Mozambique

Harare, Zimbabwe

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I arrived in Harare, Zimbabwe by car on the evening of May 2 after a long day on the road. That morning I left Malawi and drove about 400 miles (700 kilometers) through Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe. Although it was a fascinating trip with incredible sights, I was exhausted. I didn’t know what to expect in Harare. I read so many negative news stories about Zimbabwe that my expectations were tempered by preconceived notions.

Once known as Salisbury, the capital of the former British colony and country known and Rhodesia, Harare was at one time of the most prosperous cities in Africa. Three decades after Zimbabwe’s founding, however, Harare had fallen on hard times. I’d read many cautionary tales. Hyperinflation of the Zimbabwean dollar denominated in the trillions before it went out of circulation. Outbreaks of cholera and other pandemics. Unavailability of basic goods, including fuel and food. If one believed the stories told by the international media about Harare, one would think that it had nothing good to offer.

Hence, I was pleasantly surprised to find Harare a relatively modern and livable city. Perhaps low expectations tempered my outlook, prompting me to set them lower than necessary. My brief journey through Zimbabwe depicted a country with many challenges but on the whole in better condition than its reputation belied.

After several days of traveling in the African countryside, I stayed in Harare overnight at a very nice 4-star hotel downtown. The high-rise hotel overlooked a city park that coincidentally hosted the final concert of the weeklong Harare International Music Festival, Zimbabwe’s premier music event. While concertgoers paid unknown sums to spend a few hours listening to jazz, fusion, reggae — you name it – at ground level, I sat perched 15 stories above looking down on the festival and taking in the musical finale. It was a rare treat and a melodious ending to a long, eventful trip through southern Africa. I rested very well that night

I spent the next morning walking around downtown Harare surveying the terrain. The architecture was eclectic; it was both modern and dated with subtle strongman embellishments. The cityscape did not feature any quasi-public monoliths, although I sensed broad brush strokes by the hand of public design. The locals milling about were relatively well dress and moved with purpose on their way to complete all-important tasks. While not as cosmopolitan as other mid-sized cities, Harare held its own in the annals of urban metropolises. Even after years of hardship and neglect, it still remains one of the nicest I’ve seen in southern Africa. Having lived for the past year up the road in Lusaka, Zambia, my view may be a bit colored by urban life in rural Africa. Harare struck me as more amenable than its northern twin, despite the economic challenges it has experienced during the past three decades.

After a brief tour of Harare’s city center, I departed for Lusaka. My stay there was short but sweet. I was impressed enough that I plan to return to Harare in the near future over a long weekend with my family. I want to show them a place that far exceeds the low expectations set by years of negative public perceptions.

Journey from Malawi to Zimbabwe via Mozambique

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Journey from Malawi to Zimbabwe via Mozambique (Part V)

I entered Zimbabwe in early afternoon. Malawi, where I had been early in the morning, seemed so far away now. I drove on through unremarkable countryside until Eastern Mashonaland, an area dotted with weathered mountainscapes rising curiously up over the dry flat land. More people lived here than in Mozambique. They lived in what appeared to be slightly better conditions than in Mozambique, although many were quite poor. Unlike Malawi, I saw few bicycles in Zimbabwe, a sign that most locals had little discretionary income to buy such expensive items. The Zimbabweans, however, had a better transit system than Mozambicans. Far more trucks operated in this area transporting locals who hailed them using arm flourishes akin to hitchhiking.

I drove on until I reached Mutoko, a large town an hour inside the border. I stopped at a filling station with my tank nearly empty. No diesel. My heart sank. What would I do if I ran out of fuel? This was Zimbabwe after all, a place that faced chronic shortages in virtually all commodities, including fuel, until it replaced the hyperinflationary Zimbabwean dollar with the U.S. dollar as is legal currency a few years ago. I went to another station across the street and fueled up. Saved, I thought. God is my buddy. Although it was a risk driving alone through this part of the world running on faith that I would pass without incident, it isn’t a cliché to say that God was my co-pilot on this trip. He assured me in so many ways that I had nothing to fear and that He would keep me safe, including the moment when I was driving on the highway and suddenly confronted a semi-truck hurtling headlong towards me in my own lane. The driver was trying to pass another truck and ran me off the road. If not for God’s urging me to pull over and my quick response, I might have died, as so many people have on Africa’s highways. I recalled an incident just a month before in which a missionary serving in Zambia died in Zimbabwe when his bus was hit head on by a truck. Can I say I’m lucky to be alive? No, not really. I know God willed it. If He had wanted to call me home at that instance, He would have.

I checked my tire pressure in Mutoko. Very low. All the tires had lost one quarter pressure, an unsurprising fact given that I had run my tires over 1,500 kilometers of broken, pothole-marked roads and harsh terrain. While the man at the tyre (tire) shop filled them with air I surveyed the town. Across the street was a market and bus station filled with loitering people. On either side of the tyre shop were other auto repair shops with car parts, burned-out chasses, and tires strewn in front. I saw the remains of an overturned car beside the road. Mutoko was not a pretty town but definitely a fascinating glimpse into Zimbabwean culture. I stopped by a small market to buy a cold drink and chose a non-carbonated faux orange drink from the nearly empty refrigerator. The store owner said it cost 50 cents and asked if I would like to buy some chips to round the purchase up to one dollar. I agreed even though I was not hungry for a salty snack. Business was apparently slow, and she needed the money more than I needed food.

I drove on from Mutoko to Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, content that I had enough fuel and tire pressure to return to civilization. The journey ended quietly, and I pulled into town at dusk. I was concerned about arriving after dark in Harare, a large city I did not know with its fair share of crime. I also vaguely knew the general direction to my hotel but not the exact location. Once again, God delivered me right to my destination, and I pulled in at nightfall. I am thankful my buddy kept me safe.

Journey from Malawi to Zimbabwe via Mozambique

Journey from Malawi to Zimbabwe via Mozambique (Part IV)

Tete, Central Mozambique’s largest city with about 150,000 inhabitants, was far different from the neighboring countryside. A surprisingly modern city in the heart of an underdeveloped region, its architecture had a Portuguese flavor dulled by the years that followed independence. Situated on the banks of the Tete River, its eastern and western banks were linked by a suspension bridge that had seen better days but was currently undergoing renovation. The city center reminded me of others I had seen during my travels to Maputo, Mozambique’s capital, and Brazil, another former Portuguese colony. An outpost of centralized-style governance, all roads in the area quite literally led to Tete, and virtually all services, from government administration to filling stations, were located within a short drive of the city center. There were no other way stations for hundreds of kilometers. I passed up the opportunity to fuel my car because I had three-quarters of a tank of diesel and did not want to buy the metacais necessary to purchase fuel in Mozambique. I had less than a quarter of a tank left from a fill-up in southwestern Malawi when I finally passed another service station over 250 kilometers down the road in Mutoko, Zimbabwe.

One highlight of a visit to central Mozambique is geography. The landscape changes from stunning to tired and worn and back and gain, growing progressively drier as you drive west. The foliage turns from leafy green to sagebrush and thorny scrub. Most of the rivers in this area had already dried up despite the fact that the rainy season just ended, leaving the land and its people increasingly thirsty and dependent on stagnant borehole wells. The mountains near the Malawian border are wild and forbidding. I reckoned that very few tourists had ever visited this area, most notably due to the lack of tourist infrastructure – roads and hotels – and the fact that the land is still riddled with hidden land mines left over from the civil war that affected Mozambique for several decades before it ended in 1993. While I am an adventurous sort who would gladly lose myself in a place such as this, the presence of land mines made me hesitant to make this wish a reality.

Not far from the Zimbabwe border I saw three small, colonial style buildings at intervals along the road that looked conspicuously out of place amidst the cinder block rondavels and block houses. Featuring stucco walls with tiled roofs, they looked as if they had been transplanted in southern Africa from rural Portugal. I realized that this must have been the ruins of a former estate owned by a colonial Portuguese family that probably grew tobacco, a major crop in the area. The terrain looked as if it had once been cultivated and shaped in a manner more fit for Europe than rural Africa. The estate had most likely been abandoned by its owner either after Mozambican independence in 1975 or during the subsequent civil war. It was now overgrown with wild brush and small, unkempt fields. Locals had moved into the remaining structures and had lost the battle to keep the estate intact; they now spent their time growing maize in small plots and cutting trees to make charcoal. The story of this estate and the underlying tragedy of its demise would make for an interesting read.

Journey from Malawi to Zimbabwe via Mozambique