Hwange

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Hwange - The Express Version

‘They are going to die eating a Whimpy burger in Vic Falls,” Derick commented as he saw the Norwegians head into a dilapidated Whimpy outlet. I am certain the residual gin will kill any bacteria and or parasite that are hibernating in a limp Whimpy burger.

We drove out of Vic Falls with a truckload of very sore tourists. Alex hung his head out of the window and Hendrik was waving an arm outside for some reason I couldn’t fathom. Albert looked incredibly washed out and relegated himself to the back seats to try and sober up. The others rested their pounding heads sprawled across the seats. Anouk was upright and amused. I filled Derick in on the dramas of last night.
“Where was I when all this was happening?”
“At the dinner table. You were there, just not all there.”

As the last of Vic Falls faded away, it finally struck me why it felt different this time, hope. There is no longer any hope. A year ago, I had entered Vic Falls on Election Day and the nation sat on tenterhooks, hoping that democracy would prevail ending Mugabe’s tyranny. It didn’t. He won with a resounding victory that smacked of corruption. It is now his twenty sixth year in power and there will be another four before there was even a chance of ending his presidential reign of inhumanity. After he won, a law was passed stating that the president may only hold two five year terms, but this was not enacted retrospectively meaning Mugabe will rule to his grave.
“If this country ever comes right, I would invest in it,” Derick said as the withered stalks of maize lined the road. When it does come right, it will need people like Derick who believe in the beauty of this place to bring it back together.
“Let’s open a lodge,” he burst out suddenly to me.
“Okay,” I replied with zero hesitation. We looked at each other, laughed and dreamed of the perfect place to start a lodge on the Zambezi - a pipe dream in this decade.

Ivory Lodge once hosted camping groups, honeymooners, and independent travellers. It is not unusual now, that a weekly Drifters truck is its only customers. The owners were glad to see us, if not for the business but for the company. Seeing people who are happy (relatively, most of us were a little weary from travel) must be a highlight to the isolated despairing rut they had fallen into. We were upgraded to raise chalets which were a bonus. It also meant I had a double bed for myself with a wonderful view of the waterhole. A few Nyalas were grazing around the waterhole; it was not yet sunset and they were still relatively safe from predators.

I found Derick alone preparing dinner and offered my assistance. He directed me towards some cheese, tomato, onions and bread. “What I want you to do is…”
“Make some braai bread,” I didn’t let him finish. He looked at me with raised eyebrows.
“Had a lot of this at the Cheetah project. A South African lady would make them for us, but heaven forbid if I dared called it toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. It was braai bread. Now, do you want them wrapped in foil and any chutney in them?” He screwed up his nose at the prospect of chutney.
“That’s just wrong.” How do you make the perfect braai bread? Slice the onions thinly (very important - too thick, they will be raw and bitter) and the tomatoes in even slices about half a cm thick. Butter both sides of the bread. Now it’s all about the layering, cheese, onion, tomatoes then salt and pepper. Grill it on a hot braai. Trust me, unless you burn it on the grill, you can’t stuff it up.

A tall spectacled man introduced himself as Brett. His brother couldn’t make it and he will fill in as our guide for our game drive tomorrow. Back in the day Brett did a lot of guiding but it was a lonely job. He left that life for a married one. Joining us for dinner he spoke softly and earnestly on life in Zimbabwe. The price of maize has sky-rocketed so sadza, the staple food of the Zimbabweans, is no longer affordable. Sadza to the Zimbabweans is like rice to the Vietnamese.
“A meal isn’t complete with sadza. If you serve them without it, they look around waiting for it,” Derrick explained, it seems criminal that an integral part of the Zimbabwean culture is dying.
“My girls are doing okay, a little small for their age, but they’re doing well at a private school. My wife is a CEO of an important company, so we’re okay. She’s the breadwinner,” he said honestly.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” I replied thinking of my own mother.
“We have a nine month old girl, so I guess tonight will be my first night sleep in nine months,” he joked lightly. I could see he was twisting his wedding ring around on his finger with his thumb. It moved around easily on his thin fingers. He is spending his days growing maize in the back garden to feed his family and their dog.
“How is it going?” I asked.
“Its okay,” he said non-comittaly. “With the left over maize, I try to give some to workers,” he paused to think, spinning his ring around his finger but didn’t continue.

Derick had a sleep in while I organised breakfast in the morning at 5ish. The boys were suffering from the last dredges of hangovers and lack of sleep. Morning game drives are still not their thing. “I haven’t seen a tub of yoghurt this big in a long time,” Brett marvelled picking up our standard size yoghurt tub.
“Please, take it, have some more,” I said just realising how little is filtering into Zimbabwe these days.
“Its okay, I’m just forcing myself to eat a whole banana here, haven’t done that in a while either.” He said all of this so earnestly, I didn’t know what to say.

Our open jeep rattled like a tin can and spewed out an unhealthy amount of carbon monoxide and several other derivatives of blended diesel into the air. Brett sped out of Ivory Lodge (which is no mean feat given the integrity of our vehicle) and within twenty minutes we were in Hwange National Park. Or the rusty barren husk of Hwange. Inside the admissions office, a fading oil print of Mugabe stared down at paying patrons from the wall behind the desk. Audrey welcomed us and I helped Brett fill out the paperwork. Some African Wild Dogs and cheetahs had been spotted at Dom, yesterday. It was a good place to start.

“Lions! Stop!” yelled the crew at the back. Four lion bachelors were playing happily with a plastic bag by a waterhole; an odd mix of commercial vs wild. Brett screeched to a halt as we took pictures. Well, everyone took pictures, being in the passenger seat meant I had the worse view ever. “Stand on top of the cage and see if you can see if they have a kill behind the grass,” he told Alex. Alex did as he was told.
“So much for not breaking the shape of the vehicle,” Carl muttered.
“Oh, he can be the mast or something,” Brett said lightly but no one was paying attention to him. “Well that was a treat! I come here once a year and in the five years, I haven’t seen a lion. Ah, I am satisfied with that!”
Off we shot again at break neck speed. Brett was anxious to get to a large waterhole with a viewing platform. If any game had crossed our path we surely would have turned it into road kill. The wooden platform overlooked a shrunken waterhole and a lone kudu doe was heading towards it. A small herd of wildebeests galloped passed the road and in the viewing platform it stank of baboon crap. All was quiet at the waterhole. Some marabou storks stood to the side but bored with the inactivity, they too left. A few zebras meandered by and twenty minutes later, I definitely needed fresh air and walked back down. Brett had his head under the jeep bonnet and asked if I enjoyed the zebras. Sure, I replied, not having the heart to tell him that I have seen nothing but. The rest of the group trooped back down as well. “We’re not leaving yet, we’re going to sit here and wait for the animals to come to the waterhole.” Brett said with a hint of terseness in his voice. Carl sat in the jeep anyway listening to his mp3 player, Alex laid across the seat for a kip and the rest of us milled about looking at nothing. After a while he sensed that we were getting bored so we left to find some animals. We shot through the park at a speed that made it impossible for us to spot anything unless it was en-mass in an open plain or directly in front of us.

Needless to say we arrived back at the admission gates an hour earlier than expected. Nicole and Albert politely went to the souvenir stand to look at some dusty faded postcards and trinkets before heading back. Brett gathered we were restless and drove us back to Ivory Lodge. “Derick will be happy we finished early, it will mean you can set off earlier to your next destination. Where are you going?” he asked me politely. He genuinely tried hard to please us and I felt bad. I felt bad that we were less than enthusiastic about the morning drive. “Matopas,” I replied.

There was a sour mood in the air when we bunny hopped back into Ivory Lodge. Brett was his smiley self and continued to tinker away at his own 4WD and the jeep. “Are you okay?” I asked Carl, he looked a bit tired. They all were.
“I miss my mum,” he said honestly. I miss my mum too. “How long has it been?”
“About fifteen months,” I replied.
“That’s a long time.” It is.
“I just want to get to Jo’burg and rest,” muttered Hendrik. You don’t go to Jo’burg to rest. It is a city that never rests.

Bulawayo.

Driving through the wide streets of Bulawayo makes you wonder why you need traffic lights anymore, there are hardly enough cars to warrant them. The pavement is cracked, signs are rusting and the fountains lay parched outside buildings covered in grime. People sat in front of stores that sold precious little and cars lined the petrol stations scrabbling for some fuel, most of which was blended diesel that clogged the filter of your vehicle that rendered it useless in a week. But desperation means that they will take it. Restaurants lined Robert Mugabe Drive, Avenue and Road, without patrons. Bulawayo is nothing but a carcass of what it once was after Mugabe plundered it. There is no sign of reconstruction, no progress. Just devoid of the basics. At a glance you see poverty, inflation and unemployment. What you don’t see is the corruption, the lack of professional resources and in some parts genocide. Sure it is not on the same page as Rwanda but 40, 000 (recorded) deaths is still 40, 000 deaths. I can tell you so much more about the man who is ruling by decree, who has intimidated, tortured, harassed and killed (while not directly by his hand) many law officials (supreme court judges included), white farmers, ministers who oppose him and anyone not carrying a ZANU-PF (his political party) card. However I won’t. You can read all about it in:
• What Happens After Mugabe by Geoff Hill
• Robert Mugabe, Power, Plunder and Tyranny in Zimbabwe by Martin Meredith.

Matopas is uniquely beautiful to southern Zimbabwe. We had all agreed to upgrade for the night and were in chalets imbedded into the massive boulders that rises up out of the landscape. Too lazy to cook, Derick paid for our dinner at the lodge on the behalf of Drifters, he’ll worm his way out of it later. A fire was lit by the staff where Albert and I were sitting when a fifty and over group came to join us.
“Oh, this lovely couple have just been to the Okavango!” a South African lady announced as more of their companions joined us.
“We’re not a couple. We are definitely not a couple,” I replied perhaps a bit too quickly for Albert’s ego. “His girlfriend is taking a shower, I am not the girlfriend,” I reaffirmed. Just in case they didn’t get it the first time.
“Oh, well….” and off they continued. They were hilarious. Their guide was one of the original founding members of Drifters but is now working free lance. I was telling them stories of our travel so far and mentioned about poor Hendrik’s stiff neck problem. “Did he get a Viagra pill stuck in his throat?” the husband of the South African lady asked. “Should have told him just to swallow!” Life over fifty, can’t wait.

“How was the game drive?” Anouk asked me. The only ones left were us girls. I paused to think of a polite way of describing today without feeling like a toad.
“I think your silence says it all,” Nicole remarked.
“Okay, it wasn’t great but you know, we were a little rude too. We were basically falling asleep, listening to music and well, he genuinely wanted to please us. He’s a good guy, a bit old school in terms of the whole guiding thing but he was just grateful for the company and I felt bad that we just dismissed him,” I replied. I am a softy at times.
“Still he was crap,” Nicole said.
“Yeah, he was,” I finally admitted. As nice a guy as he was, as a guide, he should lay that part of his life down to rest.
“Albert tipped him,” Anouk said. “How much are we supposed to tip Derick?” I told them what I thought and said goodnight, I had to wake up early again to get breakfast started before our Rhino walk.
“We’ll help you with that,” the girls offered. Stretch was picking us up seven am on the dot, don’t be late or he will leave without you, Derick had warned.

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Photos

Blocking Traffic
At Brett's speed, the only animals we could see were in front

Chalet with a View
Upgraded, I had an open room with a view of the waterhole

Madness at the Waterhole
The scene at the waterhole

Much of the same
and twenty minutes later...

Cat Nap
.. then 23min later...

Stooooopp!!
... giraffes.

Zebras
.... oh look, Zebras..

Giraffes..
...take me home...