Wandering thru Southern Africa, 1986-87

June 25, 10:00AM, Home of Pete & Verity Mundy, Lake McIlwaine, Zimbabwe So let me tell you about a conversation I had with three white “Rhodesians” a couple weeks ago.   I’m calling them “Rhodesians” because, despite Rhodesia becoming Zimbabwe in 1980 with the arrival of black majority rule, many whites still seem to think of themselves as Rhodesians.   As reported in a previous post, I had accepted an invitation from George, a white Zimbabwean businessman, to accompany him on a trip from Bulawayo to Harare, then on to the eastern highlands of Zimbabwe.  We drove to Harare on June 11 and stayed with George’s wife’s aunt and uncle, Julie and Louden.  They are probably in their mid-40s and live in a very nice section (still mostly white) of Harare with their four kids, two of whom are away at school.  Louden works in an agricultural business.  George and Louden were in the Rhodesian Army during the civil war.  George became a major and company co...

June 22, 3:30 PM, Emissary Community, Harare, Zimbabwe I’ve made a few changes to my plans for the next two months.  First of all, I’ve decided to skip a trip to Malawi at this time.  It’s a beautiful country, but I’d either have to fly there (too expensive) or take an incredibly long bus ride there from Lusaka, Zambia.  Second, I’m not going to spend as much time in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Zambia as I had budgeted for.  I keep feeling I should get back to South Africa, especially since the political situation seems to have heated up there lately.  If I do get the teaching job in Botswana, my South African travel time will have to be curtailed anyway.  I think I’ve gotten the contrasts of South Africa’s neighboring states I need, so why keep hanging around?  My plans are to return to Johannesburg on July 9 after taking a swing through Lusaka and Victoria Falls.    Speaking of the UB job, I spoke by phone with the Environmental Science Cha...

9:45 AM, home of Bernard & Sally, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe   My first impressions of life for whites here in Zimbabwe:  scarcity and uncertainty about the future.  There are so many things we take for granted which one can’t find on the store shelves in Zimbabwe.  Some examples:  camera film, raisins and other dried fruits, imported liquor, and electronics.  Imports in general seem nearly impossible to find due to high import duties.  On the other hand, you can live like a king for next to nothing if you can do without luxury or imported items or get them into the country somehow.  I’ve already spoken about what a bargain Adrian and Penny’s house in Bulawayo was:  Z$25,000 five years ago when the Zim and US dollars were roughly at par.  The house includes 4 bedrooms and 2 baths.  There is a swimming pool and servant’s cottage – all this on an acre of land.  It would easily cost ten times as much in an American suburb. Palatia...

June 16, 12:30 PM, Home of Steve & Beryl, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe I decided to leave South Africa for a couple months and head north in search of warmer weather.  Instead, my first couple days in Zimbabwe were bloody cold for Africa.  It was grey, windy, and only in the low 50s F on Sunday morning in Bulawayo which is technically in the tropics at 20°S latitude.  Of course, I have to remember that Bulawayo is situated at 4000 feet above sea level.   My first Rotary Club hosts in Bulawayo, Adrian and Penny Feather, are in their early 40s and moved here from England in the mid-1970s at the height of the Rhodesian War.  After two years, they had had enough of the war and went back to England.  However, after a couple years, they realized they really wanted to be back in Rhodesia.  Only, by the time they were ready to come back in 1980, the whites under Prime Minister Ian Smith had lost the war to the African rebels.  The country had become Zimbabw...

June 16, home of Steve & Beryl, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe   The afternoon of my arrival in Zimbabwe, my Rotarian host, Adrian Feather, drove me over to a local Bulawayo park with two reservoirs.   It was good to stretch my legs a bit after having been in a tightly-packed train for about 15 hours.   The lower reservoir was completely dry while the water in the upper one was way down.   Drought has been a serious problem in Zimbabwe for several years although the eastern and northern parts of the country received abundant rainfall this year.   My conversation with Adrian that afternoon was reminiscent of what I’d heard from white South Africans.   Adrian wanted to set me straight about the alleged inequalities of the former white Rhodesian government.   He pointed out that Ian Smith’s government was often criticized for not doing more for black education.   How could a couple hundred thousand white taxpayers afford to educate a couple million black...

June 16, 12:30 PM, Home of Steve & Beryl, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe Before my second meeting at the University of Botswana Environmental Science Department on Friday, the 6 th , I decided to attend the Gaborone Rotary Club meeting.   I had some misgivings about even showing up given the cold shoulder I’d received on the phone from their president regarding accommodations in Gabs with a Rotary family.     Other than the guy collecting the money at the entrance to the meeting room, the Gaborone Rotarians virtually ignored me.  They didn’t even have a club banner to exchange for my Summit County, Colorado club banner.  At lunch, the only guy who talked to me was a guest of one of the members.  They only have one black member, a strange imbalance in a non-racial democracy with 1 million African and only 10,000 white residents.  After lunch, I ducked out fast not feeling it was worth any more effort to meet people in a club where I was being ignored. ...

June 6, 10:00 AM, Thornhill Government Guest Flats, Gaborone, Botswana Yesterday, I stumbled into an amazing, serendipitous opportunity.   While I had found my barroom conversations in Gaborone with the two British accountants very informative, I wanted to get some additional perspective on Botswana from local residents.   So, I took a walk to the campus of the University of Botswana hoping to meet a geography professor or two for a chat.   I stopped at the administration building and explained to the receptionist that I was an American geographer travelling through Botswana and was wondering if they had a geography department at the university.   No, they didn’t but they have an environmental science department.   I figured that was close enough having worked in environmental consulting for several years.   Were any of the environmental science professors around that I could perhaps meet?   The receptionist wasn’t sure because final exams were about...