Harare

So we spent the next week in Harare basically just living it large. In the mornings myself and Mark would play tennis on the court at the bottom of the garden, followed by a very quick dip in the freezing swimming pool to cool down before shooting some pool. Then we’d head out to get some groceries or Mark would visit some local friends.

Zimbabwe certainly is suffering pretty badly with the current economic situation, so the electricity and water supplies to the house were often cut (although both were restored towards the end of the week). But having no electricity didn’t really affect us, as we ate out each night and returning in the evening we’d just use torches to find our way to bed.

One of the biggest problems, especially in Harare, is getting motor fuel. Mark had arranged with a friend to have the use of a pick-up truck for the week, and an old girlfriend, Ezeria, had managed to arrange sufficient fuel. Mark’s house is out in the suburbs, so a car was a necessity, but due to the fuel shortages there are very few cars on the roads (there were groups of local people at all the major junctions trying to hitch lifts, many of them professionals in suits).

Naturally enough Mark took us to all the really fancy restaurants, so we ate extremely well. The restaurants always had one or two things unavailable from the menu, but still managed to offer plenty of options. The local prices are crazy low too, which is great for us ‘backpackers’, although it certainly doesn’t feel like backpacking this past week (there's really a two-tier price system - one price for residents and another price for non-residents, often up to 10 times more). But since both Mark and Ezeria are residents we managed to get local prices for most things.

On our last night in Harare myself and Mark are driving into the city for a lads night out after visiting the wife of one of Mark’s local friends (and leaving Sarah and Ezeria behind) when the pick-up truck breaks down. We try over and over to contact Ezeria, and the house we left them in, but one of the other things badly hit in Zim at the moment is the telecommunication networks, and so we just can’t get through. Eventually a couple of white Zimbabweans stop to help us out, and then offer to drive us back to Mark’s house. It turns out they’re both rather drunk, as the girl passenger (Cindy) hands us a freshly opened bottle of white wine, before casually pointing out that her boyfriend (Philly), who is currently driving whilst smoking a fag, has actually only got one arm.

But we arrive safely back at Mark’s house, and naturally invite our saviors in for a drink by way of thanks. Philly fills us in on the story of how he lost his arm – it had been eaten by a crocodile about 7 years previously, during a drunken night-time river cruise he was on with his mates. It also turns out that both of them are self-proclaimed racialists (their term for racist), and tell of how her grandparent’s and his parent’s farms had both been stolen by the Government, and were both now in tatters and producing basically no produce. I didn’t get too involved in the conversation, as I know little to nothing of the history of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe but it was certainly all very interesting to hear their side of story (and Philly did genuinely seem to be a decent bloke, and far less ‘racialist’ than his girlfriend Cindy).

Anyway, they insist on driving back to their house to get some fuel and then drop Mark back to the pick-up truck (we thought it might simply have run out of petrol, as the fuel gauge was knackered). But once back at the truck it turns out not to be fuel, and so the Rhodies kindly tow Mark back to his house. The next day we’d planned on driving to Victoria Falls in Ezeria’s car so we no longer needed the pick-up truck, so it was all quite good timing from our point-of-view really (although I missed a Friday night out with Mark in downtown Harare).

The next day we relaxed for the morning and afternoon before heading off to Victoria Falls in the late afternoon (after a short stop at Mark's father's graveside to toast his memory).