27 June, Monday
Mana to Karoi
The night was very cold again and our emotions have not thawed
out either. We leave quite early for another early morning game drive and again
do not see too much. Willie finds out about an unofficial back road out of the
park and although it is slow the road is much better than the corrugated 2 hour
one to the park entrance. We stop in a river bed for breakfast and the silence
and bush beauty also help us to thaw out of our
silence.
It takes about 2 ½ hours back to Chirundu where a happy Sammie is
the first to greet us. The 2 guys crawl out of their tent and we are happy to
see one another. It is interesting to hear from them that they also felt as if
something was missing: we’ve grown so accustomed to one another over the last 4
½ months that there is a weirdness when our team splits. We’ve shared so much –
good and bad, easy and difficult, sad and happy: we’ve become travel-comrades
and more than ever I know that we are in this together to the
end!
We decide to pack and strap and drive to Karoi – about a 4 hour
drive so that we can leave early for Vic Falls. There are 2 ways to get there:
through Harare which will be tar road or through Karoi which will be shorter,
but a bad road. We are not too fond of the words ‘bad road’ after Kenya’s
Moyale-Marsabit-Isiola dreadfulness, but we also do not want to go back to
horrible-Harare again.
We arrive in Karoi +/- 4pm
where we stop at Rama Spar to stock up. Supplies are fairly limited and
seeing the empty shelves, refrigerators and freezers give me a small glimpse
into the past when at one point it was almost not possible to buy
bread.
Hugo and I meet Rama, the friendly owner of the
Spar and he shares with us some interesting facts of what happened during the
time of the economic collapse. He takes us into his office where he shows us
stacks of unopened boxes filled with money – useless money. Hugo finally has an
opportunity to see the ill-famous money that we’ve just heard of: 50, 100, 500
million and later billion and trillion dollar notes. Rama tells us that you
could not even buy a bread with a box of the money!
The currency changed from day to another: he will wake up one morning and
a new billion, eventually trillion dollar notes were born during the night! He
gives Hugo a handful of ‘dollars’ which are now sold on the street as keepsakes.
I have a lot of respect and admiration for the Zimbabweans that hung in there
during those, what must have been, difficult and terrible years and I can only
wish for everyone that the tide will hopefully turn in the
future.
We drive to the only campsite in Karoi, part of what must have
been in the past, a very nice hotel and restaurant. Enough remnants are left to
remind one of a past where life was different than now. Once manicured lawns and
gardens are overgrown with weeds, dry and neglected; buildings are dilapidated
with broken windows, non-functional restrooms, leaking toilets, dripping
faucets, cracked walls with paint peeling, ripped out lights and fittings, no
electricity. The managers of Tiger Safaris in Chirundu have lived and worked in
Karoi for many years. Karoi was a bustling town that served the surrounding
farming community in years gone by. More than 300 ‘white’ farmers have dwindled
to 12 left leaving 1000 acres of farm land untilled with nothing to
produce…
I have only one emotion reigning for as far as we’ve traveled
this beautiful country and we had the opportunity to speak to a few people,
white and black: overwhelming sadness tinged with anger for the destruction
caused by power-out-of-control.
Mana to Karoi
The night was very cold again and our emotions have not thawed
out either. We leave quite early for another early morning game drive and again
do not see too much. Willie finds out about an unofficial back road out of the
park and although it is slow the road is much better than the corrugated 2 hour
one to the park entrance. We stop in a river bed for breakfast and the silence
and bush beauty also help us to thaw out of our
silence.
It takes about 2 ½ hours back to Chirundu where a happy Sammie is
the first to greet us. The 2 guys crawl out of their tent and we are happy to
see one another. It is interesting to hear from them that they also felt as if
something was missing: we’ve grown so accustomed to one another over the last 4
½ months that there is a weirdness when our team splits. We’ve shared so much –
good and bad, easy and difficult, sad and happy: we’ve become travel-comrades
and more than ever I know that we are in this together to the
end!
We decide to pack and strap and drive to Karoi – about a 4 hour
drive so that we can leave early for Vic Falls. There are 2 ways to get there:
through Harare which will be tar road or through Karoi which will be shorter,
but a bad road. We are not too fond of the words ‘bad road’ after Kenya’s
Moyale-Marsabit-Isiola dreadfulness, but we also do not want to go back to
horrible-Harare again.
We arrive in Karoi +/- 4pm
where we stop at Rama Spar to stock up. Supplies are fairly limited and
seeing the empty shelves, refrigerators and freezers give me a small glimpse
into the past when at one point it was almost not possible to buy
bread.
Hugo and I meet Rama, the friendly owner of the
Spar and he shares with us some interesting facts of what happened during the
time of the economic collapse. He takes us into his office where he shows us
stacks of unopened boxes filled with money – useless money. Hugo finally has an
opportunity to see the ill-famous money that we’ve just heard of: 50, 100, 500
million and later billion and trillion dollar notes. Rama tells us that you
could not even buy a bread with a box of the money!
The currency changed from day to another: he will wake up one morning and
a new billion, eventually trillion dollar notes were born during the night! He
gives Hugo a handful of ‘dollars’ which are now sold on the street as keepsakes.
I have a lot of respect and admiration for the Zimbabweans that hung in there
during those, what must have been, difficult and terrible years and I can only
wish for everyone that the tide will hopefully turn in the
future.
We drive to the only campsite in Karoi, part of what must have
been in the past, a very nice hotel and restaurant. Enough remnants are left to
remind one of a past where life was different than now. Once manicured lawns and
gardens are overgrown with weeds, dry and neglected; buildings are dilapidated
with broken windows, non-functional restrooms, leaking toilets, dripping
faucets, cracked walls with paint peeling, ripped out lights and fittings, no
electricity. The managers of Tiger Safaris in Chirundu have lived and worked in
Karoi for many years. Karoi was a bustling town that served the surrounding
farming community in years gone by. More than 300 ‘white’ farmers have dwindled
to 12 left leaving 1000 acres of farm land untilled with nothing to
produce…
I have only one emotion reigning for as far as we’ve traveled
this beautiful country and we had the opportunity to speak to a few people,
white and black: overwhelming sadness tinged with anger for the destruction
caused by power-out-of-control.
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