WAKING IN AFRICA

HARARE

Sunday morning, January 4th, after an excellent, restful sleep, Marshal came to greet us and to welcome us back after 19 years away. He looked much the same but with less hair. We went back to his house to greet the rest of his family and to hear how Shem, his oldest son, had miraculously escaped a brush with death as a result of an obstructed bowel and then complications. He is recovering well, but has a tough road still ahead. It was just enjoyable to wander around the property and just dream back in time. Few things had changed, but the 19 years of growth sure showed in the massive trees and mature vegetation. We had a chance to quickly logon to the internet and communicate with family and friends a little more thoroughly, on the semi-hi-speed internet connection.

HEADING TO SOUTH AFRICA FOR CONFERENCE

We only spent the one night in Harare and then needed to be on the road. TEAM Zimbabwe regularly holds its annual conference in Tshipise, near Messina, South Africa, for a combination of dependable electricity, food and the opportunity to buy staple needs to take back, in these difficult times, to Zimbabwe. Because it is a significant drive and slow border process, we decided to drive to the Lion and Elephant Hotel, by the Bubi River, only an hour or so from the border for an early start the next morning. We got to the hotel just before dusk so that we could enjoy a relaxed sunset walk and a leisurely supper in a very quaint old world setting. It has been relatively well looked after and served very nice food for supper and breakfast, before we left the next morning. Monday morning’s one hour drive to the border was the calm before the storm. Yet as we drove those two days, we could see the Zimbabwean “situation” reflected by what we saw along the road. People were selling almost anything that they thought others would buy ... the usual tomatoes and veggies, but also mushrooms, plastic bottles for drinking water (in a cholera crisis),petrol, firewood and even Mopane worms. It was apparent, more than ever before, that people were milling around the shoulder of the road almost continuously along the way. Maybe waiting for a ride or giving up hope for a ride and choosing to just walk. There were also more “scotch carts” or “ox carts” (mostly pulled by donkeys, though) than I remember even seeing years ago. Finally, there were wrecked cars and carcasses of abandoned cars every few miles. It seemed like after an accident, the owner would walk away (or be carried away) and no one ever returned to salvage the wreck, regardless of its state. The longer it had sat there, the more picked over or stripped it looked, till finally some were just rusty skeletons that didn’t even have sheet metal.

As we arrived in Beit Bridge what had been a few “road” milling people became a swarm and the scene became quite chaotic. The border process became an “everyman for themselves” situation with people trying all manner of tricks to jump ahead in the long, hot line-ups of the throngs of Zimbabweans trying to get to South Africa. They are going, hopefully to find the things that they desperately need back home, or that bring top dollar when sold. Or perhaps they are going to see friends and relatives in the Diaspora of exiled Zimbabweans. But beside those multitudes in the line-ups, there were people milling ALL OVER and we wondered, “where are they going” and “what are they doing here”, because they seem to have no purpose or apparent reason to not be on their way. It seemed like a “frontier town” with all the apparent activity and chaos, but such little progress. After several hours we were on our way on the smooth, tidy roads of South Africa. But to our surprise we were thrown back into a similar chaotic scene on arrival in Messina. It was once a sleepy little “Dorp” (Afrikaans for town), in the past, but now it is a hectic boomtown, driven by the Zimbabwean situation and its easy location to quickly return with new, valuable goods. We made a quick stop to buy some very nice cold drinks, not available north of the border, drop off the ladies, who wanted to shop, and then completed a short 30 minute drive to Tshipise.