THE ROAD TO VICTORIA FALLS

Having just completed over 5000 kilometers of driving in South Africa – the distance from Los Angeles to New York – the rental car is turned in after 18 days on the road in a northern town called Polokwane.  There are the usual problems, which just become grin and bear it situations frequently such as no road signs, where exactly is the car to be turned in (beyond the mere name of the town), and who should I deal with after the rental agency won’t answer their phone and e-mails to them get total bounceback.

Always that little game, of the people you rent from (the agent) saying one thing, then the actual rental agency – the ones providing the car – saying quite another.  Wanting different paperwork, or non-existent paperwork, or contract copies that don’t exist.  Too much fun, really.  I turn the car into Tempest Car Rental finally a day after my first attempt and lose my credit for early return.  In the meantime, the folks at Europcar fill in for the no-shows and assure me all will be okay.  They will do the vehicle inspection for me and vouch the car is returned without new dents, if necessary.

Fourteen hours after arrival, I finally get the service expected when the car passes muster for lack of damage and I am given a free ride to the bus station.  I am left wondering, with all the vaguery of the rental process with this group, whether I will get reimbursed for the tire and rim that was obliterated in Grahamstown.  YES, always take the extra tire and glass coverage.  Especially if you are passing through pothole hell like in Lesotho.

At the “taxi station” (a vast repository for 15 passenger vans, ubiquitous through South America, Asia, and Central America) a reasonable fee is arranged for the two and one-half hour drive to Musina, just short of the Zimbabwe border.  Cost: 100 rand, or $10 US.  I get the front seat (the crush position in case of any collision) and the added honor of everybody else’s surplus bag being piled on or under my legs.  There is no air conditioning.  It must be 95 degrees Fahrenheit out.  Not an agreeable trip.  But a necessary leg to put South Africa in the memory book, and move on to new adventures in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia).

Upon crossing the border out of South Africa for the third time without incident (Guinness might be interested in noting this record), it becomes my fortune to meet a very generous Zimbabwe couple, Raymond and Tendai Chiweshe of the capitol city of Harrare.  And their son Anotidalshe (meaning: “God is With Us”).  About an eight hour drive for them under normal circumstances.  They offer to drive me to Mosvingo, the jumping off place for “Greater Zimbabwe” – the greatest sub-Sahara civilization in Africa from about 1100 to 1800 AD and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

What is so generous about this offer, is that there will be no “totsis” (swindlers) to deal with, no handlers, no transfers, and no sets of multiple vehicles to alight from and then board again.  Just a straight shot and about a three and one-half hour journey.  This couple would become my first set of “Road Angels” in Zimbabwe, a counterweight as it were to the endless string of petty hustlers and con artists and word-breakers who sometimes chip away at your enthusiasm if not trust on a daily basis while on the road.

Of course, this expectation does not take into account Zimbabwe efficiency – and naturally, the lack thereof.  Someone has forgotten to order temporary road permit forms for vehicles transiting the country.  Raymond, a mining engineer working in South Africa, needs one to get home to Harrare.  Just another line-item in the ongoing grift that is necessary to line the pockets of local officials and the right honorable Rober Mugabwe, one of the top rated national tyrants in Africa (who virtually ignored the results of an election toppling him, choosing instead to remain in office for life since “his party’s constitution demanded it” (with the backing of a well paid-off army). It takes three hours for these forms to be made available.  Hundreds of drivers are kept waiting from passing the border.

Once approved, there is another nearly hour delay for vehicle inspection.  Raymond and Tendai are bringing back large quantities of goods to Zimbabwe for personal use, and they must all be checked to make sure they are not practicing the art of importation fraud or, tax dodging.  Only eighty kilometers up the road at Bubi River, their engine warning light goes on.  Luckily, we are near a convenience stop that has a combination store, hotel, and restaurant.  Knowing little of auto mechanics, it becomes my job to steady a flashlight, query newcomers about their automotive skills, and keep the family hydrated while we swelter in the heat while attempted repairs are made.

After four hours of repairs – which included removal of the engine thermostat and bypass wiring of the radiator fan so it ran full time – we discovered the real problem was a broken water cooling pump.  Only available hundreds of miles away, in South Africa.  Raymond encourages me to take advantage of a lumbering 20 passenger religious van passing through, and see how far I can get toward Mosvingo with them.  I feel guilty jumping ship and try to make amends by buying the family two rounds of drinks and paying a local standby mechanic who had assisted my driving benefactor.

While waiting for Raymond’s BMW to cool down and possibly respond to repair overtures, a nearby Zimbabwe woman made a request for “Pulling Socks.”  Odd name, I thought.  It did not occur to me to clarify what she meant by this.  Eventually the request came a second time.  “Do you have any pulling socks?”  After much back and forth, it was finally determined she actually wanted women’s nylon hose.  Apparently these can be stretched, formed into a loop, secured with a knot, and used long enough to get to the next town as replacements for busted fan belts.  What she really wanted was “Pulley Socks.”  And now we both know the rest of the story.

I am piled in a rear seat of the replacement van.  My legs are cramped by the wheel well.  Packages of all sizes and levels of firmness and weight pinch in on my legs.  Only later do I learn this is not a church group, but a band of Zimbabwe merchants religiously making their way to South Africa to restock on commercial supplies – at two-thirds the price of acquiring them in Zimbabwe (even at wholesale).  They make the five-hour one-way trip (and then back) twice a week, in fact.  The van also has a tagalong trailer, loaded to the brim with bedding, cooking supplies, foodstuffs, clothing, and everything Mosvingo natives need for sustenance.

The van can not compete with even worse situations of “Piling On.”  Greyhound type buses pass regularly, with their own adjunct trailers and luggage racks piled high with goods.  Included are furniture, bedding, and other unstable items such that the pile rocks back and forth as it is buffeted by the wind and travel speed of the bus.  One of these buses is almost a cartoon caricature; it is loaded with a highly unstable mountain of goods we estimate to be 25 feet high.  Several of us wonder out loud what will happen to this merchant ship passing in the night, should they encounter a bridge?

Of course, the van and its attendant trailer must stop at each railroad crossing.  At each rough patch of road.  At each campsite to let off non-merchant passengers.  At each uphill grade, to let faster vehicles pass.  And at each gas station, “just in case.”  We finally arrive in Mosvingo at 5 AM, thoroughly degraded into a near-state of rigor mortis and barely able to speak or walk.  It takes another half hour to find a hotel at that early hour – quite an accomplishment at that hour really.

The gentleman who had organized the merchant raid on South Africa offers the next morning to take me to Great Zimbabwe – about a twenty minute cab ride – for $5 US (part of the binary monetary system used in Zimbabwe, consisting of rands and actual dollars, since nobody trusts Mugabwe’s money and only want to trade in US greenbacks).  When he comes to pick me up at 11 AM as agreed, the price of the taxi ride has risen to $45.  “But I have to stand by and wait for you!” he wails.  I ditch him without mercy, move to another taxi driver 15 feet away, and negotiate a round trip AND waiting time for $20.  Meet Norbert Muchumwi, another in my fortunate series of Zimbabwe “Road Angels.”

Greater Zimbabwe would be so much more richly satisfying if only somebody there had the foresight to provide a brochure or a pamphlet to relate to as you traverse the hilly site 15 miles south of Mosvingo.

There is a museum on the grounds.  It provides excellent information.  But that is only a primer.  One really needs a map to follow, and then plaques or something similar to respond to en situ so that you can appreciate what you are looking at, when it was built, and why it mattered.  Toward this end, Greater Zim held in common a sadly common heritage held by most African museums I’d seen to date – the lack of a defining storyline and walk-away supporting materials so you could appreciate what you’d visited in the moments well beyond the immediate “well, wasn’t that nice” viewing.

 

As it stands, what I know is this: the site is huge.  It reflects the zenith of a civilization that flourished from approximately 1100 to 1800 AD.  At one time, it stretched out to the coast at Mozambique to the east, the Limpopo River in South Africa to the south, and was nearly double in size to the north and west.  It is almost a cross-hybrid between Machu Picchu and Thaba-Bosiu in Lesotho (scene of an earlier trip destination nearly ten days prior), with a bit of Mesa Verde in the American Southwest thrown in.

Extensive piling of crafted mortarless granite created walls up to 11 meters high, and 5 meters thick at the base.  Some were used as defensive walls, others as residential units, and others as storage rooms for granaries and water. (Unlike Thaba-Bosiu, there are no hilltop acres for planting and secure residential development).  The Hilltop construction here is largely defensive, and religious in nature.

It appears sacred ceremonies took place on the heights, while the feeding and watering and housing of an estimated population of approximately 2500 took place in the valley 300 feet below.  A huge ringed oval of defensive overkill called “The Great Enclosure” sits just uphill from the valley ruins.  It purpose is largely unknown.  Since Africa’s history is largely oral, much of the traditions behind the site are lost to us in modern times.

What is known is that Greater Zimbabwe was THE major administrative and military center for Southern Africa, which existed primarily to dominate and protect the natural crossroads of trade which the site occupied.  Commerce in the form of beads, glass, gold, ivory, copper and beer (!) flourished throughout the area.  No empire close to its strength existed until the rise of the Zulu Nation after 1836.

Greater Zimbabwe never disappeared.  The royalty of Machu Picchu essentially abandonded their site, fearful they would be discovered by the Spanish (they never were).  The Kings of Lesotho’s Thaba-Bosiu eventually remained in the valley below once under a Briths Protectorate.  But the leadership of Greater Zim essentially migrated north, to meet the growing commercial challenge of Portugese colonialism, and the site eventually fell into disuse.

I noted with some humor, an attempt to purchase a small booklet about the site upon taking leave.  The gatekeeper wanted $3 for it in Yankee dollars.  The information contained might have been worth 50 cents, it was so thin.  He was given a fiver.  “I’ve got no change,” he indicated … then suggested I just leave the balance with him as a “donation” and take the booklet anyway.  I demurred.  The lack of change is just one of many ploys utilized by Zimbabwe hustlers to separate tourists from their pocket money.

Adding insult to injury, I asked the concierge at the front desk to make a call for me to obtain a ticket at the Bulawayo Train Station (about a four hour drive to the west, Zim’s second largest city after Harrare) for 7:30 PM that evening on the all night sleeper train to Victoria Falls.  The gentleman patiently made this call and the reservation.  I was grateful, and told him so repeatedly.  Not three sips into a celebratory beer around the corner, he approached me and demanded $2 US for the “cost of the phone call.”  I thought this odd, especially for a quasi-government or government agency.  It occurred to me this place was beginning to give me the same “Friday the 13^th” type willies I’d experienced in Venezuela three years prior.  Too much money grubbing.  Time to get out.  At any price.

Whereby I made an immediate decision to add  an agreed $80 to Norbert’s commission to drive me to Bulawayo in time to meet the train.  That trip proceeded smoothly and without incident.  The train ride did not.  I am not sure when the train itself was constructed, or the track last repaired.  But it can now only travel 45 miles per hour at most, for fear of breakdown or a rail override.  Arrival was three hours late, not bad really by usual standards for this particular run I am told.

In terms of appearance, it has the look of one of those Indian trains, with 3000 Hindus on the roof, satchels and duffel bags tightly gripped in hand.  It is smudged, rusted, noisy, and almost devoid of exterior color at this point in time.  Straight out of a Charlie Chan movie.  The interior is worse.  There is a dining car, sure.  It reeks of smoke, and there is no dining.  It is simply a dispensary for cigarettes, beer, cookies, hard candy, and limited varieties of hard liquor with soft drinks for mixers.

The sleeper cars have sinks.  They fold up into a corner of the berth.  All water supplies have been disabled.  When unfolded, the stench of urine tells you immediately these have instead been used for middle-of-the-night urinals.  All electrical outlets have also been disabled.  The one working overhead light is infested with insects, both within its opaque plastic globe, and on the outside.  The whole cabin has torn fabric on its fold-down beds (which won’t lock into the upright position), smoke stains on the ceiling, scorch marks on the small drop-down dining table and adjacent wall, and of course … a sliding entry door that won’t lock.

But how much can you argue with this, when the ticket only costs $12 and $4 extra for the blanket and pillow and sheets?   Especially when sleep is but a memory, and you want to stay on schedule for one of the greatest natural sights this planet has to offer -- the famous Victoria Falls, now a mere 454 kilometers away.