Zimbabwe Part 3

Mucheni Gorge

Rather ambitiously as it turned out, we had decided to leave Tashinga for Chizarira late on the morning of the game walk. Initially our passage to Chizarira was more of the same; good progress on a reasonable track through glorious countryside. However in the early afternoon, after we had passed into Matabeleland, we turned on to a track that obviously saw vehicles from time to time and as a result the surface, a bone jangling mix of corrugated sun baked mud and patches of broken lumps of basalt, reduced us to a crawl. So much so that we were in danger of arriving at the park gates to find them closed; throwing caution, the contents of Boris and our senses to the wind we ‘sped’ the last 15 miles or so to the turning to the park at all of 20 mph!

From the park gate and its sleepy attendant, there was a steep drive out of the rift valley and onto the plateau a thousand feet above. By the time we reached it the park office was shut, unsure of where the campsite was we drove to the park village; adjacent to all park office complexes, they house all the park staff often, because of their remoteness, with a school for their children. Here, having been asked to return to the office the following morning, we were redirected to the Mucheni picnic site overlooking the gorge. Johannes and Anna-Marie had urged us to camp at picnic sites in the national parks; they were isolated, only large enough for one overnight vehicle and campers, often unfenced or at worst poorly fenced and as close to bush camping with the animals as you could get in a national park. The small picnic area was on the lip of the gorge, with an open sided, thatched rondavel for shade and from where, despite the gathering gloom, there were stupendous views into and along the sheer sided, four hundred foot wide rocky chasm. Heaven!

After a disappointingly animal free and quite night, we had long special breakfast in the rondavel, binos to hand taking in the view and spotting the birds flying below us. Another picnic site nearby had a similar rondavel, only this time it was on the lip of the escarpment where the river that had cut the gorge entered the rift valley and we looked out over the wide, desiccated yellow-brown valley splashed with shimmering sections of the distant Lake Kariba, across to Zambia. As we sat in silence contemplating another panorama words could not adequately describe, we were alerted by the clink of boulders moving and the snap of branches to the small greyish brown shapes of a herd of elephants feeding in the river bed hundreds of feet directly beneath us.

 Breakfast viewing,Mucheni Gorge picnic rondavel Chizarira NP

A very special place, but one we had to leave. Peter, having had one of those early hours prescient, niggling worries, had checked his passport at breakfast and discovered that instead of the four weeks we had paid for, our visa was for two weeks; it ran out in one day’s time on the 22July. Oh Lors! Peter was not best pleased, to be honest he was a complete grump ..be careful or you could be the next ‘Grumps’, Peter!.. he had desperately wanted to include a visit to the Hwange National Park before we got to the border.

Having descended the escarpment, we stopped where a poverty stricken mother, baby on her back, was selling what appeared to be the contents of her hut. We bought nothing, but the mother clapped with joy when Liz gave her an unwanted new pair of flip-flops, some baby clothes and a pair of baby shoes for her daughter.. thank you Maya and Lily! Back on the track from hell we again made slow progress and by early afternoon, our minds and bodies numb from the rattling and juddering we decided to call it a day, and look for somewhere to bush camp. Another bush camp, another unused track going who knew where through uninhabited, pristine woodland savannah; after following the track for about twenty minutes, we arrived at the perfect spot; a sunlit glade in amongst the mopane trees. Time to relax with a cup of tea!
Jonathan
On the road early the next morning and edging ever closer to what should be the tar road to the border, we paused at a ramshackle, unmanned roadside stall with carved wooden items for sale. From the nearby settlement of two poorly thatched huts partly obscured by scrub, a gaunt young man in torn, ragged clothing hurried towards us. After we had bought a few items, Jonathan, a charming, articulate and surprisingly chipper person, described how he and his young family survived the hunger that was a permanent feature of their life; existing from day to day on what roots, berries and so forth could be found in the surrounding woods and should he be fortunate enough to get money for the items he had carved, leaving his family for four days to walk to the nearest store and back.

 Jonothan's roadside stall, Matabeleland 

Initially we were the focus of attention for his sister-in-law’s family, then his wife appeared, cradled in her arms a baby that was obviously suffering from a chest infection. Distraught at the baby’s poorly condition but aware of the dangers of the uncontrolled provision of antibiotics, Liz was reluctant to offer anything more than some basic medication, a bottle of lemon juice for vitamin C, a water bottle containing filtered water, clothes to keep the baby warm at night and advice on basic medical care. Oh dear; how difficult it all was and how we hoped that death would not call on this poor family and that their innocent little child would not become yet another infant mortality statistic.
A Chance Remark
Once on the tar road and immediately passing signs for Hwange ..accompanied by sighs from a disgruntled driver!.. we were able to make good time and arrived in Victoria Falls by early afternoon. It was strangely comforting to be returning to a place we knew, coming home in a way. At the border post, in smiling response to a piece of light hearted banter by Peter ..to the effect that he would have loved to have spent another week in Zimbabwe visiting Hwange.. the immigration officer said, ‘why don’t you?’ and that he could extend our visas for a week at no extra cost! Bring on the choirs celestial! Make this man the next President of Zimbabwe!

Having taken a short time out to discuss the implications of this offer, we accepted and, with extended visas in our passports and a very happy Peter, we spent the night at a comfortable campsite in the middle Victoria Falls, in whose restaurant Liz ate crocodile for the first time. Yum!!. The following day, 23 July, restocked and refuelled, we drove back to the entrance to Hwange National Park. The approach road took us past a centre where a charity, Painted Dog Conservation, ran community awareness days and a wild dog preservation and rehabilitation scheme. It provided an opportunity for Peter to see these animals for the first time and at close quarters and learn about the nature of the animal; its need for huge areas to hunt in and despite the park’s massive size, roughly the size of Belgium, the inevitable conflict between livestock owners on the edge of the park and the predatory instinct of a pack of wild dogs.
Hwange National Park
At the park office at Main Camp, situated about mid way on the eastern edge of the park, the largest in Zimbabwe, we paid our entry fee. As with all Zimbabwean national parks, and unlike anywhere else in Southern and Eastern Africa where there was a expensive daily charge, here a one off inexpensive single payment covered up to seven days in the park; extremely good value even bearing in mind the state of the parks by comparison. Then, with the help of the staff, we worked out a three day south east-north west route through the park and booked campsites, where possible picnic sites, accordingly. We had arrived too late to be allowed to continue deeper into the park, so, after a short game drive, we spent the night at Main Camp’s dilapidated campsite, where collapsed security fencing allowed the animals free rein.

As had been the norm since leaving Mana Pools, we were the sole occupants and so had the undivided attention of the ‘attendant’, a lanky, almost gangling, and engaging man with a great sense of humour, called Binga ..you would need a sense of humour if you were named after a town on the shore of Lake Kariba! Binga was on temporary duty at Main Camp and normally the attendant at a picnic site in the south of the park where we were due to stay the following night. It was a site he would return to the following morning and, as it was where his wife and children lived with him for most of the year, except for a period of duty at harvest time at their distant family settlement, he called it ‘home’. Having ensured we had plenty of wood for the braai and that the donkey was fired up, he bade us a temporary farewell.
Binga’s Home
After a night’s sleep interrupted by a lion, only yards away and seriously in need of a course of Benylin, so wheezy were his roars, we spent the next day on an extended game drive, travelling south to Binga’s ‘home’, the Ngwethia picnic site. It was not until after six hours had passed and as we were approaching Binga’s home, that the animals that up to then had left tell-tale signs on the track but had remained disappointingly invisible, started to appear. The immaculate picnic site, an imperfectly fenced circle about two hundred feet in diameter, was set under trees and beneath them the grey-brown sand was swept spotlessly clean. The site consisted of an open sided rondavel, braai stand, ablutions and scullery; to the rear was a small shed like thatched building that was Binga’s family residence. There was no electricity, but there was cold water provided by the ancient spluttering diesel pump out on the pan that also supplied water to the larger of the waterholes there; however in order to save fuel Binga only ran it and a water supply during daylight hours.
Night Time Rumbles, Roars and Wreckage

 Sunset,Ngwethia picnic site 

In the early evening, the sky glowing with the brush strokes of the setting sun, the three waterholes in the large, flat, open expanse of savannah around Binga’s home were a magnet for elephant, giraffe, zebra and antelope. Binga kindly suggested we watch them from the top of a nearby termite mound outside the perimeter fence, whilst he prepared and lit the fire for our braai. By half past six it was dark and with the thin cream crescent of the new moon unable to spoil the brightness of their display we sat out under the stars, eating our supper by the flickering light of the fire. A group of bull elephants were also dining very close by; in addition to the crack of breaking branches, as they fed they emitted the deepest, longest, laziest, yet very resonant, rumbles imaginable. These rumbles, never heard during the day, reverberated around us, sounding like contented meal time conversation, and as such were strangely comforting.

We slept well until Peter decided a visit to the loo could be delayed no longer; Liz awoke and having been assured there were no lions nearby decided she needed a visit too. As we were at the bottom of the tent ladder, Peter’s assurances took a nose dive; a lion roared somewhere in the undergrowth just on the far side of the fence! It was too late to turn back; our bodies were in loo mode and not to be denied! A record breaking head torch assisted dash to, performance in and cautious but speedy return from the afore mentioned loo, saw us, breathing heavily and with backward glances, climbing back up into the boudoir, then laughing and listening to the intermittent roars as they receded into the distance.

The next night was spent at another superb, isolated picnic site, the attendant was just as charming and helpful and the setting was just as romantic; the black silhouettes of acacia trees against the setting sun and orange red sky; a sparkling ceiling of stars watching over us as we ate dinner by the fire; and the call of wildlife breaking the all enveloping silence of the bush at night. The wildlife became all too noisy and far too close for comfort in the early hours of the morning! Only this time, amplified by the stillness of the night, it was the alarming creaking and crash of a feeding bull elephant very deliberately pushing a tree over onto the perimeter fence. Then, so close he had to be inside the fence, breaking branches off another tree; its leaves and twigs were raining down onto the tent roof. It was the tree we were under and we began to panic!

We needn’t have, either by accident or the great beast’s concern for our welfare, he continued feeding but, as evinced by studying his foot prints in the morning, only on those parts of the tree away from Boris. However at the time we were imagining the worst ..’Globetrotting pensioners crushed to death by tree. Elephant arrested’ headlines in the Twickenham Times!.. but the snap of branches was replaced by the snaffle of leaves from twigs; then silence, the elephant had moved on .. how do they do it? Massive size and weight, yet not a sound!

 Once a permanent waterhole, now a sandpit.Hwange NP

Our final day in Hwange was spent travelling slowly northwards; stopping at waterholes, most with a broken pump and turning out to be little more than sand pits, but at one with water, seeing a pair of beautiful diminutive bat eared foxes, and taking detours to deserted game viewing platforms. The further north we went, the worse the track, the more scarce the game and the more frequent the passage of other vehicles .. well, there must have been at least three! By mid afternoon and as we drew close to our final campsite, we had exchanged flat sandy shrub savannah for hills incised by the now dry course of wet season rivers. Sinamatella Camp was on a plateau, with its part overgrown campsite on the edge of the escarpment; again the sole occupants, we camped as close to the edge as safety would allow to enjoy the marvellous views over the valley below to a range of hills in the distance.
Welcome Treatment
Our teenage attendant, Welcome, so called because his parents waited years for a child, put what was probably the only working light bulb in the campsite into the empty socket above the ladies ablution door, ushered us in and explained, not without some embarrassment, that as this was the only ablution that was open we both had to use it and the water filled buckets and tins lined up against the wall were for ‘washin’ and flushin’’, the camp water pump having packed up days ago. There were sinks, but no longer white and their tiling surround was more absent than present, the shower was missing the shower head and its floor a suspiciously dirty brown colour. But, hey, the ablution was open, there was water and we had a fit-all sink plug with us and, as Welcome pointed out to us, at night the outside light shone into the washroom through the fanlight above the door. Welcome, bless him, was making the best of a bad job and we were content; we had seen worse in West Africa!
Departure
After another cold night, our breath ephemeral mist lit by the rays of the early morning sun, we sat making the most of the view, our final breakfast in Zimbabwe and wished Louisa a ‘Happy Birthday’; Louisa, we hope that you had your ESP antennae fully tuned! The northern perimeter of the park was only about four hours from Victoria Falls and by three o’clock on 27 July, with Boris covered in a fine film of spray we were heading over the Victoria Falls Bridge into Zambia. 

 Victoria Falls Bridge.From exit point Zimbabwean border control.Bungee jump,right hand side of bridge 

Our Impressions.
We travelled to Zimbabwe knowing that some friends and acquaintances would disagree with our decision. We were not making a statement, nor minimising the ruinous impact of the later Mugabe years; we were curious travellers determined to see for ourselves, as far as was possible, what state the country, its people and its wildlife parks were in. Not as bad as we feared is the answer that we give. But this positive impression is heavily qualified by the fact that ours was a short and very incomplete visit to a small part of Zimbabwe.

From talking to the people we met, and not all were happy to discuss Zimbabwean politics openly or with others present, we became aware of their relief and belief that things were changing for the better and that those in the towns were faring better than those in the countryside. The rural population was still in crisis, surviving by reverting back to an existence that should have gone for good. They had no money and so couldn’t buy food and general goods, even if the stores had existed, and had to revert to a barter system with its inherent vagaries and uncertainties. Many, penniless and having of necessity eaten their seed corn, were no longer self sufficient and relied on food aid, augmenting that by searching the surrounding countryside for edible berries, roots and leaves. A rural infrastructure remained, but only in the sense that people now walked on roads and tracks still devoid of any form of meaningful public or private transport system. A rural health care system of sorts remained in place but, without transport, it was often impossible to use and seemed desperately underfunded and under resourced, patchy at best and in places missing altogether. In a way the plight of Jonathan and his family encapsulated everything that is still so badly wrong in rural Zimbabwe.

Yes the rural economy is recovering, but it is doing so from such a low point as to make it painfully slow for the majority and fatally so for a minority of those at greatest risk, the old and young. If you then add to this the impact of the double whammy of firstly the global credit crunch which the World Bank estimates will lead, in the very poorest countries, to 200,000 to 400,000 more children dying each year for the next five years; and secondly the effect on those same countries of the resurgent rise in staple food prices, up by 26% since last December, then those in rural Zimbabwe are still at risk for the foreseeable future.

 Sign of the times! 

The National Parks gamely carry on; the enthusiasm and dedication of the staff making up in part for the infrastructure and facilities that are pathetically outdated and decrepit. For us, all of this became part of their charm and the resilience of the staff, and the parks and game they managed under such testing conditions was quite wonderful. Particularly bearing in mind the appalling straits to which they had been driven; the staff at two parks confirmed that, faced with over a year without pay and the need for their families to survive, as a last desperate resort they had to shoot some of the game they were there to protect. Something they said that was sanctioned as a necessary evil by those in authority. This, plus the increased incidence of poaching (for exactly the same reason, survival) and the desperate fight for crop survival (elephant skulls lined the entrances to several settlements we passed in Mashonaland) would seem to have led, in some areas of some parks, to the game being scarce, secretive and skittish. The National Park officials felt that now a corner had been turned; they were being paid, investment in facilities and infrastructure was promised and they were looking forward to an increasing number of visitors to the parks they were so committed to and proud of.

We are glad we visited Zimbabwe and provided what little support we could to the rural economy, its people and the National Parks. But we realise that only time will tell if the genesis of all the incremental beneficial changes now happening in Zimbabwe, the political accommodation, survives and flourishes. For the sake of a proud and hospitable people we admire and a country and its parks we grew to love, we hope so. 

Zimbabwe Part 2

Mana Pools

Having booked in at the Park Office for two days, we stayed for four and, if Peter had had his way, it would have been a week or more! The near deserted Nyamepi campsite, indeed the whole area, was just very, very special. We camped under a tall mopane tree right on the river bank and overlooking a wide channel of a Zambezi River that was flowing unusually high for the time of year and so was still within yards of our riverside pitch. These unseasonal waters provided a perfect mirror that reflected the bold blues of the daytime sky and the subtle shades of red, orange and grey that painted the sky above as the sun set and rose over the river. The campsite ‘attendant’, a diminutive member of the park staff called Shadrack, ensured that the wood fired donkey provided a ready supply of hot water for our late afternoon shower ..a timing determined by the total lack of electricity and the need for light.. and that there was wood for our nightly campfire.

 Zambezi canoers at sunset.Nyamepi campsite Mana Pools 

The whole campsite was, and always had been, totally unfenced, allowing wildlife a free run of the area in search of food and water. In the morning we would wake to a beautiful orange-grey dawn, the colouring increasingly shaded with blue as the sun rose over the river, to find impala nibbling at the grass around Boris. During the day, hippos .. it seemed as if there were hundreds of them!.. slept on the nearby islands; waking every so often to feed on the coating of Irish green grass that surrounded them, or lay submerged in the river, resurfacing with a snort and a veil of spray to belly laugh at a joke from a member of another pod. Close in to the small patch of riverine grasses beneath our bank a submerged log was permanently stationed in the channel, only the raised eyes and snout giving it away as a crocodile. The river and our river bank also provided a continuing and ever changing spectacle of bird life; the whiter than white shapes of methodically flapping wings of lines of egrets, their downward beat missing the water’s surface by a millimetre; an enormous goliath heron standing stock still for aeons of time, before a lightning fast jab of his sword-like beak secured an unsuspecting amphibian; and the unmistakeable, haunting and iconic high pitched cry of the fish eagle resting on a branch before continuing its patrol above the river’s water.
Oliver 

 Oliver, a gentle giant.Nyamepi campsite Mana Pools 

Then, and right from our first afternoon there, each afternoon came a very special event: the arrival of Oliver. Oliver was the name the Park staff had given a senior, very senior, bull elephant easily identified by a left tusk missing the last foot of so. Unperturbed by our proximity and sometimes accompanied by a bachelor friend who invariably was less trusting of the campsite occupants, he would slowly, majestically and with a totally soundless footfall wander the campsite, going from tree to tree, snacking on the leaves above or the seedpods below. Watching him use his trunk to locate and feed on the latter was quite fascinating; it proved how essential the trunk was to an elephant as an incredibly sensitive sensory organ that was so mobile, so delicate, yet so strong. Memory and scent had already alerted Oliver to the massive acacia trees under which lay ripe seedpods, each about four inches long and an inch wide, once there he never used his eyes to locate the pods that he was standing over, only his trunk. The tip of the trunk hovered about two to three inches off the ground, gently swinging to and fro seeking the scent of a pod; once located and with great gentleness and dexterity the two protruding ‘lips’ of the open tip would enclose the pod, just as we would if we were using the thumb and forefinger of one hand. Then, raising the pod from the ground, Oliver exhaled through the trunk to remove the sand and dirt before a slow and graceful inward curving of the trunk popped the prized morsel into his mouth. Peter was able to stand so close to Oliver that he could quite clearly hear the pod being ground between his massive teeth!
Evening Visitors
As the sun began to sink towards the Zambian horizon in the far distance, it was time for chairs to be placed out on the riverbank and sundowners to be drunk. After which the evening’s meal would be prepared and cooked, actions lit by our nearby fire as a breeze carried the smell to our next visitors, hyenas! We had chosen an isolated pitch at the furthest end of the campsite and beyond which there were only mature acacia tree and scrubby bush lining the riverbank; it was from this area that the hyenas would advance into the campsite as darkness fell. We were there first port of call!

There were never more than two or three and they were quite brazen, coming to the edge of the area lit by the fire and standing there staring at either the chef, or if arriving a little late, the diners, in a determined way that contradicted their natural hang dog stance. We had never seen hyenas before and this was a welcome chance to see these much maligned animals at close quarters; their boldness was really quite illusory, any sudden movement by us and they would retreat, to be swallowed up in the dark of the night. One night a pair of honey badgers came close to the fire, their small size belying their fearsome and fearless reputation. They ignored us, but with an annoyed chatter turned to face a hyena that following them; the hyena, despite being about ten times their size, quite literally ran off never to reappear!

As we were relaxing after the meal, some of the hippos that had been sharing jokes up and down the river all evening, would come to the river bank and hidden in the dark, but with the squelch of feet moving through mud giving their arrival away, would begin feeding on the area of riverside grass a couple of yards from us. Normally about thirty minutes or so after their arrival, one braver soul would leave the grass bed, climb the bank and plod past, in the manner of a bowed, stumpy, overweight matron, heading determinedly inland to feed; where, we never knew, but hippos can travel ten mile or more inland for a night’s snack so it was unsurprising that we never saw its return.

Around about this time the male lions would begin to declaim their presence, their resounding cough-like roar invariably petering out into a series of almost breathless wheezes. There was a large pride in the area, fourteen lions in all, and they seemed to enjoy passing through the campsite late in the evening on their way to hunt, their presence only given away by the yellow glow of their eyes in the flashlight or the exited chatter of the hyenas as they ran from the lions’ approach. The final trip to the loo, head torches waving their narrow beams in a perpetual, drunken 360 degree arc, was always swift and an interesting test of moral fibre!
A Night Time Tug-of-War
On our first night the megaphone conversations of lion, elephant, hyena, hippo, et al, made getting to sleep difficult. However by about two in the morning we were at last sleeping soundly when Peter was woken by the noise of something being dragged from under Boris. In a matter of seconds, with a cry of ‘bastaaaard!’, he was exiting the tent, head torch in hand, clad only in boxer shorts and flip-flops in pursuit of a hyena that obviously thought that the rubberised roof top tent cover would make an excellent meal! The hyena made a run for it, still dragging the cover, there was no moon and it was only the spooky green reflection of its eyes in the head torch beam that gave away the hyena’s position. The cover was proving an unwieldy trophy and, catching up with the Hyena, Peter somehow managed to grab hold of a trailing edge. There then followed a short tug-of-war accompanied by shouts of, ‘let go, let go you bastard!’; thankfully the hyena reverted to type and did so, but not before biting off a large mouthful of tasty rubberised cover.

 Repairing the hyena's damage, Nyamepi campsite Mana Pools 

Hyenas have jaws that exert the strongest pressure of any in the animal kingdom ..reckoned to be in excess of 3500 pounds per square inch!.. and normally reserved for breaking the bones of animal carcasses. However they also have a reputation for scavenging almost anything from campsites; with the excitement of our evening encounters we had forgotten to put the cover up on the roof rack with the table and chairs. Ah well, we live and learn .. or might not have done if the lions had been around! The blue patches sown on by Liz the next morning have become a permanent reminder of the dangers of the bizarre and eclectic eating habits of the hyena.
A Walk on the Wild Side
When the wildlife was not coming to visit us, we were out looking for it; in Mana Pools, unlike any other similar park in Africa, there was absolutely no restriction on walking unaccompanied by a ranger. Taking sensible precautions, it was with a marvellous feeling of freedom, a feeling that we were reliving the safaris of a much earlier era, that we were able to walk from the campsite along the river bank and into the nearby flood plain savannah and, when on a game drive, park and walk to a vantage point, the bank of a pool or just enjoy the landscape at first hand and not through the car window. Each walk was a unique, uplifting and memorable experience.

 Liz watches Oliver,Nyamepi campsite Mana Pools 

If You Don’t Ask..
Also on the campsite was a family group from Cape Town that was enjoying the South African winter school holiday and had been coming to Zimbabwe, and Mana Pools in particular, over a period of some years. As is our habit, we asked the parents, Johannes and Anna-Marie, for advice on our proposed route to the Zambian border. Mana Pools is in the north eastern corner of Zimbabwe and we wanted to travel to Victoria Falls, in the north western corner, by a series of back roads through rural Zimbabwe; a route that would take us along a rough line south of the Zambezi River. By good fortune they had arrived at Mana Pools using that very route in reverse, so were able to give us detailed advice; on the piste, variable but do-able; on the three national parks en route, visit each one, each with a deserted campsite, stunning scenery and views; time taken, allow at least three days, more if possible; and on the availability of fuel and food supplies, stock up before we start.
Tsetse Fly Control
On 17 July we left Mana Pools; our encounter with the Tsetse zeppelins fresh in our mind, we travelled back to the main road with all windows shut. Once there we again came to the government Tsetse Control Point; this time we were not waved through but brought to a halt by a man in green coveralls carrying what looked like a short handled fishing-cum-butterfly net. We stared at him through our windows; the poor man appeared to be suffering with St Vitas’ Dance, twitching and tapping various parts of his anatomy as he approached. The reason for this rather alarming physical affliction became clear as he drew near; he was almost enveloped in a swarm of tsetse flies.

It was hard to hear him through the closed windows, but a shouted conversation and a series of mimed actions and gestures made plain that he had to inspect the inside of Boris to ensure we had no tsetse flies on board and we had to open a window. Peter, thoughtful as ever, pointed to Liz’s window and reluctantly it was lowered. The official, preceded by his coveralled arm and net, leant in, looked around and very theatrically waved the net along the dash board and in front of Liz’s nose, then withdrew leaving behind a large proportion of the swarm of tsetse flies that had surrounded him! Cue much flapping of hands by the occupants, followed by an orgy of squashing, murder and mayhem! The official, ignoring our plight and showing a marked lack of interest in any continuing ‘control’, quickly retired to the depths of his sentry box like hut, from the door of which his net was describing a graceful circle and waving us on our way.

With windows once again sealed we began to climb the escarpment, every so often killing yet another tsetse fly that appeared from the rear of Boris, how many more could there be! We restocked and refuelled in the town of Karoi; once a sleepy farming town now with its agricultural machinery dealerships closed and a general air of dilapidation along the high street. A high street where the Harare gloss of shelves full of choice turned to reasonably full shelves, a limited range of goods and little choice. But it would do, we had encountered worse in West Africa.
No Sects Please We’re British
As we left the outskirts of Karoi behind, in the shade of trees beside the road we saw a large gathering of people clad in white, the men faced the women and both inward facing groups were swaying, chanting and clapping. We had seen these bare foot, white gowned people throughout rural Zimbabwe; normally in groups smaller than this one, always in the open air and in the shade of trees with the sexes separated standing or kneeling, facing one another and involved in some form of service or rite. Our curiosity got the better of us; we pulled over, wound down the window and listened to the delightful cadences and rhythm of African song.

 Joseph, master of ceremonies, enroute Matusadona NP

A man wearing a green gown and with a length of red cloth draped over one shoulder, emerged from the sea of white and came towards us. A wooden staff hung at his waist with its top, a carved cross surrounded by an open indented circle, pressed into his stomach; introductions over, Joseph, his forehead glistening with a thin shimmer of sweat, listened with studious attention as we explained our curiosity. Whilst the ‘congregation’ watched and sang, Joseph enlightened us: the purpose of this gathering of members of the Gospel of God Church was to heal the sick through worship; this ‘spiritual healing’ as Joseph called it, was being conducted by and through him. A service normally took place over a twenty four hour period each week and began at midday on Thursday. Word of mouth and cell phone gave the location which was never the same and those attending, despite their ailments, were expected to walk, some for many miles, bringing with them the food and water they needed.

As he spoke, to add gravitas he frequently shook out the red cloth and gathered it back in to his waist in the manner of a roman emperor; in doing so revealing an array of white motifs sewn onto it that would have done a Masonic Lodge proud! As a finale and as we were getting back into Boris, he insisted on giving us his phone number so that we could pass it on to people we knew; he needed help selling gold. Very bizarre, but we can give you the number if you need it! We assumed that for some these spiritual healing services filled the void left by of the demise of community health care. Whatever the reason and despite cruelly raising their expectations, we hoped it gave those attending some solace. 
Mashonaland
We spent an enjoyable afternoon heading west on little used roads and tracks ..now where have you heard that before!..in this very rural and terribly scenic part of Mashonaland. The tar road, narrowed by the advance of roadside grass to a single lane, ended as the remnants of fencing gave way to open, unfenced and heart-warmingly chaotic tribal land. Now deep into rural Zimbabwe, with long established family settlements close to the track, the impact of the recent famine and economic collapse became more noticeable; the odd UNICEF aid vehicle; people, more often than not dressed in rags, walking barefoot back from a distribution point with sacks of rice, emblazoned with ‘US Aid’, on their heads; and virtually all of the little, isolated roadside brick built stores long since closed, abandoned by entrepreneurs who could not survive hyper-inflation and the insidious, growing poverty of the local community.

 Hyper inflation,abandoned rural store Matabeleland 

By late afternoon we were still some distance from the Matusadona National Park and its campsite on the shore of Lake Kariba. Our superb and remote bush campsite was along a track cut into the woods on a shingle ridge overlooking the Sanyati River. Earlier, from the bridge over it, we had seen on a distant section of the dry and sandy river bed motley groups of people, some under makeshift awnings, digging pits in the sand; a passer-by explained that they were illegal gold prospectors... ah, so that was what Joseph was on about!

On Saturday morning, the 18 July, well rested after a good night’s sleep and invigorated by a post breakfast nature ramble with the signs of elephant and antelope all around, we continued on a sandy track in surprisingly good condition, through a rolling, scenic rural landscape peppered with yellow thatched roofs of the rondavels of family settlements. The drought of winter was turning the pea green leaves of the mopane trees covering the steep hillsides to shades of brassy khaki brown, reminding us of the beech woods of the Chilterns on a sun lit autumn day. Our autumnal reverie was cut short by our arrival at another tsetse control point ..Oh Lors!
Knowledge 
Our knee jerk reaction, windows up and nervously looking for aerial intruders with vampiric tendencies, proved premature and a little embarrassing ..we were entering, not leaving, a tsetse area. The check point was manned by a smartly dressed middle aged man who, whilst being charming was also deeply reflective; silences would precede a question and follow our answer. Initially unsettling, we got used to his pauses and stopped filling them in with idle chatter; chatter that would only lengthened the pause interminably, creating a very one sided staccato conversation!

 Knowledge and Grace, tsetse control point enroute Matusadona NP 

Knowledge Isaiah, what a lovely name, lived in Karoi and spent one month on, one month off, manning the control point; when doing so his children remained at school in Karoi whilst he and his wife, Grace, lived in the small brick bungalow adjoining the barrier. Whilst on a tour of duty Knowledge also tended a large vegetable patch on the opposite side of the barrier. It turned out to be more of a market garden. Surrounded by a thick, head high fence of thorn tree branches and with the luxury of a permanent spring, it was a green oasis, a mini Garden of Eden, with all sorts of vegetables growing in raised beds to the front of bananas and papaya trees. The fresh produce was for those manning the control point and the nearby family settlement, which provided manpower and security for the enterprise. The not inconsiderable surplus was dried, taken back to Karoi and sold to the Spar store there.
Elephant Problems
Knowledge made us aware for the first time of the darker side of the elephant we so looked forward to seeing in a national park. Although some 15 miles or more south of the Matusadona National Park boundary, its elephants, at night and particularly during the growing season, would leave the park in search of food and raid the nearby fields and his market garden, breaking through the fencing as if it didn’t exist. After an orgy of very destructive feasting, the canny elephants would then retire to the safety of the park before dawn the next morning.

The problem of the elephants’ voracious appetite and its disastrous, life threatening implications for the communities at their mercy, particularly during times of hardship, were made plain to us when, about another twenty miles beyond the control point, we stopped at a small hilltop settlement to take photos and chat to the young family members there. Jeremy, probably in his early teens and the eldest present, explained that their parents and the rest of the adults of the extended family were away; women, productively gathering wood and food; the men brewing maize beer and productively getting drunk, or ‘falling happy’ as Jeremy called it!

He showed us around, explaining who lived where and the various purposes of the smaller huts; storage of food; stockade for the goats overnight; and so on. We discussed the harvested cobs of corn drying in the food store and the impact of elephants. Jeremy with a troubled grimace confirmed they were a problem and, with a look bordering on hatred, that the bull elephant was, ‘bad, very bad’. Continuing, he explained that the growing maize had to be guarded every night until harvested and, when an elephant was seen, the only way to deter it was to set fire to dry grass on the field’s edge, bang drums and shout. He added that if that didn’t work they would starve in the winter that followed, ‘perhaps with death’. It was unsettling to hear this young man talk about the possibility of death in such a matter-of-fact way as a natural and unavoidable, even normal, consequence; death, a spectre stalking those living on the knife edge of survival, had seemingly called on this family in the recent past.

 .Jeremy, settlement en route Matusadona NP 

Leaving Jeremy ecstatically happy with a Maersk baseball cap ..thank you Alex!.. and his younger siblings clutching Matchbox toys ..thank you Becca and Andy!.. we stopped shortly after to photograph one of the rickety wooden ‘guard towers’ that stood in most fields and from where, in the dark, the silhouette of an advancing elephants could be better seen. As we were doing so, a short middle aged man, bare foot and wearing tattered blue shorts and T shirt came from the nearby settlement and politely asked if we were alright or needed help. After we had thanked him for his concern and unable to help with his request for animal pictures, Liz asked if a kilo bag of brown sugar would be of any use as a substitute. On seeing the sugar, his wife erupted in a display of unbridled joy that was heart warming to watch; jumping up and down, her face lit by the biggest of smiles and, something we had noticed before and found a charming display of thankful pleasure, clapping her hands.
Matusadona National Park
It wasn’t until mid afternoon that we arrived at Tashinga Campsite in the Matusadona National Park. It was just perfect; on a small flat finger-like headland pointing out into Lake Kariba, waves lapped the beach and the deserted site was shaded by a collection of graceful mature trees. Out of the sky blue waters of the bays on either side of us, isolated imploring skeletal fingers of mopane trees reached heavenwards; drowning trees seeking a rescue that never came and now provided a perch for fish eagles and cormorants.
We spent two days at the campsite, alone apart for Rudolf or ‘Dolf as he preferred to be called. ‘Dolf was a bearded, wiry middle aged white Zimbabwean; once in the employ of the national parks authority, he had been recalled to run an anti poaching course for rangers at the park , home to a population of black rhino, and was in the process of setting it up. A wildlife enthusiast, he took us under his wing; warning us, if swimming, to be wary of a grumpy crocodile in the waters around the promontory; waxing lyrical about the sunsets over Lake Kariba; and imploring us to visit the Chizarira National Park, a short detour from our route and already recommended by Johannes and Anna-Marie, to see the dramatic and beautiful Mucheni Gorge.

 Did you say,'crocodile'!Lake Kariba Matusadona NP

By the time we left this tranquil lakeside setting; Liz had washed her hair in the lake using a saucepan and guarded by Peter clutching a wooden dagger-like piece of wood that probably would have disintegrated on contact with the hide of a hungry crocodile; we had been awed by the magnificence and colours of the sunsets over Kariba waters that became a sheet of light gun metal grey, only broken by the shimmering deep pink of the ripples on its surface; and we had gone on a sunrise game walk with a ranger, Gordon, who made up for the lack of game with his knowledge of animal signs, natural history and the medicinal value of the plants and trees we came across.

Return to Zimbabwe (Part 1)

8 to 27 July
Editorial: Yes, another! This is an over long Journal piece; in part because, probably unnecessarily, we provide a broad brush summary of the recent events that shaped the country we were travelling through, but in the main because we felt that through our impressions recorded in the Journal, we were providing a window into a country that has not seen much tourism of late, particularly by British passport holders, and has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for the last decade or so. We hope you find our comments about this lovely country and its badly served people interesting.

Zimbabwe Part 1

Second Crossing
Entering Zimbabwe had not got any cheaper; joining a queue of lorry drivers it took nearly two hours to part with about £90. All payment recorded in biro on the sheet of a ledger fast becoming full and the biro borrowed with a smile, used and then, having been ‘accidentally’ pocketed, returned with a sheepish grin. After a final check of the contents of our fridge by yet another ‘official’ dressed, as all the border officials were, in scruffy civilian clothing, we were through and heading for the Nyanga National Park, deep in the nearby Eastern Highlands.
First Impressions
The tarred road was in surprisingly good condition, the BP and Total service stations we passed obviously had fuel and the people we saw were reasonably dressed and shod, unlike the Mozambicans we had seen hours earlier. Indeed by general comparison the Mozambicans looked the poorer, this surprised us as we had heard and read so much about the plight of the Zimbabwean people. Mutare, the first major town on our route, did little to change our initial impression; we knew from other travellers that the town’s supermarket shelves and those of shops in general were once again reasonably well stocked. We passed an immaculately maintained cricket ground, complete with stands and pavilion; nearby on rough, ankle high yellowing grass a group of children were playing a dusty game of cricket; dress was optional and there were sticks for stumps, however both batsmen were wearing pads and wielding mean looking cricket bats. It all brought a tear to the eye!
The Eastern Highlands
From Mutare a steep climb up the escarpment brought us onto the vast plateau that stretches for hundreds of miles across central and eastern Africa. Before us, their peaks piercing a sea of soft shades of yellow and green, were the mountains of the Eastern Highlands; what a dramatic and complete change from the coastal plain that was southern Mozambique. Huge grey glaciated granite domes, their light grey colour reminding us of those in California’s Yosemite National Park, punctuated the distant crags and mountains. Sun blessed valleys were dotted with trees and small settlements that were a mix of small, brick or breeze block built one story dwellings and rondavels, close around them a compact patchwork of small fields. With each rise in the road higher than the one before, we were still climbing and the temperature was dropping fast; soon a pleasant 21 degrees centigrade was a distinctly chilly 13 degrees, to make matters worse a sheet of low threatening grey cloud was moving over us and obscuring the sun.

 Glaciated domes, Eastern Highlands 

School’s Out
By now it was late afternoon and on the dusty paths beside the otherwise deserted mountain road, groups of school children were making their long way home on foot; a daily round trip that for many was invariably calculated in miles. Again in a surprising contrast with Mozambique, the children wore smart uniforms, most were well wrapped up against the winter chill in fleeces and coats and all seemed to have on shoes and ankle high white socks. A major investment by dirt poor parents in their children’s future; an investment which, having met an impoverished Zimbabwean teacher working as a hotel receptionist in Mozambique, the government appeared to be failing to match. 

Between areas of yellow grassed moorland, huge commercial plantations of alien pine and eucalyptus covered the hillsides; the mature trees pressed like a spiky, dark green tide up towards the crags and stood in dark unending ranks against the road. As we drew ever closer to Nyanga it was becoming a race against time; grey clouds had become black clouds, rain was threatening and the temperature now 10 degrees. Not cold by European standards, but for us ‘Africans’ these were near arctic conditions and we agreed camping was out of the question. 
Money MattersAs a result of serial criminal mismanagement over the last decade, the Zimbabwean currency effectively no longer existed; it had been replaced by the greenback. The only other currencies that could be tendered in exchange for goods and services were those of South Africa, Botswana and the UK. This was very much a ‘good news, bad news’ event for us.

The good news was that the demise of their currency and its rampant hyper-inflation had brought stability and goods to the high streets of Zimbabwe and had been instrumental in allowing us to include Zimbabwe in our East African route home. The bad news was that we were short on dollars and long on South African rand and we discovered that for all transactions involving a government agency .. such as when we crossed the border or visited a national park.. the rand was pegged to an extortionate official exchange rate for the dollar. Unsurprisingly this official fixed rate had become the high street benchmark too; another piece of bad news to leaven the good! In effect we were about to be ripped off to the tune of fifteen percent every time we used our rand and Nyanga National Park would be no exception.

 Valley near Nyanga NP, Eastern Highlands 

Nyanga National Park
The small, one storey, brick and stone national park headquarters appeared out of the gloom at the end of what had once been a graded gravel track and was now more of a pot holed and very uneven piste. The entrance barrier had long since gone and the small gravel covered car park was fighting a battle with nature that was all but lost. To one side of the headquarters office stood a sad line of park vehicles, all rusting, on blocks and wheel-less. Inside, the office showed all the signs of ten or more years of lack of investment and the desperate attempts of the staff to ‘make do’. Everything looked dated and ‘tired’ ; the fading black and white photos that could have been taken by Ian Smith; the diorama, badly in need of restoration, with flaking paint and missing place name cards; and the framed list of animals to be seen in the park, yellowed and some of the pictures so faded as to be almost invisible.

The two smiling park rangers manning the desk were immaculately turned out and so very helpful and considerate and so desperately apologetic. As soon as we began to book into a chalet, one rushed off to light the log fire (you see ... it was cold!) and ensure that ‘his guests’ would be warm and comfortable. Documentation and payment completed, he then escorted us to our chalet, built in the same style as the headquarters office, and explained how everything worked. Or didn’t in the case of the electricity supply; with the supply ‘on-off’ at night and none all day on Tuesdays and Thursdays. But, as he pointed out with a beaming smile, today was Wednesday and there were candles in the kitchen!
Decision Makers
With a pressing need to get to Harare before the weekend to visit a bank, to change euros into dollars, and to get extended car insurance, our exploration of the park on 9 July (Happy Birthday, Nick!) was restricted to a morning during which we completely failed to reach either of the viewpoints we had planned to visit. We had only added Zimbabwe to our itinerary some four weeks earlier, after meeting Peter and Bronwen Biles, a charming English couple who were camping beside us at Hazyview. Based in Johannesburg, Peter worked for the BBC and Bronwen spent time in Zimbabwe working for a charity there. As a result both had considerable knowledge and understanding of Zimbabwe, the country and its people. It happened that they were on their way back from a holiday combined with charity work in Zimbabwe and so were able to give us an update on the situation there. Peter and Bronwen helped remove any residual doubts we had about the safety and morality of a visit with their infectious enthusiasm for the country and its hard pressed people. Thank you for your advice, without it our experience of Southern Africa would have been much the poorer.
No Views is Bad News
As a result we were doing everything a bit off the back of a fag packet (cigarette packet, Americans please note!). We had no guide book, only a very old and torn map of Zimbabwe given to us by the owner of one of the South African Backpacker places we had stayed in. On the map were highlighted ten or so points of interest for tourists. One, called World’s View, was in Nyanga and where, from the edge of the escarpment overlooking the plain running to Harare, was a ‘panoramic view so wide and a horizon so distant’ that allegedly we could see ‘the curvature of the earth’. When we arrived in the general area, there was no track, no sign and no view; just an expanse of windswept moorland. We drew another blank with a waterfall and viewpoint miles from World’s View and looking in the opposite direction, back into Mozambique. This time the park staff had given us the route, but just as we could catch tantalising glimpses between the trees of the lip of the escarpment a couple of miles away, a fallen tree completely blocked the unmaintained track .. so near, yet so far!

Frustrated ..yes, but not disappointed; the fantastic scenery, a seemingly infinite and sun clad African version of the best areas of the Brecon Beacons in Wales, more than compensated for the failures. We did have one success; a visit to the summer residence of Cecil Rhodes about 500 yards from our chalet! What superb views Rhodesia’s founding father must have had from the veranda over the landscaped slopes below to the mountains beyond; views that, despite the encroaching forestry plantations, are a draw for those who stay at what is now a lovely, rambling, one storey Victorian hotel.

 Main verandah,Rhodes' summer residence Nyanga NP 

To Harare
After a late picnic beneath a monolith, looking for all the world like a Henry Moore sculpture perched precariously on a rocky plinth, we passed a pleasant afternoon dawdling ..to extend the life of our cheap Mozambican fuel as much as possible.. along pot hole free, tarred roads that were deserted of all but pedestrian traffic; a never ending succession of people walking, perhaps for days, pushing this, or carrying that under an arm or perched on their head.

By 3pm we began looking for somewhere to camp, either in the grounds of a lodge or hotel, or in one of the infrequent areas of unpopulated bush. One potential bush camp site seemed worth investigating only for it to turn out to be ‘no good’ on closer inspection; after which we left the main road and followed a rough sandy track to an Anglican mission. St Faith’s Mission was not quite what we had expected; unlike the Catholic missions in West Africa it was really a collection of schools with accommodation for borders; not somewhere for a quiet and trouble free night!

We stayed on the track looking for another site. We found none, just a maze of small farmsteads and settlements, eventually, and to our horror, we were brought back to the main road close to where the ‘no good’ bush camp site was. By now it was heading towards five o’clock and so we decided to take a second look; going further from the road we found a perfect, secluded spot in a glade amongst the trees and covered in a spread of four foot high yellow thatching grass. Now, why couldn’t we have done this the first time, Peter!

It was a clear and very cold night and in the morning the dew sat on the tent reluctant to evaporate under the early morning sun. A damp tent securely stowed, we began the morning’s journey to Harare. Once again the combination of a perfect road and little or no traffic was very noticeable; years of government ineptitude had created a combination of poverty and fuel shortages that led to a near car free society, allowing a surface that probably dated from the days of UDI in the mid 1960’s to survive in near perfect condition.

Reminders of that period of troubled and undemocratic white rule lined the roadside; vast uncultivated fields, now peppered with rondavel settlements and patches of subsistence agriculture, were still enclosed by the rusting remains of fencing that once marked white settlers’ ownership of African land. Lines of telephone wire running between posts made of iron to thwart the destructive appetite of termites, harked back to an England of 40 years ago, and were in stark contrast to an Africa and its Africans elsewhere, now linked by an explosion in cell phone ownership and technology that had yet fully to reach Zimbabwe.

There was also a series of police check points to negotiate; with British passports we expected the worst but without exception, if they didn’t just wave us through, the police were polite and correct and just checked our car insurance and Peter’s driving licence. At many of the road junctions were groups of people attempting to hitch a lift, to travel. In every other African country the ubiquitous minibus taxi augmented any public transport system that existed; here, in an indictment of the government and its policies, taxis were few and far between and the public transport service very sketchy to say the least. A report in a Zimbabwean paper highlighted the plight of those in the countryside, particularly the more remote areas; after walking for miles to a main road, they quite literally had to wait for days before getting a lift, so bad was public transport and so few were private vehicles.

 A rare sight on an otherwise empty road,enroute Harare 

Harare
As we drew closer to Harare the uncultivated fields, covered in encroaching savannah and small acacia trees as nature reclaimed the land, gave way to an untidy sprawl of commercial and industrial development; most premises decrepit, with hand painted signs; others, belying the years of a country in freefall, modern and imposing.

We booked into a self catering complex in the Harare suburb of Avondale and, after a quick picnic outside our ‘apartment’, drove into the centre of the city. It was not large and really quite compact, with few of the tall buildings normally associated with a nation’s commercial heartland. The low traffic density made navigating to the main Barclays bank relatively simple and by the end of the afternoon we had dollars in our vehicle safe and a new vehicle insurance document in our folder. The yellow six inch square document or ‘Yellow Card’ as it is known, would provide us with third party vehicle insurance cover for all the countries that were members of COMESA, an acronym for the commercial union of most of the states in East Africa, in effect insuring us up to the Egyptian border; an absolute boon for the overland traveller and a disaster for the car insurance hawkers inhabiting border crossings.

Spending most of the weekend in Soprano’s, a dear little cafe-cum-restaurant, making use of the wifi to contact family and send Journal items to The Web Master, we saw little of Harare. By late morning on 12 July (Happy Birthday, Carlo!), after a final visit to Soprano’s, stocking up at a supermarket in the King George shopping centre and then at some roadside fruit and veg stalls, we were leaving Harare behind and on our way north to the banks of the Zambezi River and Mana Pools National Park.
Of Relics, Ruin and Revenge
At the risk of boring repetition ..and when did that ever stop us!.. the tarred road was in good condition and virtually traffic free. And ..once again.. we were passing the relics of an era of large scale, seemingly almost country wide, highly productive farming; mile after mile of rusting angle iron fence posts, the fencing wire that linked them long since gone, lined both sides of the road; road signs, rusting and faded, warned of non-existent cattle and farm machinery crossing the road ahead; and both grain silos, their lines of huge grey concrete tubes now empty, and tobacco drying sheds, surrounded by the rusting remains of security fencing and the red brick buildings becoming dilapidated, incongruously still dominated the landscape that they were once an intimate part of.

 Roadsign,no longer relevant,enroute Mana Pools

Black Zimbabweans had returned to the land. There were collections of thatched roofed rondavels at intervals along the road; some set back in what were once fields, others set along long jacaranda avenues, leading from the gateless entrances, where a sign once proudly proclaimed white ownership, to distant and now dilapidated farmsteads. Sometimes, close by would be some cattle or a few goats and always the settlements would be surrounded by a small area of land cleared for subsistence farming.

It also became apparent that there was little if any farm machinery, from tractors through combine harvesters to irrigation systems, that was not in anything other than a sorry state of disrepair. Those who had come by the farm through state sponsored theft were untrained and unprepared for the demands of industrial farming, if interested at all; sometimes the departing white farmer was able to leave the machinery for his trained farm workers to take on, only for them in their turn to be evicted by occupiers untainted by white association. The lack of working farm machinery was another indictment of the policy makers who, with scant regard for those of their fellow countrymen who were trying to maintain some limited form of productive farming, signally failed to provide any support or credit scheme that would allow people with little or no capital or experience to keep the machinery in working order.

 The only tractors we saw enroute Mana Pools 

We were saddened by what we saw, not by a desire to turn the clock back, far from it, but by the palpable and criminal failure to create a viable solution to the problem of land ownership. With victory in the struggle for independence and democracy and the end of the inherent exploitation and institutionalised racial inequality that characterises any colonial or neo-colonial period, there should have come a recognition of the need to balance on the one hand the justified claims of Zimbabweans to the vast tracts of tribal land they believed had been stolen from them, against on the other, the need to continue, in some form or other, the hugely profitable agricultural industry white tenure of the land had created.

In black Africa and with some justification, white farmers with roots in the colonial era were always in danger of being on a hiding to nothing. Zimbabwe was no exception. To the victorious majority these farmers were thieves who had stolen their land; seen as its supporters and main benefactors, they were inextricably part of the despised period of white rule; and, as a defeated minority, an imperialist fifth column. The white farmers thus lacked political clout and were easy political prey. Added to this was the fact that returning the land to the people had been a rallying cry in the struggle to overthrow the Smith regime; those fighting against the regime, including those now in positions of authority, had been promised, and now expected, land in return for their ‘sacrifice’.

To the cost of all Zimbabweans, there was no black leader of Nelson Mandela’s stature and the land ownership problem was solved by those endowed with a complete lack of foresight and statesmanship. The better white farmers should have been encouraged to stay for the medium to long term under some form of stewardship scheme; instead greed, corruption, violence .. sometimes lethal.. and ‘pay-back time’ were the order of the day. Agricultural production imploded; the rural economy, no longer primed by the trickle-down wealth of white farming, began to collapse and a net food exporter became dependent upon food aid as those in the country, particularly the rural poor, starved, some to death.

Despite this, the issue of land ownership still resonates for some of those in power in Zimbabwe. We watched on state run television part of an address by a surprisingly eloquent President Mugabe at the state funeral of a military leader of the struggle for independence. A large part of what we heard was a well crafted diatribe on the continuing threat of the imperialist nations, linking this to their historic support for ‘kith and kin’ over farm and land ownership. His conclusion, which showed a complete lack of any sympathy for the remaining white farmers, reaffirmed the need for the land of Zimbabwe to be in black Zimbabwean hands. He really gave the impression of a man caught in a time warp, fighting yesterday’s battles under the banner ‘forward into the past’, at the expense of Zimbabwe’s future. Here endeth the lesson!

Botswana Part 2

8- 17 September

Chobe Safari LodgeBack in Kasane, we headed to the side of town closest to the Chobe Riverfront. As we had hoped, we managed to squeeze into a campsite in the grounds of the swanky Chobe Safari Lodge; a riverside lodge recommended by Susanne and Philippe who had stayed with their Namibian friends. The lodge also ran an afternoon, game viewing, river cruise heartily recommended by Philippe.
Chobe River Cruise
We managed to book ourselves the last two places for that afternoon’s cruise and after a two minute lunch (grab-it-and-run!) joined a large group of Germans on board the decidedly better of the two cruise boats. As we set off it became clear that there were only Germans on board and then that this was a German tour company’s cruise boat! Ah, the Dunkerque spirit, Omaha Beach and Bastogne! Whispering to each other in English and nodding and smiling at completely the wrong points in the tour guide’s preamble, we decided to play the ‘dumb Brit abroad’ card and carry on regardless.

It all worked a treat; the tour guide was a young man from Cape Town and very welcoming when he discovered his two stow-aways; making use of Peter’s binos (German of course!) and pointing out riverside game in German and then in English.

 Chobe River 

The Chobe River, about 50 to 60 feet wide, meandered slowly through the wide floodplain amongst low, flat islets of lush green grass and floating riverside mattresses of papyrus. We moved slowly from one wildlife hot-spot to the next.

  Left: Bull elephant doing the leg swinging trance dance, Chobe River
Right: Buffalo ignoring attendant egrets,Chobe River 

 Contemplating the scenery.Chobe River 

We certainly were not the only boat on the river and often used our size to out-muscle others, getting close up to all sorts of birds and animals that seemed unperturbed by the boat’s proximity. (Photo: CMK 7 & 8)

  Left: Two lonely hippos on the banks of the Chobe River?
Right: No, two crowded hippos on the banks of the River Chobe! 

The lack of a big zoom lens and the problem with focusing the small zoom that had been with us since Mauritania, frustrating though they were, did not diminish our enjoyment of a superb outing. We returned to the Lodge as the sun was setting; thanking our German hosts, we left them heading for the bar and restaurant and made our way back to the campsite.

We retired early, but our attempts to get a good night’s sleep were constantly frustrated by the hellish orchestration of resonating snores from nearby campers and the chatter of night watchmen. Oh lors!
Chobe Riverfront
The next morning, 9 September, we visited a nearby internet cafe, failing miserably to ‘send’ an email of birthday wishes to Becca. Sorry! After visiting an ATM, the Spar store and filling both tanks with fuel, we drove to the entrance to Chobe NP. Lucky, lucky us; there was space at the remote and virtually unfenced, basic campsite on the Chobe Riverfront, Ihaha. Two hot hours later and we were sitting by Boris, between two shrubby trees, having lunch at Ihaha. Pleased as punch, we looked out across a flat grassy area, with antelope feeding, onto the course of the Chobe River not more than 400 yards away. As we were about to clear up, a herd of elephant sauntered around the corner and silently, extraordinarily silently for animals of that size, came past the table so close Liz could almost touch them! Why, oh why, had we left the camera in Boris? What a missed opportunity! 
Game Drives

 Cheeky vervet monkey and breakfast visitor,Ihaha campsite Chobe River 

 Warthog encounter, Ahaha campsite Chobe River 

We stayed for three nights and, when not keeping an eye on thieving vervet monkeys or inquisitive warthogs, relaxed in the sun between going on early morning and late afternoon game drives in Boris. The Chobe Riverfront was about 35 miles long, but by far the most prolific area for game was that between Kasane and the half way point, Ihaha Campsite.

 Matriach leading the river crossing,Chobe River
 Young bull elephants testing each other out,Chobe River 

Tracks, a series of loops from a main track running through bone dry mopane scrub, ran along what was the southern bank of the floodplain and often six to eight feet above it, gave a good view of the game on the plain and in the river. Elephant were there in huge numbers, so too buffalo; we failed to see any of the large lion prides attracted by the game, only the odd male and a couple of lionesses. But we often saw scrums of hunch backed vultures feeding and fighting over the remains of the previous night’s kill, whilst the morbid black silhouettes of others adorned nearby trees, waiting their turn.

 Evening,lion sniffs the breeze 

 Vultures waiting... 

Night Noises
After nightfall we became all too conscious of the lack of a secure fence and the presence of lion and hyena (a great nocturnal hunter); in an effort not to become a night time snack, a strict no drinking after sunset policy ensured that there were NO late night visits to the loo! We lay in the tent soaking up the night sounds; the roar of nearby lion was special, but so was the haunting noise of the excited chatter and eerie ’whoooo-oop’ of the Hyena, initially some miles distant then coming quickly closer, passing within feet of the tent as they hunted down their prey or zeroed in on a pride’s kill; that for us was the sound of the Riverfront at night.

On our last night we were awakened by the sound of splashing coming from the river, it seemed to come from all around us and went on for the best part of an hour, giving way to the sound of munching interspersed with gentle snorting and grunting that was just everywhere. Intrigued we got up at the grey of daybreak to find in front of us a vast herd of what must have been a thousand buffalo, black lumps merging on the nearby floodplain as far as the eye could see. It was like the bison scene from ‘Dances with Wolves’; feeding as they moved away, they then drifted inland to find shelter for the day. 
To SavutiWe left Ihaha on 11 September, following the Chobe River away from Kasane; leaving the river we turned south and headed to our next campsite in Chobe National Park at Savuti. As expected we were soon in deep, deep soft sand; the notorious and badly cut up piste passing over ..or through!.. massive rolling dunes covered with scrub savannah. Despite lowering the tyre pressure to Saharan levels it was hard work.

 Stuck in the sand, enroute Savuti 

Lunch gave Boris a short reprieve and 30 minutes later we were helping a Landrover and trailer, the latter acting as a sheet anchor in the sand, stuck fast in the track ahead. The two men, safari tour operators, were in trouble with no shovels and little idea about what to do, apart from argue with each other! Following our expert advice ... what a difference 8 months of overlanding makes!.. and some sweaty digging, they were free and heading back up the track we had just come down. We hope they made it!
Savuti
The unrelenting deep sand stayed with us all the way to Savuti. On the outskirts of this small collection of huts and game lodges we passed an artificial waterhole with elephant ..not more elephant!.. enjoying a late afternoon cool down and drink, surrounded by a motley collection of 4x4’s and game drive vehicles. Where the Kalahari appleleaf trees stood in full blossom, covered in the most delicate shades of purple, the Savuti campsite was stunningly beautiful. The ablution block was a mini version of Fort Knox! To keep thirsty elephants at bay, they had completely trashed the previous version, the block was surrounded by a high berm of soil upon which stood a low wall and the metal entrance gates were just wide enough to allow a fat tourist through, but not thin thirsty elephant.

Savuti sits on the banks of an offshoot of Okavango Delta, the Savuti Channel, which flowed through a parched landscape into a large, 60 square miles of it, depression creating the Savuti Marsh. In such a dry area, this supply of water and wetlands attracted huge quantities of game. Unfortunately the channel dried up in the early 1980’s, as it has done periodically throughout its history, for reasons known only to itself and geology, leaving the marsh to become a large pan once again. The Savuti area, largely shorn of its permanent game population, despite several artificial waterholes, was not anything more than a stopover for us on our way to the Moremi area, 50 miles further south in the Okavango Delta. 
Savuti Marsh
Ever the optimists we left at the crack of dawn, so allowing us to include a game drive through the Savuti Marsh, where a myriad of confusing sandy tracks made the GPS an absolute godsend. Identifying where the game might be and then the act of spotting the isolated and infrequent animals, mainly lone bull elephants and wildebeest, somehow gave great satisfaction and a sense of achievement at the successful use of our ‘hunting’ skills.

 Blue wilderbeest, Savuti 

The marsh, a huge area of grass savannah containing islands of shrub vegetation, was being eroded at its edges by the natural advance of acacia and thus the return to scrub savannah. Here and there, in the midst of the open savannah, stood the dead, gaunt relics of trees, grey fingers pointing heavenwards in supplication, killed during the last inundation some 50 years ago.
Khwai River Valley
Our time up, we began the long sandy approach to the Moremi Game Reserve; travelling painfully slowly through mile upon mile of parched landscape covered in waving yellow grasses and stands of stunted mopane, the only tree able to survive the conditions and its leaves a highly nutritious food source. By lunch time we were close to the extreme edge of the Delta and the vegetation began to reflect the greater periodic abundance of water, dense green leaved thickets and tall old growth trees. We were approaching the Khwai River valley, a flat and ever narrowing verdant green finger that ran east from the Delta before vanishing into the sands we had been driving over.

Looking for a picnic site we were fortunate to spot on the branch of a large umbrella thorn tree the most enormous owl, a Verreaux’s Giant Eagle Owl.

 

The size of a little person.. let’s say around about two and a bit years old, eh Maya!.. it too was having a picnic; hacking away with its beak at a small mongoose and with its head tilted back then swallowing lumps of animal with a rather uncomfortable looking gulping motion. We joined the owl for lunch, but declined his kind offer of a piece of mongoose that fell to the ground!
A Back to Front River
Reaching the Khwai River ... no bridge and no Colonel Bogey!... the first thing we noticed was that the river was flowing backwards! Despite the dry season, the water level of the Delta was rising, a delayed reaction to the millions of gallons of Angolan wet season rainwater carried by the same river that flowed past us at Ngepi Camp. As the level rose, so the waters of the Delta pushed outwards down seasonal river channels that, as they lost water to the land around them, became progressively smaller before losing the unequal battle with the ever thirsty sand and disappeared from sight. Geddit?
A Magical Mystery Detour
By chance, or the brilliance of the navigator, we avoided the main track leading to the entry gate into Moremi Game Reserve, still 20 miles away, and spent the most rewarding ,David Attenborough afternoon driving at a snail’s pace along a sometimes flooded riverside track, through a magical and beautiful green corridor of animal activity. We came across all sorts of birds, buck and antelope, pods of hippo and herds of buffalo and elephant.

 Midday snooze, hippo pod Khwai River 

The latter repeating the wholesale destruction of parts of the riverine mopane forest that we had seen on the Chobe Riverfront. Habitat destruction wrought by hungry elephant on the scale we had seen would likely take years to recover and must be a result of manmade constraints on seasonal migratory patterns, resulting in too many elephant in too small an area year round.

 Midday cooling bath 

 Habitat destruction by elephants 

When we arrived at North Gate, the entrance to Moremi and with a ... wait for it!... bridge over the River Khwai, we were caught out by our ‘arrive and see’ policy; the nearby campsite in the Reserve was full. So we were refused entry to the Reserve that evening and told to come back the following day. Shucks!
Night Time Visitors
We retraced our route for a mile or two and found a pleasant bush camp site under a large tree and close to the river. It was beginning to get dark as we finished supper and Peter was like a cat on a hot tin roof; looking over his shoulder, standing up and staring into the nearby bushes, steadily becoming quite paranoid about us being eaten by lions. Liz, an old Africa hand, knew that lions always had their G&T’s from 7.00 to 8.00 PM and so pooh-poohed his concern!

But we did have a visitor that night; Liz, woken by the sound of snapping twigs and tearing leaves, looked out of her tent window to see the massive, moonlit head of the hugest bull elephant ever, only inches away right by the tent. Quite sure it would have us over and trampled on in seconds, Liz froze and didn’t dare to utter a sound and risk alarming the feeding elephant by waking Peter, who slept on in blissful ignorance. 
Moremi Game ReserveWe returned to North Gate the following morning, 13 September, crossed the pole bridge, a 30 ‘ long line of wooden poles, many looking dangerously thin, secured crossways to the bed of the river and at one point sinking under its surface as we passed over.

 Crossing the pole bridge over the Khwai River 

Our ability to explore fully the Moremi Game Reserve was going to be severely compromised by having to stay on dry land on the only tracks in the delta and so remain within the small area of the Reserve above water. We spent two days in the Reserve; our ability to explore compromised by the need to stay on dry land and the rising water levels which flooded some tracks, curtailing our game drives and giving Liz palpitations when we forded some sections.

 Fording flooded track, Khwai River valley 

Peter, expecting great things, was very disappointed with the small amount of game we saw; Liz however was completely taken with the beauty of the Reserve. The ancient woodlands, through which dappled sunlight sparkled in a diamond cascade on patches of rising water; lagoons, their waters a shimmering sky blue blanket upon which nature had sown swathes of flowering lilies; and the delta, stretching out to the far horizon covered with swaying serried ranks of dark green papyrus.

With mixed feelings we left the Reserve and returned to the Khwai River valley, almost immediately we spotted game. This was not surprising as the river is both the border of the Moremi Game Reserve and, in the dry season, for game to the north and east, the closest, readily available and reliable source of food and water. 
An Illegal Camp
Our progress was slow and once again we decided to bush camp, this time just yards from the river. We were in the tent as night fell, with the front flap raised so we could see the area of the river flowing past us. We were not disappointed; soon dark silhouettes of elephants passed noiselessly before us, then there began most peculiar and repetitive noises, a ‘chomp, chomp, chomp, chomp’ followed by a squelching noise before the chomps started all over again. It grew closer and then, around the bend in the river to our right, came two large hippos making a meal of the lush tall grass that was growing in the narrow flooded water meadows alongside the river. Their advance was almost mechanical and very methodical; head moving from left to right, they cleared the area in front of them, before advancing a few steps to repeat the process all over again. Slowly, they passed in front of us and disappeared out of sight still following the river and still chomping like there was no tomorrow.

What next we wondered. Well, ‘what next’, was the arrival of a vehicle and two men who, very politely, explained we were camping illegally! We should have sought permission at North Gate and paid a camping fee; it also transpired that we probably would not have been allowed to camp where we now were. However, as moving us was too much hassle, we paid the fee and their lights disappeared into the night. 
Boundary Recognition
The night had echoed to the calls of hyena, supplemented by the roar of lions. The next morning, after an early breakfast in the sun, we moved off in Boris and had only gone a few yards before we stopped, gasping in amazement. There on the opposite bank of the narrow river was a pride of lions relaxing in the morning sun, after a good night out and only 50 yards or so from where we had been so casually having breakfast. Thank heavens they had read the Bradt Guide and knew where the Moremi boundary was, we could have been their eggs and bacon! 
Spreading Flood Waters
Leaving the river behind us, we headed cross country towards the start of the road to Maun. However, we were constantly being thwarted, seemingly at every turn, by a flooded track ahead. Detours had already been cut through the scrub; on what was to prove to be our last, we came across a team of surveyors plotting the course of a proposed extension to the Maun road.

 Slow and gentle inundation,upper Khwai River 

 Early morning drink,upper Khwai River 

They confirmed what we suspected; the increasing spread of the flooding was an annual and continuing phenomenon, a possible portent of things to come. A snapshot of nature’s timeless and unending cycle of change; the ancient pan we were travelling through might be returning once again to marshland.
Ghanzi
In Maun we quickly restocked our food supplies and set off towards the Namibian border and a visit to Hanne and Axel in Swakopmund. By late afternoon we had joined the iconic Trans-Kalahari Highway and were approaching the town of Ghanzi. Here we called a halt and, for a bit of TLC, checked into the Kalahari Arms Hotel. The swimming pool, followed by a long hot shower got rid of the worst of the ingrained dirt. What a lovely feeling it was to be tingling clean and wearing a fresh set of clothes.

The morning of 16 September ..Happy Birthday Jeni!.. our departure from Ghanzi was delayed by a visit to the Bushman Craft Centre close to the hotel. It was a treasure trove of exquisite objects handmade by San women living in the vicinity of Ghanzi.

 Cottage industry, rear of craft shop,Ghanz
 Threading ostrich eggshell pieces, rear of craft shop Ghanzi 

The San came into town every Tuesday (serendipity .. it was Tuesday!) some bringing items with them, others sitting around the Centre preparing the fragments of ostrich eggshell they would then thread together to create necklaces, bracelets, belts and so on.

  

The women sold these ornaments to the Centre, which in turn sold them to tourists both at the Centre and other outlets in Botswana; the profit made was ploughed back into the San community by buying more ornaments and by funding much needed community projects. We were happy to spend, spend, spend!
To The Border
Leaving a much depleted craft centre shop behind and our purchases safely stowed in various nooks and crannies in Boris, we rejoined the Trans Kalahari Highway. Yet another long, straight black line of tar led to the horizon; beyond, the border with Namibia and ahead of us, a two day journey to the coastal resort of Swakopmund.