Zimbo James

I had finished my first round of golf at the Hillside Golf Club in Mutare and had gone up onto a deck that overlooks the first tee and ninth green to get some water and a sandwich. The day was dry and hot, around 30C, humidity like that of a desert. I'd worn a scarf around my neck to protect it from UV. The course was parched. The rainy season hadn't yet begun, and, because there is no irrigation system for the fairways, they were brown and dusty. The course, though, in spite of the dried up grass, was an excellent British layout that was built more than a hundred years ago. It places a premium on accuracy off the tee. A stray ball ends up in the bush and lost. (Zimbos find golf balls and sell them back to golfers.) I sat down at a picnic table next to a table of locals, all white and drinking beers. Black locals were at other tables. One man, N., turned to me and asked how I'd played. Not well, I said, but it was my first time. He asked me where I was fro...

On the first Friday of every month, starting at nine in the morning, Africa University has a campus clean-up. Students and staff go around the campus, which has a soccer and rugby pitch, groves of trees which have leaves that can be eaten (I can't remember the name of the tree), and bush which looks very snake friendly. I've been told there are black mambas in the nearby hills. Trails are worn through the bush, which serve as short cuts from the classrooms to the pitches, and to a nearby illegal gold mine on the other side of a hill, where men eke out a living, looking for specks of gold, their bodies caked with mud. Truly. Those volunteering for the clean-up met behind the chapel, perhaps a hundred of us, wearing long pants, to protect our legs from bushes bristling with thorns. (Seeing the thorns, I always recall Hemingway's story, " The Snows of Kilimanjaro ," in which the protagonist, Harry, contemplating his impending death--Gregory Peck in t...

Went for a motorcycle ride on Sunday, to look for avocados, peanut butter, and tomatoes at a shop in the opposite direction of town, an closer, and came to one made of cement blocks, sand out front, chickens pecking in the sand, beat up car with windows cracked. There was a shop on one side of the building, a bar on the other, reggae music blasting out from it, and men, drunk, stumbling around holding bottles of Castle Beer, dancing to the music, or sort of lumbering around about to fall on the floor. Others were shooting pool. Went in there, the bar not much bigger than the pool table, the store clerk, a large woman, behind a screen, who, because the music was so loud, had to put her ear up close to the screen so that she could hear me when I shouted, "A bottle of Castle, please." I got the idea to buy a beer because in the shop next door a drunken man had asked me to put some money on his phone, 4 Zim bonds, maybe .30 cents. Did that. He was drinking a Castle beer....

Africa University is about 20km from the relatively small town of Mutare, Zimbabwe, the only place to do any shopping The supermarkets are well-stocked. There are several markets to buy avocados (very plentiful and cheap, maybe .20 cents each), carrots, onions, and tomatoes; they're so cheap I can't even calculate the cost. But getting into town is problematic. The Univeristy has a bus service, but it is too infrequent. So to solve this problem I bought a rather inexpensive Chinese off-road motorcycle, a Nexus 150, knock off of a Honda.I brought along an international driver's license with a motorcycle endorsement. The highway into town is good, one put down by the British over Christmas Pass, only about a 300 meter climb, which is between the University and town. Not much of a grade. Traffic is light. Drivers in town don't drive so fast. But on a motorycle dangers lurk everywhere, and it's necessary to always be on guard. Have a helmet, of course. It's required...

Biggest challenge in Zim is getting one's hands on money, so that they can buy something. The local currency is regarded with suspicion, and it is against the law to exchange dollars, though there is an active black market. I have already met a money changer who has solved a lot of my problems in that regard. Few people use banks for their local currency, because they could wake up and discover it is worthless. Just about all products are imported, paid for in American dollars, and because the Zim currency is not cannot be converted on the international market, they are paid for in dollars, which inflates the price. Setup a bank account in town which has two separate accounts for American dollars, foreign currency, and the local currency, called everything from bonds to dollars to RTGS. Need a letter of employment to do that. Took a long time, all morning, but accomplished it. Now I just have to wait to have the money show up from my American bank account. Many ATMs...

Zim isn't at all what I had expected: somewhat similar to a chaotic city in Indonesia or the Philippines with traffic, noise, and plastic pink and blue shopping bags blowing around, looking like air born jelly fish. Harare has a peaceful, lazy post-colonial atmosphere. Perhaps things are different in the central business district, which I could see over the tops of the acacia trees. The roads were potholed, hardly anything to complain about considering what Zim has been through over the past forty years. The shoulders along the streets--all two-lane--were tidy, maybe a plastic bottle here and there, but also manicured shrubs and flowers at the entrances to peoples' houses, which were behind walls; I did see security cameras guards. Clearly, there is a security problem, but I never felt threatened. People were friendly, often greeting me with extended handshakes, or by holding out an arm for me to grab a hold of if their hands were dirty or wet. I was told...