Zimbabwe journal: 2005 part 2

This is a journal from my Zimbabwe trip in 2005. I stayed in Harare with my friend Louis.

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Friday, Feb 4^th

I talked with Patricia Magubu a the University of Zimbabwe, and we arranged to meet on Wednesday for lunch. Louis was advising me today that she will spend some time figuring out what it is that I want to hear, and then will tell me that.

Before then I will have to exchange some dollars for Zim dollars. Figure it out – $50 at 9,000 per dollar. I will have a pocket full of cash to pay for lunch.

We left Harare on Friday after doing some shopping for the weekend’s food, driving the two lane highway which circles the city, climbing ever so slightly all the time.

Soon we came to the land where Louis’s family had their farms – property after property abandoned, with an occasional thatch hut on it, but few, or poor, crops. We discussed whether there something wrong with giving land to families for subsistence rather than for large scale farming; after all, money isn’t everything. Just because the land doesn’t produce huge cash crops doesn’t necessarily mean it is good for nothing. It will employ lot of people. It is difficult for the former farmers, who were getting huge cash crops off of this land, to see them idle or poorly farmed, but to a person, they don’t seem unduly resentful, nor do they seem to disagree so much with the land redistribution, rather with the manner in which it was done.

We passed the former agricultural research center which had been a showcase in Africa for developmental research. It is no longer pre-eminent in its field, although it is functioning. One after another we passed formerly prestigious or effective or famous institutions and places – schools, farms, etc. All functioning at a fraction the level they were functioning before,

We stopped at a tea house, with tables under spreading trees and a vegetable stand in the entrance room. We bought some eggplant, apples, pineapples, tiny pineapples, and onions, then pressed on.

We drove right through his former farm. “My property ends over there, as far as you can see,” he said. “You see that dam over there? You remember I told you that I set up an irrigation system on all of my pastureland? Well the dams are still there, but fuck all is happening.” One night in the 70's when Louis and his wife were away in Harare at a wedding and the manager of the farm had stayed with friends, the rebels came from the distant mountain, to the house, which they shot at and mortared, leaving only the foundation, which is still a tiny sliver on that hill.

After demolishing Louis’s home, the 7 rebels had tried to escape to the mountain. Five of the seven were killed, and one of Louis’s friends took a bullet in the shoulder, partially disabling him for life. They had raised cattle, dairy cattle, maize, and several other crops. It was idle now. Going further along the road, we passed the farms of his parents-in-law, his parents, his brother-in-law, friends, old lovers. All the farms have been taken away. It is a whole life that has gone, an English kind of living that settled lightly on the African soil, took root and bloomed for a while, and is now going to seed. As far as I can see so far, there is an acknowledgement that the way of life had to change, and little resentment, though there is nostalgia.

The hills roll, covered in what looks like a mossy soft cover, it is actually grass, but the covering looks soft and green. There are acacia trees, gum trees, who knows what those other trees were. The vista was beautiful.

As we entered the national trust land Louis told about his time in the intelligence service of the Rhodesian Army. He and a female colleague had traveled from village to village, hut to hut, talking to the Africans to see whom they were voting for – Musarewa or Mugabe. As they continued speaking, in Shona, the people warmed up, first telling them that everyone was voting for Musarewa, because that is what they perceived that these white people wanted to hear, later revealing that the whole village was voting for Mugabe He had deep respect for his companion, Phillipa Berlin, who was soon killed in a plane crash. He still speaks of her, remembers her. She shared great dangers with him. Her Shona was impeccable and she knew how to warm people up, reveal her genuine interest in them. The Army was run on a call–up system, 6 weeks on, 6 weeks off. People arranged their lives around this system. When Louis and Philippa wrote their report not everyone believed their conclusion that the populace would vote for Mugabe, but they decided to tell the truth in their report.

We passed baboons playing on a railroad track, and cumulatively hundreds of Africans walking along the road, climbing up and up until we got to the house in Nyanga, which is a gem. I have pictures.

On Saturday we drove to a ford of the Pungwe River, which had two cottages one on each side of the ford, totally abandoned, the solar panels stolen from the roof, according to the park warden, there was only one blanket in the cottages, no other amenities, and no visitors. They used to have to be booked years in advance because the trout fishing is outstanding and the place idyllic. They were situated along a trout stream which flowed into a slightly rough white water stretch which people raft down sometimes. On the other side of the river, which was about 20 meters across, was a hill. Louis said that sometimes wildebeest or other animals come and stand at the top of the hill. It was lush, green, textured and beautiful. The cottage across the way used to be cleared from its front door down to the river, but now underbrush had grown up to about 6 feet and the cottage was only partially visible. On the way back we stopped at the gate house where the park warden spent long, lonely days waiting for tourists to come, without even the cottages to keep in order, because there were no tourists to fish the river so richly populated with trout. He was fairly loquacious, in Shona and English, confirming the lack of tourists, the lack of amenities, the sad sate of the park. Then we climbed in the beaten up old truck back up the hill, bumping and shivering over a terrible road past hillsides with neatly planted pines waiting to be harvested, past the saw mill which served all this lumbering, past the always present Africans walking the roads, some of them hitchhiking, others just walking purposefully.

We turned onto a highway, two lane, and drove to the Rhodes Hotel which is housed in the former home of Cecil Rhodes. He had come by oxcart from Bulawayo, five months, and built a beautiful stone home on a hillside with the same kind of view we had been going by all day, rolling hills covered in a carpet of green, with acacia, pines, brush falling off in the distance. The Nyanga Mountains in the distance. This is part of the Rift Valley which begins in Ethiopia and crosses Africa to Cape Town, going up and down, being more or less wild as it progresses.

The hotel was gracious and surrounded with luscious gardens. It was cool, breezy and sunny. We sat under thatched roofs in the garden and had tea and a sandwich, served by friendly, concerned staff. In the hall of the hotel was a chalk board on which were listed the latest trout catches – what kind of fly, what day, where, what was the means of fishing, etc. The listings had mostly come from October and November, and it was now February. This was nostalgic for Louis who, although not a fisherman himself, remembered the days when the place was buzzing with people very serious about trout fishing. In the bar there would be a varied bunch of people indistinguishable from one another except for their varying devotion to trout fishing.

After this lovely, lush experience, we drove to Troutbeck, a hotel situated above trout lakes, originally built to serve the trout fishermen, but now serving the high-end tourist business. There were a few tourists there, but nothing like what there had been. It reminded me of the Adirondack lodges that I know so well. The English culture had transmogrified itself into Africa, and into America, leaving behind similar looking hotels and resorts and habits.

Of course, if I had been a tourist, I could have seen these places, but Louis could give me their context – what they had meant to the inhabitants of this place, how it had been attacked during the war in the 70's .

We drove back to “Blue Mountains,” the name of the house in Nyanga. Chukupa had finally cut the grass and Ranier had lit the stove for the water heater. We had beers out on the back terrace, watching the sun set over Mount Inyangani.

I came inside and cooked a bread pudding in the oven of the wood stove, and grilled steak, eggplant and pineapple on the stove top, also boiling rice. It took some doing because I let the fire go down too far and we had to stoke it up again. I enjoyed using the wood stove – you can move things around from hot to less hot, put them up above where plates warm nicely, or in the warming oven. I had a feeling of control like the feeling I have driving a stick shift.

Sunday morning the mists of Inyangani spread to Blue Mountains, fogging the distant views. There was a wood fire in the living room, the stove fire in the kitchen, and the hot water heater (called the “geezer”) outside. On the other side of Mount Inyangani is Mozambique. Now that I am here, it seems so ordinary to have Mozambique just around the corner.

As I waited for the bread to toast on the stove top, I stood at the kitchen window, and ten feet away was a bird out of a picture book, chirping happily in the pouring rain. It was flitting from branch to branch on a bush with bell like red flowers hanging downward off of long stems The bird had a bright yellow beak and irridescent blue wings, chirping as it clicked its beak into the center of the flowers.

Breakfast was bacon, fried tomatoes, toast, scrambled eggs, passion fruit juice, and marmalade. We ate it at the dining room table looking out at the garden, then sat in front of the fire and talked about archaeology and our children, the photographs Louis doesn’t have of himself and the hundred other things which kept us talking from noon Friday until Sunday evening.

I feel quite at home here, drink water from the tap, shop at the local supermarket, and send you all emails. There is another parallel life going on around me, the African life, which does not exist at home, and things are much simpler. Suddenly one wonders why we need so much stuff when most everything can be done much simpler. Aside from the baboons on the railroad track and the slow stream of Africans walking along the sides of the road, many of the sights and feels and sounds are things I have seen elsewhere in the world. I think during our drive to Zambia this week, if it comes off as planned, I will feel much more of Africa. I can see the thatched Shona huts along the road, but have no feel for what life is like in them. Maybe I will learn, though this trip is so pleasant and fun that my ambitions are limited. I’m learning a little Shona from the maid’s daughter and the maid, and Louis’s driver, Givemore.