spring break: welcome to zimbabwe

We soon left Botswana to venture into Zimbabwe. Predictably, there was border-crossing drama. We didn’t have enough money to get past the border ($50 each). So we were given a choice by our driver. We could either spend another hour driving back into town and an hour back to the border to take money out. Or, we could use the black market to change rand into US dollars. We chose the black market. I thought the black market was a shady market with illegal goods all laid out for trade on tables and in tents. Little did I know it is nothing more than under-the-counter trades with random people very much in the open. With a complicated exchange rate, a fee for this black market exchange, and our feeble attempts to simultaneously understand three currencies (rand, US dollars, and kwatcha), we somehow still didn’t have enough money to get across. So we hired a cab—as negotiated by the all-mighty-Emma—to front us the cash and drive us across. We drove forever to the hostel while random elephants popped up right next to us on the side of the rode. We stopped at a police checkpoint when our cab driver got out of the car to slip the policewoman a 5. He told us that it happens all the time. Then we stop again a little while later and begin to back up quickly while I’m passed out in the back. Apparently, we just missed another cheetah, which walked across the road while we were all sleeping! Oh, Africa. Anyway, we finally get there to go to an ATM to find that none of them are working and they are apparently the only ones in town. Eventually, we figure it out that we have to use “universal” account (whatever that means) and we are able to pay this poor man after all.

The cab dropped us off at the Shoestrings Backpackers, which is more like a bar that happens to have some rooms in the back. Feeling like we had drained our funds after safari and exhausted after a long day of travel, we spent the rest of our afternoon having ghetto high tea at the Victoria Falls hotel and hanging out by the pool pretending to be guests. After a nice African dinner, all of us walked back in the dark to the hostel—which we only did upon the encouragement of many Zimbabweans. It was so surprising and cool because, as four girls, it’s something we would never feel comfortable doing in South Africa.

One of the things I found really intriguing and confusing about Victoria Falls was the acceptance and embrace of colonialism. Here it was, these white men come into Africa, claim to discover Victoria Falls, despite obviously being taken there by natives who have lived there their entire lives. And this man is applauded--to this day--by the tourist industry in Zim. This fancy hotel had framed pictures of white men in colonial gear, on top of having black men wearing old-fashioned colonial garb. When I asked this Zim man at a bar later that night, he said it was catering towards the older generation and will likely end when the generation fades out. I'm not so sure. He also had a more nuanced take than my previous all-negative one. He explained that because Livingstone brought over whites who now help their economy, there is an acceptance of the good (of colonialism), as well as an acknowledgment of the bad.

I don't know how much you know about Zimbabwe, but they are politically and economically a MESS. All of this land was distributed amongst the black (unskilled and uneducated) people by president Mugabe and taken away from commercial (mostly white) farmers. So now there is nothing for their economy to really stand on. In addition to corruption, rigging of votes, and violence, there is an insanely high unemployment rate, and hyperinflation (the highest in Africa - as in, a meal costs about 46,000 kwatcha, which is equivalent to about 10 US dollars). Just nuts. And yet, people from Zimbabwe seem to define themselves as being uniquely Zimbabwean because of their immense about of hope and optimism. Emma questioned whether this was an unhealthy form of denial, or a helpful tool of survival. I leaned towards the ladder.