The Matopos
Cave Art
Great Zim
Harare Gardens
Hello all, welcome to our 58th week and 400th day traveling!
We have been a bit lazy and not learned a word of Shona, but hey this is Zimbabwe, EVERYBODY speaks English!
Zimbabwe is similar in many respects to the other crazy dictator run countries we have visited such as Venezuela and "mystery island". I do think they all collaborate to see how the government can continue to beat down its people.
One great comment we heard from a white Zimbabwean in his 50's who was born here is
"Mugabe's unintentionally has brought the whites and blacks together" - due to the oppression of all people. We read back home about how he is taking white farms and giving them to blacks - this is happening and in many times violent ways, however the government has lead many atrocities which we don't often hear about in the west, but are very factual such as genocide of poor villagers. One occasion which is well documented is 25,000 villagers killed to make room for farmland - the soldiers involved were trained by the North Koreans - sounds crazy, but Google it and you'll find a lot of info. Also, a few years ago 400 villagers were killed as a diamond mind was discovered in their village - I guess it would have just been too hard to say its time to move... We don't typically hear about this stuff back home, but it happening and seemingly the United Nations is turning a blind eye.
In Zimbabwe, power outages are daily, there is limited health care and education is scare. As in Venezuela, many teachers are striking or not working any more as they aren't paid enough or paid at all. The government is nationalizing everything and when they do, it just falls apart, such as with power plants.
Mugabe is now trying to pass a law that for any foreign owned company, the government is to be given 51% free. The operating costs are all to come out of the company's 49% ownership. Hmmm, so essentially all foreign companies will be closing up shop if this passes, which it very much looks to do!
The people however are similar to Zambians and super friendly. I can't remember one time when we have been hassled walking down the street in Zimbabwe and most people say hello, how are you, when they walk past!
I won't comment on the villages as we haven't seen too many, but the cities are very nice. Bulawayo could easily be a small Midwest city in the US, however out of the early 80's. The country was very prosperous back in the day, but the government doesn't seem to be looking to improve things. As successful farms were taken off of white owners, the agricultural output has diminished. Regardless of race on who owns these farms, if the government touches them, all just wilts away.
From our point of view, Zim (as its called) has been a very hospitable and easy place to travel. Some places are a bit difficult and mildly out of reach without our own transport, but we have been managing very well.
Thus far we have been in Victoria Falls Town > Bulawayo > Matopos National Park > Masvingo > Harare
Tuesday - Crossing the Boarder bridge: After the Lion Encounter in Zambia, we crossed over to Victoria Falls town in Zimbabwe and wrote you the last blog. We really jumped in the deep end in Zimbabwe, unsure where to go, one reason is our Lonely Planet guide book seemed to be written 10 years ago and secondly because most places were quite far and required your own transport or a serious amount of time and patience. After chatting with a few locals we built our game plan and relaxed a bit.
Wednesday - Combis (minibus): We were out the door by 6am and on our way to the minibus station, which turned out to be a van on the side of the two lane highway. By now we had the trick, sit in the front and you have much more room. These vans which hold around 20 people, often very tight together are a great place to talk and chat with locals. We really got a good feel for the place talking to people on these minibuses. We arrived in Bulawayo (pop 1 million) around 3pm and were soon out the door to book a tour/safari the next day in the Matopos National Park. Just as we were at our wits end as most places were out of business or not running tours due to the lack of tourists in Zim, we found a great lady called Mrs Bell in the tourist information office who sorted everything for us including logistics for our trip to the next place (Great Zim). That night we enjoyed dinner at the sports complex next to our hostel.
Thursday - Matopos: Matobo National Park or Matopos as its nicknamed was a very interesting and beautiful place. We were told the history of Rhodesia and Zimbabwe including many of the Shona stories. The park was littered with huge granite boulders and much of the day was spent on safari animal spotting. We stopped at one point to look at cave paintings which were approximately 20,000 years old and quite good art, even for today! Zimbabwe seems to have a horrible problem with poaching as we barely saw any animals and this was one of their main national parks. Rhino horns can fetch as much as $250,000 in China - so you can imagine what's happening in this poor country. We were able to see a small family of giraffes, warthogs, and several antelope. The best part of the trip was talking with our guide who was very open about Zimbabwe.
Friday - Great Zimbabwe: Seems they shorten everything in Zim. Well they call this place Great Zim. Zimbabwe in the Shona language means - Big Stone Houses, named after the UNESCO site - Great Zimbabwe. Built more than a thousand years ago, making it the second oldest archeological site in Africa - after Egypt's many places. The Zimbabwean government will tell you this place was built by the Shona, but Marina and I believe an alternative theory that this was built by Arab or Chinese traders. The Shona seemed to occupy it for several hundreds of years, but they only lived in mud huts inside the stone walls. Given there are no similar places where the Shona lived around Kenya or Tanzania and even before this time the Chinese were pretty good at "wall" building, I think this seems easy to figure out. However it's quite a sensitive political topic.
Saturday - Cooking in Harare: I haven't mentioned about this, but Zimbabwe seems to imports everything. As a result the prices for food and many things are very similar to back in the US. We would be stuck in Harare for a few days so having a very nice kitchen at our disposal we decided to cook. It's been a while, but we whipped up a delicious spaghetti meal.
Sunday - Tree lined streets: Harare is a really pretty city, but just needs a bit of cleanup. Yesterday we walked all through the city enjoyed its central Harare Gardens and National Gallery. The hostel we are staying in has a lot of fun backpackers so we heard stories of travelers enjoying West Africa, and even getting through Nigeria.
Now we are off to Malawi tomorrow morning. Malawi's people have a reputation for the friendliest in Sub-Saharan Africa, so we will see how it goes.
Until next time,
Dan and Marina
No comments:
Post a Comment