The Hotel turned out to be about three minutes walk from the bus station and was a one and a half star affair , but it charged thirty American
dollars which was a lot for me, they charged a further ten dollars for
breakfast , one hundred rand !! I thought i was going to travel through Africa because it would be cheaper than home !!! But i wasn’t going to
complain, i had
No other choice, and there were no alternative options nearby, my Swedish travelling companion looked exhausted and ready to sleep and booked a room across from mine , i took a Walk to buy some cigarettes but was warned by the concierge
That the streets might be dangerous at this time ,. I bought a few loose cigarettes at a corner shebeen and had my first encounter with some of the Zimbabwe locals, after that i smoked ,while chatting with the concierge, trying to gain a an inkling of what the city held in store and learn a little about life pin Zimbabwe..after ..slept well and woke up early, and went out to explore the city.i went straight to bed...and woke early
Bulawayos wide streets and many old colonial buildings, it seemed clean and well maintained. I was in search of mosquito repellant and preventative medication and i needed a Zimbabwe simcard and wanted to find out if my blackberry service could work in Zimbabwe
And when i stopped to ask for directions, i found all of the Zimbabweans to be polite ,educated, presentable and good at giving directions.....i took longer than i had hoped in finding all the things i needed, and by the time i got back to the hotel, i found a friendly Note from the swedish lady saying that she had moved to a backpackers with a swimming pool,inviting me to join her if i wished, after learning that the backpackers cost fifty dollars a night, i thought better and decided to rather sms her and politely decline, and to proceed instead straight to victoria falls....
I intended to hitchhike, both for the sense of adventure and to save money, and made myself a cardboard sign...and hired a cheap taxi to take me to the perimeter of the town and put me on the road....there were a lot of locals also waiting by the side of the road and i walked further down and found a shady spot beneath a tree to hike From.
A friendly local who was parked in the shade Stepped oust of his car to talk to me and informed me that it was very difficult to get lifts here, and that it could be dangerous, and i should beware of robbers if it should get late there and i should be stuck. also he said cars would be unlikely to stop here, i should return to the spot where all the locals were standing and to try get a lift there, Or to simply pay the fifteen dollars for the minibus taxi it was about four hundred and eighty kms to Vic falls !! A car stopped but the driver was just being friendly asking me where i was from,we chatted a bit but he wasn’t going very far.
I decided at first to persevere in my efforts but after about forty minutes of waiting i decided to take the minibus and carried my bags down to the minibus and paid the fifteen dollars...they then wanted to charge me an extra five dollars for my luggage, but i objected and they allowed my bag to travel for free.
I was the only mlungu in the minibus, but the occupants were warm and friendly, i chatted with the man sitting next to me who was a maths teacher, and learned that although the transition from Zimbabwean to American dollars afforded the citizens a lot more stability,
That Zimbabwean wages were very low, and this was a qualified teacher with a degree...only about two hundred and fifty dollars a month !!
The scenery from my window was beautiful and wild and the sun began to set while exquisite African choir music played on the sound-system....i was transorted into a holy rapture and felt happy, as i fell naturally into a state of prayer and thanksgiving to our creator, thanking the great spirit for life and all that is good, for tihe journey so far and ithe journey to come.we stopped about halfway at a small village with some shops where i disembarked to buy something to drink...here i did an impromptu comedy juggling show for the local kidsin who whooped with delight....then onward we drove toward victoria falls. When wwere more than two thirds of the way, we changed minibuses, and i found myself sitting next to an overly friendly somewhat drunk and overweight zimbabwean man who was going to vic falls to work as a game guide. It was a tight squeeze and the guy was quite drunkly affectionate, arms around my shoulder, not
In a gay sort of way, friendly but annoying, and i returned his friendliness without complaint and suffered it....another occupant of the taxi...a very sober polite gentleman chatted with me...he worked at a hotel at vic falls where he could perhaps help me get some work as an entertainer...but aside from that, he offered me work as a gold miner...an idea that i was not entirely adverse to, but not sure if i would feel quite comfortable working underground....well life is all about adventure and experience, and earning a living, so it was certainly a prospect to mull over.
By now we were about thirty kilometres from vic falls ,and the minibus stopped at a petrol station to refuel so i got out to stretch my legs....the sober man joined me and chatted....suddenly a bakkie drove past with what appeared to be a slaughtered water buffalo, he explained to me ,that was a game reserve nearby , and that many of the workers there had not been paid for many months, and so the parks would allow the men f to hunt and kill a certain amount of buffalo occasionally as payment.
The last twenty kilometres filled me a sense of anticipation and excitement at arriving at the falls...i upon arrival, ....before we knew it we had arrived...at the terminus and taxi drivers and touts were there waiting .....i declined all offers of taxis or accommodation, and decided to proceed on foot to find my own....i wanted to save money after the expense of the bus trip and the three hundred rand flea palace hotel...and planned to pitch my tent somewhere in the bush...there was plenty of bush that seemed ideal...i was joined on my walk down the dust road by the friendly drunk man and a companion who had met him at the terminus....and they were trying to dissuade me from pitching a tent....it was not locals or humans i should fear they said....but elephants !!!!
Personally i would be more afraid of humans than elephants...but i really wanted to camp rough, and so i bid them goodnight....and i did not envisage any elephants stomping on my tent while i slept....it saddened me that in my youth i could set out on a journey, with not much money, easily hitchhike a ride , and always manage to find a place to safely pitch my tent, and feel safe and undisturbed....and now almost every square meter is owned by somewhere, and that i must pay someone my hard earned money they just to camp under the stars. Sigh.
So i trudged into some bush, found what seemed an ideal spot, then reconsidered, moved on found a slightly better one then reconsidered once more....i didn’t want any humans to see me from the road...so i got back on the road and continued in search of the perfect campsite...as i did a car stopped with two white guys asking me where i was going....i told them i was looking for somewhere to pitch my tent in the bush....noooo they objected.....you cant do that they said...the elephants.....!!!!!! .......three weeks later, still in Vic falls and i still had not encountered one single elephant ,,,!!!!!
I should have kept my big mouth shut , walked on and camped....instead i got it the car and allowed them to deliver me from a sure demise by elephant stomping to the safety of a friendly backpackers where i could camp for only five dollars a night....alas, yet another hard earned fifty rand just to pitch myl tent...and to think that i
Had imagined that Africa would be cheaper than home !!!
So there i was at a place called shoestring backpackers....which turned out to be the best place that fat,e and circumstance could have brought me to...it was to be home for the following three weeks, and i must say i loved it....for my money it was five star luxury, a mini sun city for only five dollars a night !!!!
I pitched my tent and slept soundly....hoping to wake early and view vic falls with the sunrise....alas i overslept and woke up around nine am....and went off in search of the falls....Vic falls is a tiny town with one short main street selling whitewater rafting and bungee jumping, river cruises, sadly even elephant and wildlife hunting to those bastards who get their thrills by shooting at poor defenceless animals...who cant shoot back.....you cant walk far down the main street without some impoverished local trying to sell you a collection of fifty billion or one hundred trillion old Zimbabwe notes, old uncle bob Mugabe with all his fine education had done a sterling job of totally screwing up the economy of the breadbasket of Africa....the one country that previously could feed all of Africa in times of drought or famine...was full of meek humble goodhearted people who had no option but to keep their mouths shut keep their thoughts to themselves...before the transition to dollars taking trillions of dollars to the shops to hurriedly buy all they could....because everything would be twice as expensive in three hours time.....but now everything was American dollars....and at least five different locals were desperately trying to exchange their collections of trillions and billions for one lousy American dollar...!!....at that point i was not in the mood for being a softy, later on i would succumb to my mushy human sympathies and finally succeed in become a multi millionaire finally....except not one of those trillion dollars would i ever be able to spend...only look at, and laughingly show around to other mlungus as conversation pieces....and thankfully it would only cost me one dollar.
So dodging the local zim dollar vendors, and somehow avoiding the determined sculptor curio vendors i took a left onto the road that later leads down to Vic falls ......i encountered some Zambians pushing their bicycles laden with goods they they had come to sell or trade in Zimbabwe......then i walked across the railway line which i later learned was the terminus of the great unfinished cape to Cairo railway....envisaged by Cecil john Rhodes....he only got this far and for some or other reason stopped....i pondered what a great necessity and major artery it would have been for Africa....and wondered why an international trans African railway had not been created....later i was told by a fellow umlungu that the reason was politics....the nations of Africa with differing agendas of their own could not come to agree on something that would be this positive and for their mutual benefit. Down the road i excitedly ambered anticipating my first glimpse of Vic falls, imagining that i would suddenly catch a glimpse of it and that it would be freeee.....oh the thousand natural that flesh is heir to....alas...it was not....for suddenly i found myself at the entrance of the Victoria falls national park....at a cashiers office where a twenty dollar entrance fee was required of me.....Thirty dollars for Americans and Europeans however and only five dollars for locals ....so i gratefully thanked the big guy in the sky that i was South African and not a yank or a pommie...and without complaining promptly paid the fee.....no free waterfall for the children of the earth....the friendly staff greeted me and indicated which path i should follow....and offered
Me a raincoat to hire for only ten extra dollars which i politely declined with a grumpy...no thank you.....walking only a short way down the pathway to the falls and it was raining quite heavily.....within minutes i was sopping wet and i was to realise that i was in a veritable rainforest....suddenly the pathway led me to my first spectacular glimpse of a solid breathtaking wall of water...the day was overcast and gloomy and quite misty and i did not have the most clear of views...i met a couple of black friends who were busy taking photos of one another with an android....and i took some photos for them and they for me...they had evidently paid the extra ten dollars for the yellow raincoats...and they were trying to simultaneously protect the orifices of their android from getting wet...whilst taking photos...they took a few good shots of me....which i have uploaded to facebook and will make a note to share in this blog.
After paying the fee one cannot leave the park and then enter again later...so i decided to make the most of the day...and returned to the coffee-shop by the entrance where i indulged in a two dollar cup of coffee..and went onto facebook on my mobile.....i was in the mood for teaching English on my online TEFL English classroom....where the subject at that time was idioms and idiomatic expressions. My online teaching has been free, and most of my students are Vietnamese and Egyptian. Egypt i have visited but not Vietnam...although i did teach English for four months in neighbouring Thailand. So we discussed expressions like...the pot calling the kettle black....a stitch in time saves nine, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and so forth....just. Then i heard a friendly female voice and i looked up, and that’s when i met Jane and elder woman from Holland, a friendly generous hearted soul,who had lived in Zimbabwe for some years....she worked as a nurse....and she was best friends and have travelled for years with a gay friend, Jan who worked as a waiter at the falls restaurant....Jane and i had an instant affinity, she had a jovial round face wit.h rosy cheeks and wore a colourful kakoi scarf....her eyes twinkled.....she related her experience of her time in Zimbabwe.....she recounted to me how in the transition from the Zimbabwe to the American dollar.....how homeowners who had unwisely sold their homes in their failure to keep up with ever rising home repayments had suddenly woken up to discover that their gazillions of zim dollars were now worthless....they could take them to the back to exchange them for greenbacks but they were now worth peanuts....meanwhile uncle bobs money was likely saved as greenbacks all along and was sitting cosily in some Swiss account or offshore account....accumulating interest while he sits in his palace lonely save for his spendthrift wife grace his obsequious generals....faces his loneliness, tries not to consider the prospect of an afterlife, and the possibility of eternal consequences.....and gorges himself on large silver spoonfuls of cake.oh its tough at the top....methinks..... poor old rich old bob....
Jane Invited me to join her that afternoon....with another two African friends on a visit into a traditional village some kilometres away...to visit a traditional inyanga...a medicine man, healer, soothsayer all rolled into one...the real McCoy.....i gratefully accepted...why not...life is either an adventure or nothing....she needed to pop off and do some groceries and would come and collect me in about an hour....so i remained and continued with my online English class....until she returned.
It was not her car but her friends and she only had it for the day...we first went past a place called elephants walk to collect her two local friends...who were craftsmen and sculptors...who she was paying a tip to guide her through the village and lead her the nyanga
Outside elephants was a large wire sculpture of a rhino which was made from tin cans as a recycling project, i greatly admired this, as well as deeply caring about the plight of the rhino and being somewhat of a passionate rhino activist.....i photographed this sculpture...before greeting our two companions, whose names i regretfully forget....sorry, not great with names but never forget a face.
To be continued.......
No other choice, and there were no alternative options nearby, my Swedish travelling companion looked exhausted and ready to sleep and booked a room across from mine , i took a Walk to buy some cigarettes but was warned by the concierge
That the streets might be dangerous at this time ,. I bought a few loose cigarettes at a corner shebeen and had my first encounter with some of the Zimbabwe locals, after that i smoked ,while chatting with the concierge, trying to gain a an inkling of what the city held in store and learn a little about life pin Zimbabwe..after ..slept well and woke up early, and went out to explore the city.i went straight to bed...and woke early
Bulawayos wide streets and many old colonial buildings, it seemed clean and well maintained. I was in search of mosquito repellant and preventative medication and i needed a Zimbabwe simcard and wanted to find out if my blackberry service could work in Zimbabwe
And when i stopped to ask for directions, i found all of the Zimbabweans to be polite ,educated, presentable and good at giving directions.....i took longer than i had hoped in finding all the things i needed, and by the time i got back to the hotel, i found a friendly Note from the swedish lady saying that she had moved to a backpackers with a swimming pool,inviting me to join her if i wished, after learning that the backpackers cost fifty dollars a night, i thought better and decided to rather sms her and politely decline, and to proceed instead straight to victoria falls....
I intended to hitchhike, both for the sense of adventure and to save money, and made myself a cardboard sign...and hired a cheap taxi to take me to the perimeter of the town and put me on the road....there were a lot of locals also waiting by the side of the road and i walked further down and found a shady spot beneath a tree to hike From.
A friendly local who was parked in the shade Stepped oust of his car to talk to me and informed me that it was very difficult to get lifts here, and that it could be dangerous, and i should beware of robbers if it should get late there and i should be stuck. also he said cars would be unlikely to stop here, i should return to the spot where all the locals were standing and to try get a lift there, Or to simply pay the fifteen dollars for the minibus taxi it was about four hundred and eighty kms to Vic falls !! A car stopped but the driver was just being friendly asking me where i was from,we chatted a bit but he wasn’t going very far.
I decided at first to persevere in my efforts but after about forty minutes of waiting i decided to take the minibus and carried my bags down to the minibus and paid the fifteen dollars...they then wanted to charge me an extra five dollars for my luggage, but i objected and they allowed my bag to travel for free.
I was the only mlungu in the minibus, but the occupants were warm and friendly, i chatted with the man sitting next to me who was a maths teacher, and learned that although the transition from Zimbabwean to American dollars afforded the citizens a lot more stability,
That Zimbabwean wages were very low, and this was a qualified teacher with a degree...only about two hundred and fifty dollars a month !!
The scenery from my window was beautiful and wild and the sun began to set while exquisite African choir music played on the sound-system....i was transorted into a holy rapture and felt happy, as i fell naturally into a state of prayer and thanksgiving to our creator, thanking the great spirit for life and all that is good, for tihe journey so far and ithe journey to come.we stopped about halfway at a small village with some shops where i disembarked to buy something to drink...here i did an impromptu comedy juggling show for the local kidsin who whooped with delight....then onward we drove toward victoria falls. When wwere more than two thirds of the way, we changed minibuses, and i found myself sitting next to an overly friendly somewhat drunk and overweight zimbabwean man who was going to vic falls to work as a game guide. It was a tight squeeze and the guy was quite drunkly affectionate, arms around my shoulder, not
In a gay sort of way, friendly but annoying, and i returned his friendliness without complaint and suffered it....another occupant of the taxi...a very sober polite gentleman chatted with me...he worked at a hotel at vic falls where he could perhaps help me get some work as an entertainer...but aside from that, he offered me work as a gold miner...an idea that i was not entirely adverse to, but not sure if i would feel quite comfortable working underground....well life is all about adventure and experience, and earning a living, so it was certainly a prospect to mull over.
By now we were about thirty kilometres from vic falls ,and the minibus stopped at a petrol station to refuel so i got out to stretch my legs....the sober man joined me and chatted....suddenly a bakkie drove past with what appeared to be a slaughtered water buffalo, he explained to me ,that was a game reserve nearby , and that many of the workers there had not been paid for many months, and so the parks would allow the men f to hunt and kill a certain amount of buffalo occasionally as payment.
The last twenty kilometres filled me a sense of anticipation and excitement at arriving at the falls...i upon arrival, ....before we knew it we had arrived...at the terminus and taxi drivers and touts were there waiting .....i declined all offers of taxis or accommodation, and decided to proceed on foot to find my own....i wanted to save money after the expense of the bus trip and the three hundred rand flea palace hotel...and planned to pitch my tent somewhere in the bush...there was plenty of bush that seemed ideal...i was joined on my walk down the dust road by the friendly drunk man and a companion who had met him at the terminus....and they were trying to dissuade me from pitching a tent....it was not locals or humans i should fear they said....but elephants !!!!
Personally i would be more afraid of humans than elephants...but i really wanted to camp rough, and so i bid them goodnight....and i did not envisage any elephants stomping on my tent while i slept....it saddened me that in my youth i could set out on a journey, with not much money, easily hitchhike a ride , and always manage to find a place to safely pitch my tent, and feel safe and undisturbed....and now almost every square meter is owned by somewhere, and that i must pay someone my hard earned money they just to camp under the stars. Sigh.
So i trudged into some bush, found what seemed an ideal spot, then reconsidered, moved on found a slightly better one then reconsidered once more....i didn’t want any humans to see me from the road...so i got back on the road and continued in search of the perfect campsite...as i did a car stopped with two white guys asking me where i was going....i told them i was looking for somewhere to pitch my tent in the bush....noooo they objected.....you cant do that they said...the elephants.....!!!!!! .......three weeks later, still in Vic falls and i still had not encountered one single elephant ,,,!!!!!
I should have kept my big mouth shut , walked on and camped....instead i got it the car and allowed them to deliver me from a sure demise by elephant stomping to the safety of a friendly backpackers where i could camp for only five dollars a night....alas, yet another hard earned fifty rand just to pitch myl tent...and to think that i
Had imagined that Africa would be cheaper than home !!!
So there i was at a place called shoestring backpackers....which turned out to be the best place that fat,e and circumstance could have brought me to...it was to be home for the following three weeks, and i must say i loved it....for my money it was five star luxury, a mini sun city for only five dollars a night !!!!
I pitched my tent and slept soundly....hoping to wake early and view vic falls with the sunrise....alas i overslept and woke up around nine am....and went off in search of the falls....Vic falls is a tiny town with one short main street selling whitewater rafting and bungee jumping, river cruises, sadly even elephant and wildlife hunting to those bastards who get their thrills by shooting at poor defenceless animals...who cant shoot back.....you cant walk far down the main street without some impoverished local trying to sell you a collection of fifty billion or one hundred trillion old Zimbabwe notes, old uncle bob Mugabe with all his fine education had done a sterling job of totally screwing up the economy of the breadbasket of Africa....the one country that previously could feed all of Africa in times of drought or famine...was full of meek humble goodhearted people who had no option but to keep their mouths shut keep their thoughts to themselves...before the transition to dollars taking trillions of dollars to the shops to hurriedly buy all they could....because everything would be twice as expensive in three hours time.....but now everything was American dollars....and at least five different locals were desperately trying to exchange their collections of trillions and billions for one lousy American dollar...!!....at that point i was not in the mood for being a softy, later on i would succumb to my mushy human sympathies and finally succeed in become a multi millionaire finally....except not one of those trillion dollars would i ever be able to spend...only look at, and laughingly show around to other mlungus as conversation pieces....and thankfully it would only cost me one dollar.
So dodging the local zim dollar vendors, and somehow avoiding the determined sculptor curio vendors i took a left onto the road that later leads down to Vic falls ......i encountered some Zambians pushing their bicycles laden with goods they they had come to sell or trade in Zimbabwe......then i walked across the railway line which i later learned was the terminus of the great unfinished cape to Cairo railway....envisaged by Cecil john Rhodes....he only got this far and for some or other reason stopped....i pondered what a great necessity and major artery it would have been for Africa....and wondered why an international trans African railway had not been created....later i was told by a fellow umlungu that the reason was politics....the nations of Africa with differing agendas of their own could not come to agree on something that would be this positive and for their mutual benefit. Down the road i excitedly ambered anticipating my first glimpse of Vic falls, imagining that i would suddenly catch a glimpse of it and that it would be freeee.....oh the thousand natural that flesh is heir to....alas...it was not....for suddenly i found myself at the entrance of the Victoria falls national park....at a cashiers office where a twenty dollar entrance fee was required of me.....Thirty dollars for Americans and Europeans however and only five dollars for locals ....so i gratefully thanked the big guy in the sky that i was South African and not a yank or a pommie...and without complaining promptly paid the fee.....no free waterfall for the children of the earth....the friendly staff greeted me and indicated which path i should follow....and offered
Me a raincoat to hire for only ten extra dollars which i politely declined with a grumpy...no thank you.....walking only a short way down the pathway to the falls and it was raining quite heavily.....within minutes i was sopping wet and i was to realise that i was in a veritable rainforest....suddenly the pathway led me to my first spectacular glimpse of a solid breathtaking wall of water...the day was overcast and gloomy and quite misty and i did not have the most clear of views...i met a couple of black friends who were busy taking photos of one another with an android....and i took some photos for them and they for me...they had evidently paid the extra ten dollars for the yellow raincoats...and they were trying to simultaneously protect the orifices of their android from getting wet...whilst taking photos...they took a few good shots of me....which i have uploaded to facebook and will make a note to share in this blog.
After paying the fee one cannot leave the park and then enter again later...so i decided to make the most of the day...and returned to the coffee-shop by the entrance where i indulged in a two dollar cup of coffee..and went onto facebook on my mobile.....i was in the mood for teaching English on my online TEFL English classroom....where the subject at that time was idioms and idiomatic expressions. My online teaching has been free, and most of my students are Vietnamese and Egyptian. Egypt i have visited but not Vietnam...although i did teach English for four months in neighbouring Thailand. So we discussed expressions like...the pot calling the kettle black....a stitch in time saves nine, butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth and so forth....just. Then i heard a friendly female voice and i looked up, and that’s when i met Jane and elder woman from Holland, a friendly generous hearted soul,who had lived in Zimbabwe for some years....she worked as a nurse....and she was best friends and have travelled for years with a gay friend, Jan who worked as a waiter at the falls restaurant....Jane and i had an instant affinity, she had a jovial round face wit.h rosy cheeks and wore a colourful kakoi scarf....her eyes twinkled.....she related her experience of her time in Zimbabwe.....she recounted to me how in the transition from the Zimbabwe to the American dollar.....how homeowners who had unwisely sold their homes in their failure to keep up with ever rising home repayments had suddenly woken up to discover that their gazillions of zim dollars were now worthless....they could take them to the back to exchange them for greenbacks but they were now worth peanuts....meanwhile uncle bobs money was likely saved as greenbacks all along and was sitting cosily in some Swiss account or offshore account....accumulating interest while he sits in his palace lonely save for his spendthrift wife grace his obsequious generals....faces his loneliness, tries not to consider the prospect of an afterlife, and the possibility of eternal consequences.....and gorges himself on large silver spoonfuls of cake.oh its tough at the top....methinks..... poor old rich old bob....
Jane Invited me to join her that afternoon....with another two African friends on a visit into a traditional village some kilometres away...to visit a traditional inyanga...a medicine man, healer, soothsayer all rolled into one...the real McCoy.....i gratefully accepted...why not...life is either an adventure or nothing....she needed to pop off and do some groceries and would come and collect me in about an hour....so i remained and continued with my online English class....until she returned.
It was not her car but her friends and she only had it for the day...we first went past a place called elephants walk to collect her two local friends...who were craftsmen and sculptors...who she was paying a tip to guide her through the village and lead her the nyanga
Outside elephants was a large wire sculpture of a rhino which was made from tin cans as a recycling project, i greatly admired this, as well as deeply caring about the plight of the rhino and being somewhat of a passionate rhino activist.....i photographed this sculpture...before greeting our two companions, whose names i regretfully forget....sorry, not great with names but never forget a face.
