, where officials want to bar unlicensed vendors from operating. Vendors say the police raids can be violent, and their advocates say vendors are viewed as a “nuisance” despite their importance in a struggling economy.

In Mount Pleasant, a suburb of Harare, Zimbabwe, Nyasha Manyeruke, 20, shows artwork that her company, Reysh Alef, collects and sells as a part of its Art of Humanity Project, which helps artists to network and to sell their works. The project also uses materials made from recycled waste to make science kits that are donated to schools in impoverished areas.

Redistribution of farm land has created ongoing problems in Zimbabwe since independence. Evictions continue to disrupt lives of farmers, both black and white.

Informal tobacco sales have long provided supplemental income for residents of Makokoba, the oldest suburb of Bulawayo. However, the dismal Zimbabwean economy has driven more and more residents into the informal trade, making competition fierce, while police last year began confiscating sellers’ tobacco because of violations of health regulations that had been previously ignored.

Zimbabwe in 2015 banned the import of secondhand clothes in an effort to help resuscitate its flagging clothing industry. The government relaxed the ban in January, and secondhand clothing markets continue to provide a source of income for sellers and rock-bottom prices for purchasers in the nation’s deteriorating economy.

A girl crosses a river using a sewer pipe as an improvised bridge on her way to school in Mutare, Zimbabwe. Children take this route to avoid the conventional path, which is much longer and often requires them to pay for public transport.

An official deems the illegal but convenient taxis a menace, and drivers face impoundment, fines and prison terms. But a driver says it’s the police procedures that cause accidents, and an attorney calls the impoundments unlawful.

Children, ages 4 to 7, participated in an art class held by the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare. They took a tour of the museum and then painted pictures to recreate what inspired them.

The City Council of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest municipality, at one time required prepaid water meters, citing more efficient billing, accountability and water demand management, but now these meters are only installed if citizens request them. Some residents are in favor of the prepaid meters, believing they help curb debt and conserve water; others oppose the meters, arguing that people who can’t pay won’t get water, leading to health hazards.

Amid high unemployment and a cash shortage, the government’s tighter restrictions on certain imports have many complaining that, since the contraband goods are the only ones the public can afford, the new rules amount to an all-out ban. The government says it only means to regulate, not ban, the products and to curtail smuggling; business people who make products domestically hope the move will bring industry back to the nation.

Traditional spiritualists say Zimbabwe’s current problems are due to the government’s failure to recognize their work and to honor ancestral spirits who helped the country win liberation. They are seeking government funding, saying it would help rectify this oversight and lead to economic recovery.

A high unemployment rate has spurred informal businesses in Zimbabwe, and these five siblings moved from being shoe salesmen to being shoemakers, to serve patrons who don’t have the money for footwear in retail shops. The brothers are successful in marketing custom-order shoes at wholesale prices, despite competition from Chinese-made products and some difficulty in getting materials.

For years, the Doma community in Kanyemba, Zimbabwe, lived in isolation with a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. Interventions from church groups have seen them embrace a more modern way of living. However, since their area was declared a game reserve, they face food shortages, and have few resources to facilitate this transition.

A public dump site in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city, sits near lodges and shopping complexes in a commercial area. Health officials say such sites are a factor in current outbreaks of typhoid and cholera. Health Minister David Parirenyatwa noted in a January press release that insufficient waste collection services in the city, paired with inadequate water supply and poor response time to blocked sewers, were causing the outbreaks.

In Zimbabwe’s deteriorating economy, individuals laid off from work are starting their own companies to survive. In 2011, Cornwell Nyamande noticed that there was an untapped market for wheelbarrows and started a small cooperative that has employed several people and helped provide capital for other small businesses.

Many rural children in Zimbabwe are destined for poverty because they lack birth certificates or other identity documents and thus can’t take national exams in grade seven that would allow them to continue in school. There are myriad reasons why parents don’t have this documentation, and many don’t realize that it’s a crime not to have it, but various nonprofits are helping them through the difficult process of obtaining the registration.

Tinashe Mangwiro, an informal parking attendant, directs motorists to available parking bays in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city. Mangwiro says he earns between $5 and $10 per day in tips, a sum that supports his family.

Vehicles and pedestrians stand where the Mtshabezi River flooded across Gwanda-Bulawayo road in late January in Gwanda, Zimbabwe. The Gwanda-Bulawayo road is a major thoroughfare used by mine workers, but others, including schoolchildren, were also trapped on one side and unable to return home later that night.

The settlers at Ngozi Mine, in the city dump of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, must either walk a kilometer to get legally limited amounts of clean water or gather dirty water from a nearby stream, and they say the shortage leads to disease. A program under which tankers brought water to them was ended in 2014 due to financial constraints, but a ward councilor says he will address the scarcity issue.

Amid a crippled economy, unemployed or self-employed men find it difficult to pay the bride price, which some parents have turned into a business that has lost its original significance as a bond between two families and a way to give a woman status.