Adventures in Zimbabwe

During our mid-semester break, I spent a week and a half in Zimbabwe with three of my friends, two of whom are from Zimbabwe (the other one is from Malawi). There is something very invigorating and exciting about throwing some clothes and my passport in a backpack, hopping on a rickety old bus, and travelling across South Africa and into a new country. Of course the novelty of the rickety old bus started to wear off after the eight hour ride to Johannesburg, fourteen hour ride to Bulawayo (a city in Zim) and then a seven hour ride in a mini bus taxi (a 14 passenger van used for public transportation in most African countries) to Victoria Falls. I did get to see some amazing scenery, beautiful starry nights, and stunning sunrises from my bus window. There were also some elephant crossing signs, but much to my dismay I did not see any elephants lumbering across the road.

We spent two days at Victoria Falls, which is on the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia. We crossed over to Zambia for a few hours to see the Falls from that side, and of course to get another stamp on the old passport. It was pretty much the same as Zim, only there were baboons in Zambia and not in Zimbabwe (apparently their passports weren’t up-to-date so they couldn’t cross the border). Victoria Falls were (is it “were” or “was”? I’m not really sure) absolutely stunning. They make Niagara Falls look like a trickling stream. The Falls are one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and it was easy to see why. They’re about a mile in length and so massive that I couldn’t capture them adequately with my camera. The mist from the falls left us soaking wet, as though we had walked through an intense rainstorm. It’s hard to describe how it felt looking at the Falls. It was one of those moments where you just stand there and try to take it all in, try to burn the immensity of what you’re seeing into your memory, and try to realize how fortunate you are to be there. It was truly breathe-taking.

After spending a couple of days at the Falls, we went to a town called Gueru, where my two friends are from (yes this meant another long rickety bus ride and this one left at 3 in the morning). It’s funny because someone asked me today what my favorite part of my trip was and at first I was tempted to say Victoria Falls, but then realized that in fact it was staying at the house of my friend’s sister and her husband in Gueru. In the tradition of African hospitality, we were welcomed in not as guests but as members of the family. We spent the remainder of our trip there, relaxing and visiting my friends’ family members and friends, all of whom welcomed us in the same manner. The second we stepped in the door a meal would magically appear, and the food was so good that I ended my vegetarianism. This was meant to be a temporary change, but I realized that I love chicken and have decided to forfeit the vegetarian deal altogether, much to the delight of my traveling companions who never really understood the vegetarian thing to begin with.

I don’t know how much you know about Zimbabwe, but it is currently a country in conflict. I’m not going to go into detail about it all now, partly because I don’t completely understand the situation and partly because this is a public blog and I don’t want to say anything against the country in a public forum because it’s a bit of a dictator state that doesn’t take kindly to criticism, but I encourage you to look it up and learn more because it’s really fascinating. Let me just say that there is a lot of political and economic unrest, which at first made me nervous about traveling there, but my friends assured me that it was very safe. And in fact I felt safer there than I often do here in S.A. It was strange being able to carry a purse without fearing it would get stolen and being able to walk around at night. The only thing that made me uncomfortable was the fact that I was one of only a handful of white people in the entire town of Gueru. While I’m often in situations in SA where there are no other white people, in Zimbabwe it seemed to be more of a novelty for other people, particularly the men who were fond of calling out to the tall white woman walking by, and several of whom proposed to me. At first I found it all entertaining and just shrugged it off, but it got very tiring to be stared at and to have men making comments everywhere I went. I think my favorite line was “my name is Moses and I want to take you to the promised land.” Niceeeee. I will say that at times it got quite annoying to constantly feel out of my comfort zone, both racially and culturally, and to constantly feel out of place. My limited attempts at Shona, the language spoken there, and my attempts to act socially appropriate were often met with (friendly) laughter. It was a good lesson in taking myself lightly and learning to laugh along with everyone.

I think my favorite part of the trip was one night at my friend’s sister’s place when the electricity had been out since 8 am (the electricity and water go out daily for several hours). We all went outside under a sky completely blanketed in stars to cook dinner over a fire, and not just a dinner of hots and hams like we would back home, but a full meal of vegetables, beef, stew, and sadza (a traditional Zimbabwean food, kind of the same consistency of mashed potatoes but made of maize). We then went inside and ate it by candlelight. We sat around the table for a couple of hours just talking and laughing. It’s hard to describe how I felt or why such a minor evening had such an impact on me. Part of it was the simplicity of the six of us cooking together by starlight and then sitting and talking because there was no electricity to distract us. I guess we don’t always take the time to do that back in the states, or even here in SA, where we’re always busy. At one point I looked around the table and thought that at that moment there was absolutely no where else I would rather be.

So that was a very simplified rendition of my trip to Zimbabwe. There’s lot s more I could tell you, like about hitchhiking in the back of a pickup truck which smelled like meat, or the anxiety I felt during the two hour process of crossing the border both going into Zim and coming back into SA. There’s the sketchy bar we went to where we had the traditional home brewed beer called Opec and where someone shouted “thanks for bringing us a white woman!” in Shona when I entered the bar. Then there was exchanging our South African money into Zim dollars on the black market (aka through questionable characters standing on street corners) because the exchange rate was much better (inflation is horrendous there, something like $1 to 1700 Zim dollars). As always there are so many stories to tell that I can never really properly put into words. Sometimes I feel like our memories are meant for us alone, to be kept bottled up and savoured on a rainy day somewhere down the line because no matter how we try to describe what we experience no one else can ever really understand. This isn’t a bad thing, but rather it makes me cherish my experiences more, realizing that I may tell the stories, but they are for me alone. Hopefully this weak attempt at sharing these experiences will at least give you a glimpse into my jar of memories.