11th Dec am -Harare first impressions
We’re staying for a few days in Avondale, with family friends, J a lawyer and his wife T who is an ex-headteacher. G (my sister-in-law) and I wake up at 6.30 am for some cross training and our long-awaited first glimpses of Harare in daylight. I sincerely hope this will quell the sinking feeling we began to feel last night, as we entered the capital city in the dark, sans any form of street lighting!
We’re staying for a few days in Avondale, with family friends, J a lawyer and his wife T who is an ex-headteacher. G (my sister-in-law) and I wake up at 6.30 am for some cross training and our long-awaited first glimpses of Harare in daylight. I sincerely hope this will quell the sinking feeling we began to feel last night, as we entered the capital city in the dark, sans any form of street lighting!
It's cool this morning because
it rained last night . Harare’s urban-scape is generously furnished with luscious green foliage and looks as fertile as ever. The golden morning sun
brushes its warm rays gently across my cheeks, as I smilingly note that there
are vegetables and fruit trees everywhere, in allotments, in-between and within every garden, like there always used to be! Orchard trees are heavily hung over with fruit including bananas and mango trees of almost every variety. Cousin P later informed me that now-a-days people are nervous about when to plant their
maize crops because this part of the world has not escaped changing climatic patterns. So planting and harvesting is late
for many and staggered due to differing weather forecasts.
Ghettoisation has crept into this affluent neighborhood in the form of poor street maintenance, worn paint, heavy rust and litter. I stare in silent bewilderment at the steady and uniform stream of cheap Japanese cars and rusty bikes driving past us, amidst incessant and unnecessary beeping of horns, and rush hour cuts into the peace and tranquility of our morning power walk. With no buses in sight, public transport is limited to ETs (emergency taxis). These come in the form of people carriers, a step up from the battered old Peugeot 404 estate cars I formerly used to hop onto in a mad rush to get to lectures, during those heady days at University (the UZ was the only one in Zimbabwe at the time. Now there are 3 or 4...I have yet to find out more about the quality of courses on offer). The average ET is unlicensed and stuffed to bursting with commuters who flag them down from any point along the road. It flaunts all safety rules and sensibilities. But one thing you can be sure of is that no matter how many tonnes of jet black fumes puff out of said ET, you will somehow arrive at your destination, remarkably intact for just US$1 (Z$1 in my day, a useful measure of inflation...but what do I know about economics or finance?).
Ghettoisation has crept into this affluent neighborhood in the form of poor street maintenance, worn paint, heavy rust and litter. I stare in silent bewilderment at the steady and uniform stream of cheap Japanese cars and rusty bikes driving past us, amidst incessant and unnecessary beeping of horns, and rush hour cuts into the peace and tranquility of our morning power walk. With no buses in sight, public transport is limited to ETs (emergency taxis). These come in the form of people carriers, a step up from the battered old Peugeot 404 estate cars I formerly used to hop onto in a mad rush to get to lectures, during those heady days at University (the UZ was the only one in Zimbabwe at the time. Now there are 3 or 4...I have yet to find out more about the quality of courses on offer). The average ET is unlicensed and stuffed to bursting with commuters who flag them down from any point along the road. It flaunts all safety rules and sensibilities. But one thing you can be sure of is that no matter how many tonnes of jet black fumes puff out of said ET, you will somehow arrive at your destination, remarkably intact for just US$1 (Z$1 in my day, a useful measure of inflation...but what do I know about economics or finance?).
No amount of gloom mongering can prepare a nostalgic home-comer for the sense a malaise creeping up on me this morning, despite having returned with an open mind even after the grueling experience at Beitbridge (boarder between South Africa and Zimbabwe). In other parts of Harare as I find out later, the degradation is blatantly apparent
but to put it down a widening rift between the haves and the have-nots would be an oversimplification of Harare’s current condition. I’m sure many would agree that even the
nouveaux riche are hurting beneath the surface but the feeling that they are in
many ways exposed and vulnerable is
perhaps more palpable to the first world outsider, than to local opportunists and entrepreneurs who are just getting on with their lives. But this kind of laisser faire economics is so accurately played out before me this morning, when a man suddenly crouches down at a road junction and using a bucket of rubble, begins to fill up and level
off the pot-holes. Every now and then he stops traffic to put out his hands for what he feels he is owed for offering a service that the government has clearly failed to deliver. This act I’m
told, would be repeated at various busy road- junctions
in the city, without ever seeing the actual completion of the job in question! (I would not be surprised if the same bricks are removed from the holes each time, and the bucket reloaded for the encore)
I've taken pictures (to be added later) of some ostentatious houses built alongside the dilapidated roads. There are even more affluent cul-de-sacs, that we later stumble across, in this and the neighboring suburb, which
look like embassies typified by security guards manning electric gates (everyone has electric gates!), high brick walls, topped with masses of barbed wire,
tennis courts, outdoor swimming pools, thatched gazebos, servants quarters, orchards and still an acre of land to spare, inhabited by those who, like J and T have either made it or survived in the new Zimbabwe. There’s definitely wealth and money
here.
My sister in law and I end our power walk, relieved not to have sprained any ankles whilst trying to negotiate the unfriendly road surface. Fresh filtered coffee is served in familiar modern western style at a Greek cafe, although we resist the temptation to replenish ourselves with large tall triple chocolate and carrot cakes cut into gargantuan slices, in favor of joining our hosts in their 12 bed-roomed home with landscaped garden, complete with fashionable but incongruous , non-indigenous palm trees. We promised ourselves that we would offset our braai frenzy with a healthy breakfast of cold fruit salad and were not disappointed with the exotic variety on offer ( sliced pawpaw, guava, Mexican apple, lychee and mango)...certainly much more befitting of the smoldering mid-morning heat!
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| Everyone has an electric gate! |
My sister in law and I end our power walk, relieved not to have sprained any ankles whilst trying to negotiate the unfriendly road surface. Fresh filtered coffee is served in familiar modern western style at a Greek cafe, although we resist the temptation to replenish ourselves with large tall triple chocolate and carrot cakes cut into gargantuan slices, in favor of joining our hosts in their 12 bed-roomed home with landscaped garden, complete with fashionable but incongruous , non-indigenous palm trees. We promised ourselves that we would offset our braai frenzy with a healthy breakfast of cold fruit salad and were not disappointed with the exotic variety on offer ( sliced pawpaw, guava, Mexican apple, lychee and mango)...certainly much more befitting of the smoldering mid-morning heat!
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