Biscuits and AK47s – by Evan

Anyway, Zimbabwe was, for me, stunning. It is without doubt a very beautiful country, and the prettiest scenery I have seen in Southern Africa – the variety is also phenomenal, from tropical bush to, erm....Sussex countryside! At one point, it struck us that, when arriving in Nyanga, we had travelled thousands of miles by plane and then driven 10,000 kms to end up in a place that looked exactly like Sussex (rain included).

The people are, as has been written many thousands of times on various guidebooks etc, preternaturally friendly. But it is such a mess. Really. But not in a threatening, aggressive-towards-visitors way, but in every other way. The police roadblocks, for example, are not at all threatening – the police were – without exception – friendly, polite and almost uncorrupt (almost – see later) – but it just gets so annoying being stopped six times on the way to buy some milk, that you wonder why they spend so much time shooting themselves in the foot – when instead of making police stop people at random, they could be rectifying some of the crimes that have taken place over the past decades. One of the saddest things was passing the thousands of miles of barren farmland that we drove through, that was once all cultivated – greatly contrasted by the (currently) well organised agriculture south of the border – but more astute minds than mine have waxed lyrical about that at length elsewhere, so I have very little more to add. It just seems so needless.

In contrast to Namibia, everything tourist-wise was beautifully looked after, and scrubbed clean, with the meagrest of resources for those maintaining it – but there are clearly so many obstacles. Almost everything we consumed was imported, at great cost- cornflakes for 7 USD anyone! – and we came to wonder how people existed at all without thousands of USD to spend. And ZESA blackouts – for us they remained their charm as using candles to eat is still romantic, but you can only imagine how tiring it must be having blackouts day after day after day after day after day...

For tourists though, the place does remain fantastic – it’s heaps safer than South Africa, the Game Parks are incredible, cheap – and you’re the only tourists there. At one point we sat at a waterhole in Hwange – the biggest national park – watching Ellies, Baboons and other game gather in multitudes only a few metres from us, and in over two hours one other car visited (and weirdly, didn’t stop). Contrast this with Kruger where we were at a lion sighting with 20 other cars.

The infrastructure is still there to an extent as well, certainly in terms of the luxurious hotels – but at a much cheaper cost than anywhere else in Africa. We rented at one stage for example, a whole house with a big garden, and views over a spectacular lake, for 50 USD a night...

In short I fell completely for Zimbabwe, and it was a great shame we had to leave – but it wasn’t quite the right time yet.

We only came across corruption once in a month in Zim. A policeman stopped me for speeding (whoops) and after initial discussions of a fine in the region of 40 USD, we settled for 20 USD – on the condition that I wasn’t overly fussy about asking for a receipt. There were police roadblocks absolutely everywhere – and it is funny, after our first terrified encounter in Namibia with the police, after you’ve been through thirty roadblocks and been asked for various bits of paper by guys with AK 47s, you no longer feel even the slightest trepidation – it is instead replaced by a sense of real annoyance! Here’s my licence officer- NOW TAKE YOUR MACHINE GUN AND PISS OFF! Actually, they were really friendly and generally willing to have a bit of a chat. My goal of bribing a police officer with a biscuit was only partially successful (it was an armed guard) so I had to content myself with giving one at a toll gate a bottle of water instead.

It’ll be a beautiful country again one day, just not quite yet – and not until their police stop accepting bribes from pink-faced tourists – they’re a danger, you know, and should be kept off the roads.