This is the twenty second in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.

Part 21
8/4/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe The next day I went to work for a little bit but then met Lillith in town. It actually wasn’t that simple because I thought that Clemens, the CHIYSAP chauffeur was going to give me a ride into town but after waiting for an hour I hiked to the bus stop with my heavy pack, really pissed off by now, and caught a bus into town and the a taxi to the Sable Lodge, a backpacker’s place in town where Lillith was staying. We took a taxis to Mbare, where the long distance buses leave from. Once out of the taxi in those places you are instantly surrounded by men trying to herd you into their bus. It is really annoying and they are just trying to get your money. I just picked out a bus that looked decent and we got on. Only 60z dollars to Bulawayo, a 7 hour bus trip. The ride was uneventful, just long. Those cheap buses stop a lot along the way and at each stop the bus is surrounded by people holding up their wares to the bus window and banging on the bus and sssing at you to buy something. It is nice to be able to get a snack without leaving the bus, but some won’t take no for an answer. I bought a drink and some roasted maize but it wasnt very good and I ended up throwing it out the window. People have no compunction about littering so it is becoming a bad habit for me to just toss things on the ground when I’m done. No one else seems to care, Chitungwiza is covered with litter and trash which is seldom collected and more often burned in the gutters alongside the road and it the open fields.

We got to Bulawayo after dark and had no idea where to go or where we were. We went into a restaurant called the Checkered Flag to regroup and figure out where to stay for the night. It was a sleazy joint but was full of motorcycle paraphernalia (Bulawayo is apparently known for its races). We looked up some places in Lonely Planet and then got a taxi to take us to a pay phone to call some of the hostels. The only one who’s number was still in service and had a double with the YWCA so the taxi dropped us there. It was huge and only 40z each. Our room was nice, it had a sink and four beds so we got to choose which one was the most comfy. There were two showers and two bathtubs in our section but when I went to take a shower I discovered that that none of them had locks and there was no security whatsoever in this communal (men and women) bathing area. I wanted a shower so bad that I didn’t care, at least it was hot. Afterwards we wandered around trying to find a Chinese restaurant, but even together we didn’t feel that safe so we ended up at Nando’s (again). I feel like I eat there all the time but at least I know that the food is always good. After dinner we just went to bed. Bulawayo is lacking in nightlife as I’ve discussed before.

To be continued…

This is the twenty first in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.

Part 21
8/4/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe I got up around dinner time and tried to go out to the bathroom holding a candle because it was dark. It was windy though and I hardly made it out the door. This was the precise moment for which I brought a flashlight but alas it was back in Zengeza 3 where it would do me no good. I ended up carrying a box of matches out into the darkness and entering that scary, smelly concrete building without sight, hoping I wouldn’t encounter anything unpleasant or at worst, fall in! Once inside, I had to light several matches to get my pants down and position myself correctly. It was frustrating but looking back I suppose it would have been a pretty funny sight. Dinner was much the same as lunch but I had to ask for chicken because all that was on the table was goat meat and intestines. After dinner the women sat around the fire in the cooking hut and the men sat outside around the fire. Not feeling welcome at either, I did a brief stint at both and then went to bed, both fires were smoky anyway. I wanted to get up to go to church the next morning but didn’t feel like getting up. No sponge bath, it seemed too much trouble. I watched TV and ate porridge while they had their family meeting and then we went home, stopping for beer and gas on the way, we passed small monkeys on the side of the road, playing in the grass. Francis said that they were ‘clever’ and that it was bad luck to run them over.

We dropped uncle in the Harare city center to catch a lift to whatever suburb he lives in and dropped Dorothy off nearby in Zengeza 3, we were home by 5pm. The journey was much more interesting by day. The village is miles and miles out into the bush but it is still a large fairly well off area. We got gas in Umvuma where there is a big gold mine. I was glad to be home, people get on my nerves sometimes and that was a day when I wanted everyone to just shut up and leave me alone. John took me out that night but it has been a while since this happened (only just now writing it down) and I don’t remember what we did. The trip to the village was during the last weekend in July. We must have gone to see a movie or went to the Pensoua, a bar that the motorcycle boys frequent.

Continued in Part 22

This is the twentieth in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.

Part 20
8/4/97, Chitungwiza, ZimbabweI’ve been writing letters so by the time I think about writing in this journal, my hands are tired. The village experience was trying to say the least. After my bath Francis drov me into the main part of the village which is centered around a Catholic mission. There is a general store, two hospitals and a good school all relatively close together. So this village is actually well off. I some areas of the country, people have to walk up to 20km to get to a school or a medical clinic. After the drive we took a walk out into the bush, through cattle fields and down a narrow dirt track. The ‘forest’ consists of low trees and scrub brush. This particular place is said to be the home of one white baboon and if you say anything negative while in it you will get lost and have bad luck. Although most everyone is a Christian, many traditional beliefs still exist, there are witch doctors, or traditional healers. Cats are believed to be evil so no one owns one for a pet. Many animals are sacred or said to have particular powers, the white baboon and monkeys among them.

After the walk we came back to the homestead, which consists of several buildings centered around a well. The main house has electricity but none of the others do and the toilets are holes cut into cement over a deep pit, one for men and one for women, separate from the house. There is a hut especially for cooking that has a fire in the middle going all day. The whole area is fenced in and the chickens with their small broods and the dogs run free within this enclosure. Usually only Francis’ mother and son Tafara live there and maybe one other person but this weekend most of the family was there to sort out his father’s affairs. He died a few months ago. Family relations are quite complex around here. The terms uncle, aunt, cousin, mother and father are used to mean a variety of different relationships, depending on if the relation is on the mother’s side or father’s side. I don’t think I’ll ever understand it. All the women did the cooking and the washing up. When they are done in the morning they sit under a tree on goat skins and knit or embroider.

I went to the ‘shebeen’ with the guys to have a beer. A shebeen is an illegal drinking place in the village, every village has one, they serve traditional beer which tastes horrid and also bottled beer which usually isn’t very cold. The traditional beer is thick and gritty, you really can chew it! We went back to the house, just a short walk, later. After I sat through various male conversations in Shona, I learned that the women who runs the place is called a ‘Shebeen Queen’ and watched several TB patients from the hospital sit apart and drink their beer. Lunch was served to us (me and the men) inside the main house, the women ate separately. Sometimes it is really gross to watch men, especially ones who have spend most of their time in a village, eat their food with their hands. Especially if that food is sadza and goat intestines. At least there was some chicken for me. After lunch the guys went back to the shebeen and I went to the room and read. I wasn’t feeling very social or feeling like I belonged in either group, men at the bar or women under the tree knitting, all conversing mostly in Shona.

Continued in Part 21

This is the nineteenth in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.

Part 19
7/29/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
Back in Bulawayo again, this time as more of a tourist. Lillith, an IDEX volunteer came to visit CHIYSAP and see Zimbabwe. At first it was strange to have her around because she gets to go back in a few weeks and I have to stay here but now we are traveling together for a few says and it’s been nice. She stayed with Joseph and Talita while in Chitungwiza and at a place called The Sable Lodge in Harare where backpackers stay for cheap. We went to see Absolute Power with John and Alec the other night and have been out for beers a few times. It is great to have an American to talk to . I haven’t been home much at all lately between going out and the trip to Francis’ village last weekend. When you are going to the village you refer to it at the ‘rural areas.’

The village we went to was called Merre which means ‘noise.’ It was actually pretty nice so I guess I didn’t have the true experience but this visit was enough of a challenge! We left Friday night in a car with 2 other relatives, uncles or brothers. Family terms are used differently, depending on if the person is a relative on your father’s side or mother’s side. All three of them drank beer the whole way, about 4 hours. To get to the village we had to travel for about 45 minutes off the main road on an ill-maintained dirt track. It was kind of scary to be in the middle of nowhere. We got there late and I was really tired and in a bad mood. The main house actually had electricity and I got to sleep in a bed. I shared the room with Francis’ sister and her crying, snuffling baby. All the small babies around here sound like they have lung problems, it’s kind of scary. I slept really late in the morning after being awakened several times by the baby. Another sister, Dorothy, who actually lives in Zengeza 3, got me up and made me breakfast, boiling me some water to drink (the water was from a well, or ‘borehole’ as they call them here) and brush my teeth with. I took a sort of a sponge shower with a bucket of hot water standing naked in the toilet, it was better than a cold shower though.

Continued in Part 20

This is the eighteenth in an ongoing series of posts that capture journal entries from my incredible trip to Zimbabwe in 1997. You can read more about my motivation for the journey and why I’m revisiting it now in the original post. I was 21 at the time I wrote this.

Part 18
7/20/97, Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe
Next stop, Sarah’s, a hip hop nightclub downtown in the city. It was a nice club and much better than the place I went to while in Bulawayo called the Silver Fox. The Fox was one of the worst places I have ever been to. All the women were ugly and badly dressed, the men were slimey. I couldn’t even dance without being jostled by 3 or 4 men trying to grind on me. It seems that most women who go to clubs like that are whores. I’m told it’s similar in Chi9tungqiza so I won’t be going dancing here either. The clubs in Harare seem to be different though. I liked Sarah’s because it was a true mix of people, black through all shades of ‘colored’ to white. I felt comfortable there despite the hip hop atmosphere. Everyone was nicely dressed, especially the women and I didn’t feel harassed by the men there. Most people there live in Harare so they have money, people in Chitungwiza probably couldn’t afford the cover charge or the price of beer. Sometimes I feel a little guilty but I would never be happy here if I didn’t go out and to the things that are more familiar to me like riding motorcycles, eating out, going to movies and going dancing. I’m getting more than my share of poverty just living here.

I’ve found a good fast food place called Nando’s. Sara, the Canadian I shared my room with in Bulawayo recommended it to me and it has great food. It is a Portuguese chicken restaurant which serves chicken, chicken burgers and chips, it’s heaven. I’ve been pretty brave (I think) in trying local foods. I’ve drawn the line at tripe though. Today I had Zimbabwean biltong, which is like beef jerky sticks. I had some in South Africa but it was in chunks, not sticks. I’ve tried sugar cane which is sold on the street in tall stalks. It is too sweet to eat a lot of though, you peel it and then chew on it, sucking the juice the spitting out the stringy plant part. There is this roasted corn on the cob that is sold on the street too, it is nice and warm and you put salt on it. Maput is roasted popped corn but different from popcorn. It is bigger and chewier, it comes in small bags. I suppose I should be worried about getting sick or something bus so far I’ve been healthy except for a sore throat which is probably caused by smoky clubs and bus exhaust. I’ve been drinking the water which is safe here too. I guess I’ll keep my fingers crossed. The weather is getting warmer and I’m looking forward to summer.

Continued in Part 19