Lost in the Dark in Harare – by Ellen

Resisting the urge to pop over the border to Mozambique, we headed back to Harare for a couple of nights to stay at the Dewhursts’ home. They texted us their address and we agreed we’d come over about 7pm. So there was plenty to time to go and have a beer at Evan’s favourite place in the world – Harare Sports (the international cricket ground).

It then dawned on us that we didn’t have a proper map. All we had was the ‘map’ in the Lonely Planet Southern Africa guide book, which was no more than a few token squiggles on half a page of the book which represented probably every 4th or 5th road in Harare, and of the few streets shown on our map, only about half of them had names by them.

Not to worry – we’ll head to a petrol station to buy a map. Or not. In a country where a petrol station actually having petrol is a near miracle, expecting to buy a map is definitely asking too much. Not to worry – we’ll head to a book shop to buy a map. All the book shops we tried had sold out of maps of Harare (but if we’d have wanted a detailed map of Bulawayo or Mozambique we’d have been in luck). On explaining our predicament to the shop assistant, he said he’s go to the store room where he had one last, map of Harare – one which was to be returned to the supplier as it had a few pages missing. And guess which pages were missing...
We decided to set off anyway – we knew the vague direction of their suburb. Within 2 minutes we were lost again. As we’d accidentally found the street where Evan’s cousin lived (couldn’t have done that if we tried) we gave him a call on our about to run out of battery phone, to ask to borrow a map book. But he wasn’t home.

At this point is got dark. It’s not like England where you have a nice dusk to ease you into the night. Here, once the sun’s set, it gets dark. No messing about.

We then, somehow, ended up on one of the roads that was represented as a – named! - squiggle on our map. The odds of us finding a road that still had a legible, upright street name sign, and then that same road being on our map would have bankrupted the bookies. A helpful security guard pointed us in the right direction for the suburb we wanted, and we continued on our treasure hunt.

Originally we’d decided that driving round in the dark without a map was probably Rather Stupid. But it was starting to get quite fun. Essentially, we decided that, no matter what happened along the way, the ultimate ending to this tale would be ‘and then we arrived’. So it was best just to sit back and enjoy the ride. And avoid the potholes/other drivers/stray dogs...

Once we’d found the main road, we pulled in to a garage where a very helpful customer gave us extremely detailed directions to, not just the suburb, but the actual road! Once on the correct road (we assumed – it obviously didn’t have a signpost) we were a little shocked to find ourselves outside number 615 when we were looking for number 24 - how long is this road?! But of course number 615 is opposite number 18. So we bumped and bounced down the unlit road...and then we arrived.