Downtown Harare

I apologize in advance- this entry has some language which might be offensive to some. I am only quoting words that were actually said by someone else over 20 years ago. The word Kaffir is an offensive term used here to describe native Africans. Its origins lie in Arabic ("Infidel"), and was brought to South Africa by the Dutch who had colonies in predominantly Muslim Java. It isn't a term that I have ever used personally, nor do I intend to.

The other day we had to travel to downtown Harare to visit the French Embassy. Mikaela had to get her Schengan Visa forms, and the French Embassy was located in the heart of urban Harare.

This was my first time to the city center, and seeing the dichotomy between what once was and what exists now, was fascinating. Buildings that were at the cutting edge of technology, now stood rusting in their towering frames. Medians that had flourishing plants and trees were mostly bare with the exception of a few flowering bushes. Street light poles had fading paint, and the stoplights did little to enforce order in the streets. The Law Courts, once the center of justice in a flourishing country, now were the instruments of corruption. The most ironic of all was the building opposite the courts which had a barred courtyard with a statue of Cecil Rhodes standing with a raised arm pointing forward. Yet for so long this country, which, purged of his name, has slid backwards.

When we arrived, Bob ran into the French embassy with his EU passport. As we were sitting in the car, we heard sirens and saw a police car followed by some black sedans. I was holding my camera, but Mikaela reached over the seat and pressed it beneath the vision line of the window. “It might be Mugabe’s convoy- don’t take any pictures.”

The convoy weaved in and out of stopped traffic as cars immediately pulled to the side of the road. It turned out it was a lower minister because it was a small group of vehicles, but none the less it was fascinating to watch a bustling road come to a grinding halt. Mandy went on to tell me how right after independence in 1980, her grandmother “Nana” had picked her up from work one day. What happened next nearly killed both of them.

While they were driving, they heard the sirens of Mugabe’s convoy and pulled to the side of the road. Because of the large group of vehicles, it was clear that it was Mugabe. After the first few military trucks had passed, there was a gap in front of Mugabe’s black sedan. Nana gunned the engine, pulled in the gap, rolled down her window, and stuck her two fingers out at Mugabe’s cars behind her (a reversed peace sign is like flipping the bird in the States).

“Bloody Kaffirs!”
“Nana! What are you doing?! Pull over, were going to get killed! Stop it!”
Nana continued cursing, and as she did so, an open truck with soldiers and guns tried to overtake them. Right as they were about to come along side, Nana veered left, and turned down a street and sped away. Mandy was livid.

“Nana, you cant do stuff like that, you could have gotten us killed! This isn’t Rhodesia anymore, people have been shot for less!”

As a side note, a friend of ours who served as an LDS missionary here in Zim once had his camera out when Mugabe’s convoy passed. He took pictures, and they took him to prison. He had to be rescued by the US Embassy and the LDS Mission President.

When we got the necessary papers, we drove out of town passing a Holiday Inn Hotel.

Who on earth comes here on holiday?

Oh wait... we did!

Milk, Shaken

This is a picture of Kean's classroom, with Kean dressed in is Form 6 white Sweater. This is what they wear all the time!

It was the boys last day of exams and Mikaela and I wanted to take them out and reward them for their hard work.

Side Note: I feel like I really missed out by not growing up here. For some reason the Academic grade scale of the Cambridge System is as follows:

A= 75% and above
B= 65%
C= 55%

Aka- Either they:
1. Grade ridiculously hard,
2. Like to think the high pass rate is reflective of the abundant supply of bright minded youths, or
3. They just like to reward plain mediocrity.

Needless to say, despite the clear “advantages” in the system it was amusing to hear Kean attempt to explain how his 28% on an exam was OK. “It’s because my teacher’s crap.” No matter where you are- some things just don’t change. . .

Anyhoo, we wanted to reward the boys for their (up until that point) assumed hard work, and took them out to ice cream. We went to a little shopping area where there were a few burger and pizza joints next to a popular supermarket (Yes, all of the above establishments DO exist here) and went to “Creamie Inn”. To the American audience, it was basically the Dairy Queen of Zimbabwe- minus the concept of edible ice cream all together.

It was essentially soft serve with the different flavors scooped or drizzled on top. Not particularly in the mood for soft serve, I opted for what seemed to be the next most universal item on the menu: a chocolate milkshake. It was to my surprise then, when I was handed a plastic cup with a straw containing what seemed to merely be frothy milk with a little bit of chocolate syrup mixed in.

Guess what? It WAS frothy milk with a little bit of chocolate syrup mixed in. True to form, they had given me precisely what they had advertised. Milk, shaken. One sip added another dimension: You know the white frosting that is on ice cream cakes in the States? The milk was essentially that stuff- melted.

Back to the window I go to return the milk shake, but only to find out that since I had used the plastic cup, I would still be charged full price. However, if I wanted the same cup to be re-used and filled with Ice cream instead, it would be free of charge.

They didn’t care about the extra ice cream wasted, but rather cared about the plastic cup. It then occurred to me that the ice cream was most likely a domestic product of Zimbabwe, and the plastic cups were clearly imported. This difference in the origins of the materials meant that the cups were more important: it was more of a cost to waste a plastic cup than it was to lose more ice cream.

After all the cultural analyzation and extended macro-geo-economical thought. . .

the ice cream was still awful.

Oh well, you can’t expect Zim to get everything right.

Dinner with the Bells and Night Driving

Evidently the best way to fish in Zimbabwe is to drag an Elephant’s head behind your 4X4, attach it to your boat, motor to where the fishing is good, and anchor for the night.

And I thought you just needed some bait and a hook.

Man, I was way off!

The other night Kaela and I had dinner with the Bell family, some of our favorite people here in Zimbabwe. Their daughter Kirstin (age 20) lives up in Chirundu (on the Zimbabwe-Zambia border) in what seems to be a game park/farm. Hearing her encounters about Elephants, Hippos, Crocodile, Leopard, Lion, Cheetah, poachers, and fishing for Tiger fish made my raccoon encounters seem pathetic.

“At least they can wreak havoc below your knee” I added.

Her stories made Harare seem like the center of civilization as far as I was concerned.
She talked about how this massive Baboon always breaks into their house, and how her boyfriend had to hold the door against another one while she had to fight the first off. While Baboons like to break into their house, she makes it clear they don’t get into their garden because, well, she shoots them with her shotgun. Summing it up concisely, Kirstin just said “Ooh, I hate Bobos”.

She went on to say, “Oh and did I forget to mention how lion have eaten 6 ½ people in the past few weeks in Chirundu? You can’t walk outside, or go from the general store to the church without a gun because of the lion, and one of the attacks happened right outside the National Park office. They just shut the door and listened as the guy was eaten… Ja, crazy man. Once when my friend put out a bonfire to pack up his camp, and there was a Lion as far away as you are to me just watching him… eish man, it was so scary. Like the time when this Elephant shouted at me and charged and Mark (the boyfriend) just watched him come at the car while it just chugged along in 2nd gear. Ja, I was so scared then…”

The stories she had were incredible, and at the end of the night, they invited me to go up there in the first week of August. I am way stoked!

The rest of the night however turned a bit tense. As we were chatting in the living room drinking the customary tea we were all put on edge as we heard banging somewhere closeby. We all froze. The curtains were drawn, and the youngest daughter age 11 started giggling and sunk low in the couch and said, “I’m getting down because when you open the windows, I don’t want to get shot!” She was dead serious, and yet giggling.






Keith, the Dad (and ex professional rugby player), turned on the flood lights and looked outside, but the banging continued. They then let the dogs out, but they didn’t find anything either. They all guessed it was the neighbor trying to open the front gate next door, but we were still on edge as Mikaela and I drove out of their perimeter fence and on the way home. To get home, however, we had to drive on a road that crossed a “Vlei” or deserted field (pictured above during the day). Unfortunately there was no other way home except through the vlei. Mikaela had the car in top gear as we sped through there because she said, ”I’ve heard of stories where they come out of the vlei and stand in the middle of the road to stop you. It’s then that they shoot you and take your car.”

The car rattled as it sped across potholes filled with broken brick, and plowed through hazy pockets of smoke caused by some fires in the vlei. The headlights made the smoke block our view of the rest of the road, and each time we drove through one, I half expected to see a pair of eyes and a mouth open with sudden fear.

“No matter what, we are not stopping for anything.” We drove through each of the deserted intersections with red lights in fear of stopping, and raced through the Msasa lined streets. The large gnarled trees, illumined by the pale glow of the old headlights, cast uncertain shadows on the various protective walls they lined. Because there are no functioning street lights its hard to tell, especially in Africa, if that is just a flitting shadow or a person. There is always that fear that you won’t see someone at night until it is too late.

Once we entered Chisipite, I looked at my hands and they were white as I let go of the door handle.

Alarm Systems

There is a constant apprehension, if unmentioned and yet overstated, of “them”. You can call them “Opportunists”, “Desperate”, or just “Unfortunate” but the sad fact is, you always walk, drive, sleep, and even eat with the silent reminders that this society is used to their pervasive influence. Every night before we go to bed, we go through the house checking each window, locking each door, to make sure that “they” don’t come in.

Zimbabwe has something like 90% unemployment, and in a stratified society without a middle class, the poor are really poor and everyone else can be considered really rich by comparison. Add the unemployment to dismal economic times, shortage of food, and classic African politics, and you have a group of people that are willing to steal to survive. The best example of this was when the guy smashed through the car window two years ago and stole my computer bag my first night in Zim. He came out of nowhere, and practically disappeared in the long grass along the road. He probably isn’t a mean guy, just desperate.

The first challenge to security lies in the location of the property. The outer edge of the Lane’s property borders a “vlei” (Flay) or an open undeveloped field with similar dry tall grass. They are supposedly very dangerous to walk through alone as squatters live there, and opportunists often hide there. Surrounding the property line is an electric fence with multiple wires “that just give a shock and set off an alarm inside. Its illegal to have anything lethal in Zimbabwe,” Kaela’s Grandpa told me. I may have mentioned this before but on the side of the property that runs along the road outside their house, there is a ten foot wall with a gate that only opens from a button inside the house. The thing is, when there isn’t power, we have to go and slide it open manually- which means other people can too.



Which brings me to the alarm system. On the perimeter of the house lies several heat and motion sensors that when turned on, report to a central console in Bob and Mandy’s (Mikaela’s parents’) room when something is detected. See the picture above of the front of the house with the motion sensor in the corner. Floodlights that illuminate the entire yard likewise are controlled from their bedroom. The house is divided into two sections: the bedrooms and the rest of the house (kitchen, living room, TV room, etc etc). Dividing the two sections is a small passage way that has 2 doors that are locked at night. While each room has a sensor in it, the house is armed so that at night we can freely walk in between the bedrooms (which open only into a common hallway). But the moment we step foot into the passageway to the rest of the house, the alarm goes off.



Additionally each of the windows are covered with reinforced steel grating (above), so that there isn’t a space larger than an 8.5 X 11 paper through which a person could crawl through. Aside from the windows, each of the bolted solid wood doors facing the outside has a separate steel counterpart with multiple padlocks.

Thus, each night before we go to bed, we go through “the routine”. We begin in the “rest of the house” (Living room and Kitchen) close all the curtains, and check that all the windows and doors are locked. We then move into the bedroom area, close the curtains, lock the windows as well, and set the alarm.

As a side note, how then do we have ventilation if the house is completely closed? Evidently, it was law at some point to have ventilation grates put into the walls of each outward facing wall. So imagine building a wall with bricks and replacing some with a metal grate. In each of the rooms of the Harare homes I’ve been in, there are several of these grates facing outward. So how do you keep the heating inside? In a climate with perfect temperatures, there isn’t a need for insulated walls or central air or heating- so no worries on the energy costs here!

Should the alarm go off, Bob immediately gets a phone call from a security company asking if they need to send an armed guard. (If we call the police, they often say that they don’t have petrol and need you to pick them up first). The guard can be here in 2 minutes if there is a problem. Plus, Kaela’s Grandpa who lives next door fought in the Rhodesian Bush War…

Sleeping under these conditions at first can be a bit unnerving. Every time the dogs bark, you listen. Every creak in the house, you listen. Kaela the other night was worried because she thought she heard saws at work and had a hard time sleeping.
Yes, there is a real threat (Roro and Grandpa had an intruder the other night, and Mikaela has a friend that was tied up in her own home once), but after a while, after I think about the 10 ft walls, electric fences, alarms, steel doors, dogs, padlocks, the Rhodesian War Veteran and armed support. . .

I’m not so worried anymore.

Pies, Rand and Radio Licenses

Yesterday when we were “at the shops” Liam (Kaela’s younger brother) and I went to get some meat pies while Mikaela waited with the car with Janet and Esther whom we had picked up. Mikaela’s Grandma Rosemary (Roro) told me the other day that when they were in America they saw Marie Calendars and were excited to eat some “proper” pies in the States. To their dismay, they found that all the pies were “sweet pies” instead of the normal “savory” pies you get here. Since I had never had a “proper meat pie” she said I had to have one soon.

I was pleasantly surprised when I did. The closest thing we have in the States is the chicken pot pies (which I never really liked when I was little) but meat pies are a bit simpler in that instead of veggies and peas and noodles mixed with the meat, its just savory meat with a little sauce baked in a flaky pastry. Forget the microwaveable aluminum tin, forget the cardboard box wrapping and nutrition facts, its just a circular croissant under a heating lamp next to the donuts at the bakery. And its the simplicity that makes them really good! Add the fact that they are $1.20, and I have now found the source of my lunches for the rest of my stay here!

When we paid for the pies at the counter I discovered another little interesting tidbit about Zimbabwe. Because the country now runs solely on the US Dollar, it has plenty of cash on hand, but hardly any coinage. Instead of change, they give you a credit note saying “You can reclaim this for 85 cents worth of goods at this store”. Consequently, whenever you pay for something, you search your wallet for any little credit notes that you might have received from an earlier visit and use them when you shop. Despite this, when I paid with a US $20 bill, and was supposed to receive $13.50 in change, the guy gave me 13 USD and a coin for 5 South African Rand.

?

As we were heading back to the car, I saw an African man with a neon green vest (with reflector strips) walking around looking inside each of the cars. “The Radio Licenses,” Liam said. “He’s checking if people have radios in their cars, and making them pay the licensing fee.”
“So you guys don’t have a radio in your car?”
“Nope- we don’t want to pay the fee!”

When we got back into the car, I looked to where the radio console would usually be and noticed for the first time since I have been here that it had been stripped out completely.

Isn’t it funny that Zimbabwe can’t feed it’s population, yet it employs men patrolling the parking lots looking for radio licenses…

Seasons in Harare

The seasons here are a bit unusual when compared to the States. Instead of Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, the Zimbabwean flora decided to (unsurprisingly) do their own thing.

Because we are on the other side of the equator, the seasons are reversed here when compared to the States. Because the climates are relatively mild, the year is mainly divided into wet season and dry season. The wet season, Summer, begins when the rains come in November/December through March, and the dry season, Winter, from April till August. What is different lies in the fact that there are two disparate plant populations….

Think about it- there are two groups of plants that are here: the indigenous vegetation, and the foreign vegetation. The foreign vegetation is the kind of plants that are cultivated and consumed by most of the world (Corn, Potatoes, Fruit trees, etc etc- in addition to imported trees) and the indigenous vegetation are the types of plants that dominate most of the scenery. Undoubtedly, these two groups of plants are still arguing about what order things should be in.

For the foreign plants, they follow the same patterns that their northern relatives do- Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall. How else could important foods like fruit and corn produce? But for the indigenous plants, instead of having Fall and Spring separated by Winter and Summer, someone decided to put the two best seasons of the year together so that Fall follows Winter and Spring happens right after Fall. The best example of this can be found in the Msasa trees (pronounced Ma-SAH-sa) because they are green during Summer and Winter, turn brilliant colors and fall in the indigenous Autumn, but then immediately sprout flowers and new leaves in the Spring. In the meantime, the foreign plants have their Spring has usual and follow their regular cycle.

The other great thing about Harare’s weather lies in the geography. We are at the same elevation as Provo, UT (5,000 something feet) but are much closer to the equator. This results in an extremely wide range of year-round temperatures: 50-90 degrees Farenheit. That’s it. Plus, the humidity is at a constant level of perfect.

Thus Zimbabwe has two Falls, an incredibly mild Winter, a fantastic elongated Spring, and a warm Summer. Think about that the next time you freeze at Christmas!

The best part about this is- we get to be here to watch the Msasas and Jacarandas explode with colors in the next few weeks.

Arrival to Zimbabwe

“I’ll tell you what, these people can do anything if they put their mind to it”.
We drive past a once tall public light pole, now rusted and bent nearly parallel to the ground.
“They can break anything if they want to.”
We swerve to miss a pothole and narrowly miss a massive lorry barreling down the two lane road.
“I’ll tell you, if anyone wants to test how long something can last, just send it to Zimbabwe and the people here will find a way to destroy it. If it lasts, then you know you have a good product!”
A several hundred pound re-bar enforced cement rubbish bin lies over turned in the center divider.

This was my welcoming scene to Zimbabwe, and yet I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Comparing the sprawling brown veld laced with decaying highways to the comparatively squeaky clean roads of the 110 to LAX, I became aware at just how raw life is here when compared to the manicured suburbia I had just left.

Monday night at 10:45 PM, our flight had left from LAX for a red eye flight to DC. Flying then on Ethiopia Air, we had flown from DC to Rome where we refueled at bright eyed and bushy tailed time of 12:30 AM. (On the way to Rome we flew over France the night before Bastille day which was a blast as we watched hundreds of firework shows from 33,000 feet in the air.) From Rome we flew over the Mediterranean over parts of Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan and transferred in the beautifully green Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa (Elevation 7,700 feet- who knew?!). From “Addis” we flew south over Kenya, Tanzania (saw Kilomanjaro shrouded in clouds), Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and finally entered Zimbabwe where we flew over a golden brown canvas of dry grasslands with creamy dollops of puffy clouds stretching to the horizon.

Thus, four flights, three continents, two hair-raising layovers and 1 solid day of travel later, we arrived at the Harare International airport in one piece and miraculously, all our luggage made it with us. (Go TSA Luggage Locks!)

While the term “International Airport” might imply to the average American a mega-structure filled with thousands of people, the Harare Airport has just two baggage claim carousels, and even less operating bathrooms. Even when the bags began to come out of the ramp, the carousels came to a grinding halt every so often as the airport suffered from random powercuts. Add that to the fact that the four visa officers had to wait on eachother to process travelers because they were using the single piece of carbon paper between them, and you had a classic Sub-saharan attempt at modernity. Luggage in tow, we passed under the smiling image of President Mugabe as he gazed over probably the only semi-functional public facility in the country.

Bob and Kean met us and took us to the indestructible Toyota Venture where we loaded our luggage and began the drive home. First thing Mikaela did was to ask to drive the car home, which made me cringe a bit as she hadn’t driven here for quite some time! We agreed to let her drive when we got closer, but first we had to find enough petrol to even make it home. Two non-functioning petrol stations later, we finally found a place with fuel to sell, and we were on our way. Not before long, Kaela was at the wheel mistaking the “windscreen wipers” for the “indicators”.

Rule #1 in driving in Zimbabwe: Drunks are the only ones who drive in straight lines. As we drove into Chisipite, the potholes made the driving more like an ultimate game of 4X4 off-road hopscotch. Swerving into oncoming traffic, avoiding the ditches on the left side of the road, Kaela drove brilliantly all the while operating the clutch, gas and brakes with the opposite feet and hands. When we pulled into the gate and drove within the 10 foot walls around the Lane’s home, I was glad we had made it safe. Images of the green sprawling gardens bathed in easy going sunlight contrasted sharply with the first time I came here two years ago. Which brings me to
Rule #2, Lock your windows and doors when driving at all times, and Rule #3, don’t stop at stoplights at night. Arriving last time with my laptop and passport stolen, I was very happy this time to not only make it with my citizenship but my clothing as well!

Greeting us at the house was Janet and Esther, the Lane’s two live in maids and Nyasha, the full time gardener. When I say live in, I mean they live on the Lane property with their families in homes built on the 1.5 acre lot. They cook, clean, and garden for the Lane’s while the Lane’s provide for the servant’s children and schooling fees. Mikaela sees Janet like a mother as she has known her since Mikaela was 5. Zim wouldn’t be home for Mikaela without Janet and Esther as a major part of it

We spent the rest of the day cleaning up, saying hi to visitors who dropped by, and enjoying the best Macaroni and cheese I’ve ever had. (The secret is making two different cheese sauces from cheddar and mozzorella, and layer the two with tomatoes and thick bacon. Top with cheese, toast till the top is brown, and voila.)

I will try to write more soon, but until more from “the left side”,

Take care,

Christian