Victoria Falls

Victoria Falls, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, is well worth the long trip to get to it.  The day I was there, the weather was overcast with some rain, so I didn’t get wonderful photos of the falls.  There is a trail in a park along the falls that goes for most of a mile, with 16 viewing points.  I may not have been able to get photos with bright-colored rainbows that can be had on sunnier days, but I really enjoyed the subtle variations of greens and grays that I saw.  It was almost like looking through a kaleidoscope—the scenery shifted moment to moment due to variations in lighting and spray. 

The falls actually go around that huge island on the right

Another section of the falls

Victoria Falls is about 5600 feet wide, and the falls drop as much as 350 feet at some points.  It’s described as the largest single sheet of falling water in the world.  The indigenous name for it is 'Mosi-oa-Tunya' , which means the 'Smoke that Thunders'.  It’s an apt name.  The roar of it can be heard from a mile away, and the spray is phenomenal. 

This last picture is for Chris, who comments that I don't have photos of me on my blog.  See, I'm actually here!

Maggie at Victoria Falls



Travel to Victoria Falls

I promised to fill readers in about how the trip to Vic Falls went.  I traveled with the Korean lecturer from AU.  We left at 3:30 AM, and caught a bus to Bulawayo that was supposed to leave at 4:00, but actually left at 4:40.  It was a large bus with seats like a school bus—no padding.  The cost was $15.  After any number of stops, we got to Bulawayo just after 3:00.  We caught a cab to another place where the bus to Vic Falls was supposed to depart, only to find out that we’d missed it by 10 minutes.  There were no other large buses that day, so our choice was to stay in Bulawayo and leave the next morning, thereby missing one of our two days in Vic Falls, or take a minibus.  (The minibus cost $25, whereas the bus we missed would’ve cost $10.)  We got on a minibus that was supposed to leave in a few minutes, and actually did leave in a little less than an hour.  It seated 24, but carried 28 of us.  It pulled a trailer full of stuff that we delivered to quite a few different places along the way.  We got to Vic Falls and took a cab to our backpackers’ lodging, arriving a few minutes after midnight.  The real trick of this 20 ½ hour sojourn was that we never had a rest stop along the way, and there weren’t even any stops with a good bush to pee behind.  I didn’t know I could wait that long!

 We had two delightful days of vacation.  The first day we went to Victoria Falls.  The day was quite overcast, so the photos are all in shades of gray.  It was quite impressive.  Around noon, the sun started to peek out from behind the clouds, so we walked the whole length of the park a second time.  Then we went to a local craft market, where I quickly became overwhelmed with the needs of the vendors.  They all are having a tough time, and although they tried to be polite, sales are extremely important to them for basic food needs.  I wound up buying more than I really wanted or could conveniently carry, just to spread a little money around.  We also went to a grocery store to get a few things, and were amazed at the greater variety of goods available there than in Mutare.

 The next day we connected with a day tour of Chobe.  There were four South Africans, two Brazilians currently living in Zambia, a Japanese man and a German man as well as us.  We went into Botswana, which conveniently has a free one-day entry (give them credit for encouraging tourism).  We spent ½ day in a covered tour boat and ½ day in a safari jeep that just held the 11 of us (including our guide).  The number of different animals we saw was amazing!  We were within 20-30 feet of most of them, and were able to sit for periods and watch their behavior.  It was a blast!

 Coming back into Zimbabwe fulfilled my need to be admitted with a tourist visa.  My temporary employment permit expired the 18^th.  The immigration officer who handled it threw a fit because I gave him a $20 bill with a small (maybe 1/8 “) tear in it.  I said I didn’t have another and held up the line over that for several minutes in hopes that he’d be reluctant to pick another fight over my work permit.  He commented on it, but didn’t object to giving me a 30-day tourist visa.  So now I have to go through some process again in a month, in hopes of being able to stay until the end of the semester.

 The trip back to Mutare was a little better than the outbound trip.  We’d paid for the backpackers’ lodging through Saturday night before we realized that we’d have to leave Saturday to get back Sunday.  That was a good thing, though, because we could leave our stuff there when we went to Chobe and, when we returned, take a shower and have a nap.  We caught a midnight bus to Bulawayo, arriving a few minutes after 6:00 AM.  We found a public restroom, got some food, and then caught a bus at 7:00 for Mutare.  This bus actually was a coach—quite rundown, but with padded seats, which made the trip back much more pleasant.  We arrived in Mutare around 4:30 PM.

Travel to Victoria Falls

Another visiting faculty member from Africa University and I are leaving tomorrow morning to make my second try at getting to Victoria Falls.  Traveling isn’t easy here, however.  Here’s the story of my trip so far (and remember, I haven’t even left yet)!

There's a bus from Mutare to Bulawayo.  It leaves sometime very early in the AM, but there's no good way to find out when.  It leaves from a bus "depot", which is really just a parking lot with bus-size spaces, in the very worst part of Mutare, several miles from where I live.  There's no way to get a taxi short of walking to the center of town, and there's no good way to reserve a taxi, even by walking down there and asking someone.  It's not safe to walk at night--I'm of the opinion that the greatest danger is breaking a leg in one of the many potholes and the very uneven pavement that seems to be the norm, because although there are street lights, no one can remember when they last worked.  It's pitch black out and there's enough of a cloud cover that there won't be a moon tonight.  So a foster son of a Health Sciences faculty member will drive us to the bus depot at 3:30 am, stay with us, and make sure we get on the correct bus.

Once we're on that bus, our best bet is to try to make friends with people from Bulawayo who might be able to tell us where and when we catch a bus from Bulawayo to Vic Falls.  We're assured there is one, but that's as much as we know.  Oh, did I mention that no one knows how much either of these buses will cost?  We think the first one might be $20 or $25, and I'm guessing the second one won't be much more.

Assuming that we get on the bus to Vic Falls, our next task is (again) to make friends with anyone from Vic Falls to try to get a commitment for someone to drive us (probably for a fee, of course) from wherever the bus lets us off to the backpackers' lodging where we're staying.  I'm told that bus depots are usually on the far edge of towns, and that there will be no taxis anywhere around when we get there because most of the people riding the bus wouldn't be able to afford one, so none meet the out-of-town buses.  And, you guessed it, there's no way to phone for one.

The backpackers' lodging I chose came recommended by a friend of a friend.  Unlike most such facilities, this one has a room (not a dormitory) with 2 twin beds and a private bath.  All the others I looked at had a public bathroom down the hall.  I booked the room through the internet at a site that specializes in such accommodation.  Like Priceline and other such sites, they have you contact the accommodation directly with any questions or to change arrangements.  I emailed the backpackers' place because I needed to check on something, but it's been 4 days now without a reply, so if they actually have email, either it doesn't work or they don't check it.  The internet site gave 2 phone numbers for them.  The first doesn't accept incoming calls, and the second is out of service.

My temporary employment permit (TEP) runs out Saturday, which is a huge issue.  AU has had my passport for over a week trying to get an extension, and in the last three days I've walked across campus (because neither the email system nor the phones are working) 4 times to get it back so I'd have it for this trip.  I'm told that I'll need to walk across the bridge, go through immigration and customs there, and probably spend a night out of Zimbabwe so that I can recross the border, buy a tourist visa, and thereby extend my stay 30 days.  The university will try again to get an extension on my TEP once I get back.  Failing that, I'll have to go out of the country again mid-April.  I haven't had time to look at lodging in Zambia, since the internet hasn't been working well either at the university or on my dongel until just before I started this email.  That's next on my list of things to do this evening. 

So wish me luck.  I'll let all of you know when I get back, and whether I made it to Vic Falls this try.

Baobab Trees

I first heard of baobab trees in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories (along with the green, greasy Limpopo River, which is a name I’ve always liked).   when I was a young child.  On the way to see the Great Zimbabwe, we passed through an area that had quite a few, and I really enjoyed seeing them.  They’re pretty large, and unusual in that they have very fat trunks.  (The ones we saw weren't nearly as large and fat as they can get.)  These trunks hold an amazing amount of water—I read in my favorite scientific annals, Wikipedia, that a large one can hold 32,000 gallons!  This is very adaptive in times of drought.  As the trunks get bigger, a hollow is formed in the middle, which can become home for animals or even a person.  The baobab doesn't live as long as the oldest bristlecone pines, but a few specimens have been dated at close to 2000 years old.  The baobab is sometimes called the upside down tree because for most of the year it doesn’t have leaves (more water conservation, I’ll bet), so the empty branches and twigs kind of look like a root system.  We were lucky--at this time of year, the trees have leaves.

Baobab tree in its natural state

The first few baobabs we saw were in their natural state, but then we saw quite a few that had had their bark stripped off in large rectangular patches.  We stopped so I could take a photo of one.

Baobab tree with bark trimmed

We were wondering why anyone would strip the bark, but within a couple of miles it was evident, because there were a lot of rugs and mats for sale along the edge of the road.  I later found out that the fiber of the bark is naturally fire resistant, so it makes good mats and rope.  Here’s a photo of some of the mats. 

Baobab rugs

Thoughts about Some Aspects of University Finances

Yesterday I talked more with a faculty member about a seminar she wants us to develop.  Whereas I’ve worked with organizations that want to educate the community and are willing to do training on a shoestring budget, she explained that here the whole point of doing a seminar is to bring in money to the university.  According to her, the attitude is that there’s money out there, and the goal is to get as much of it as possible for the university.  The way that’s done is to try to interest non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) in funding the seminar.  This involves paying the presenter (actually AU, not any individuals) for developing and giving the seminar.  Then the NGO needs to show its board that there’s need for the seminar and that people will attend it, so they often pay participants to come sit through it.  Sometimes this is extravagant—they’ll foot hotel bills for people coming from Harare to Mutare or vice versa as well as paying generous stipends for expenses (gas, meals) for all participants.  The faculty member said sometimes people appear for seminars well aware of the money they’ve been promised but with no idea (or care) about the content of the seminar.  We’ve decided to proceed by talking to her contacts about what kinds of training they need, and then developing a pilot test that would be done on a shoestring.  This might eventually lead to funding if  the dean wants to market our seminar to NGO’s once we’ve developed and tried it.  I was clear that I have no interest in doing that in the time frame I’m here.
Today one of my students came to see if I had any idea how he could continue to finance his education.  He’s Zimbabwean and is in my undergrad class in the Health Sciences Management program, which is 3 years.  This is his second year.  A number of people contributed to pay his tuition the first year.  Last semester he paid all but $40. He was unable to take some exams with his class last term because of that $40 deficit, and he hasn’t been able to pay registration this term.  He now owes $1770 total.  He’s been told that some scholarship money may be available to help him during the last year of his program if he gets to that point, but his benefactors have said that they can’t continue to pay for his tuition, and have encouraged him to go to a public university (where tuition is more like $400/term, according to him).  However, none of the public universities has a similar degree program, so he’d have to switch majors and essentially start over.  I really feel for the students.  I’m sure this happens in the US to some degree too, but I don’t think it’s desperate enough or structured such that faculty are very aware of it.  Another faculty member is getting lists of students’ financial status from the bursar’s office because she can’t sign off on attachments for them unless they’ve paid at least ½ the semester’s tuition.  It’s down to the wire now, and many students still haven’t been able to come up with the all the money.  What’s that saying?  “For the lack of the nail, a shoe was lost.  For the lack of a shoe, the horse went lame. . . .”   I don’t remember the rest of it, but a lot of what happens in Africa seems like that.  For the lack of a quick test, that 54-year-old woman see earlier blog about health issues in Zimbabwe) died of malaria.  It’s sad.

Communication Woes

We had the electricity go off at Africa University last Thursday (3/1), which is nothing unusual.  However, workmen had recently connected a number of separate generators so they could work in a coordinated fashion for whatever parts of campus lacked electricity.  The newly modified generators came on, then failed.  I'm not sure how that took the university computer server down (maybe there was a big power surge), but the upshot was that the server went down and has been corrupted, so we had no internet access and no email for a week. 

In January, the campus telephone system was being upgraded when a big bolt of lightning hit campus and destroyed most of the phone system.  University officials are still working to get someone to come in, probably from another country, to see what is salvagable and to decide what to do next about the telephone system.  In the meantime, very few telephones are working.  (I haven't had a working phone in my office at any point since I got here--there's only one on my floor of the Health Sciences Building that works.  This isn't important for me, but is for people who are running labs in another building or working to create attachments for students and supervise students in attachments scattered through this province.) 

For a week, official university communication has been by word of mouth or hand-delivered notes.  I found out about a required all-faculty meeting Tuesday of this week only five minutes before it was to start!

About 8:15 yesterday morning (3/8), I went over to the Information and Computer Technology (ICT) office and re-registered my user name and password, so now I have internet access again at the university.  However, everyone who had saved documents to their university computers can't access them, and it was not immediately clear whether they'll ever be recoverable.  I don't think the university has a regular system for backing up files, so there was fear that they might be gone permanently.  By today ICT has figured out how to get the documents back, but is having to go office to office to do that.  We don't have email yet, and there's not much hope for recovering anything that was saved in the email system.  Also, everyone's address books were lost.  So we all start from scratch, whenever they get the email part of the system running again.

Somone asked me about personal communication.  I have a cheap cell phone, for which I have bought a few minutes of call time.  Like most people here, I communicate mainly by instant message, since that doesn't cost money and calls cost by the minute.  The system has frequent breakdowns--I'd say that about one in four messages that I try to send won't go through on the first try, though they usually go within the first half hour.  I also have another phone, for which I buy gigabytes of time on the internet on a pay-as-you-go basis, since there's no computer connection at my apartment.  This connects me to a broadband network.  It works about 3/4 of the time when I try to get on it.  It's OK for looking up information pretty consistently.  It's fast enough to connect with the Cox Network for email about 1/2 the time.  Skype works about 1/3 of the time, without video and with some interruptions and needs to reboot, again because of the connection being too slow to sustain a call. 

Everyone adjusts to the vagaries of communication technology here pretty well.  After all, what's the alternative?  A few people have their own wi fi connections, but it's difficult to get those.  People have to provide proof of residency and utility bills for the past six months, get a letter from their employer, etc.  I could never fulfill their requirements in the time I'm here.  I'll appreciate my Android and my reliable internet connection when I get back home!

The Great Zimbabwe

Guide, Phillip, at the entrance to The Great Zimbawe

Last Friday I went with two other Americans to see the Great Zimbabwe, the best of the historical ruins in this country, and the basis for the country’s current name.  Zimbabwe means “great stone house”.  It refers to a royal complex built by the Shona for their kings.  The site was occupied beginning in the early 1200’s AD, and continued to be occupied through the 1500’s.  At its height, the population of the urban area was in excess of 100,000 people.  The mud and thatch structures are long gone, of course.  What remains is the kings’ quarters, meticulously built on top of a large granite hill using “dry” stone construction.  That means that rocks were fitted together without benefit of mortar.

The lower, wider part of the approach to the king's quarters

The approach to the kings’ quarters was ingeniously designed.  A person approaching had enough steep steps to climb that even a conditioned warrior would be winded and fatigued by the time he reached the top.  The walls were built to form a kind of winding chute, which is narrow enough that people had to enter single file.  Warriors above could simply drop stones on any unwanted visitors.  The walls were at least 7 meters high.  At the base, they are about 5 meters wide, and would have tapered to more like 3 meters wide at the top.  Within the hill compound are spaces where traditional mud and thatch huts would have been placed.  The kings stayed there, and so did their advisors, fortune tellers and iron workers.  The iron workers’ jobs were considered so important that they were not allowed to marry, and were placed in the hierarchy of the structure pretty close to the king.

The higher part of the approach to the king's quarters

the flat rock to the right is the king's balcony,
which has a wonderful panoramic view of the countryside

The entrance to the hill compound (after climbing all those steps)
the top structures are symbolic granaries

one area of the hill compound

This was a polygamous society, and given the kings’ stature, they were expected to have many wives (estimated to be 200 or so per king).  There was a whole separate compound, currently called “the enclosure” at the base of the hill where the wives stayed until called to the hill compound by the king.

the enclosure, viewed from the hill compound

walls in the great enclosure, more recent one on left

There is evidence both in the hill compound and the enclosure that kings outdid their predecessors in opulence by enlarging and/or improving structures.  In the hill compound, where space was limited, there are signs that different kings took down the walls of previous structures, laid a new floor, and then rebuilt.  In the enclosure, walls were built around walls, forming corridors.  Each successive outer wall was more sophisticated in building style than the last, so it’s easy to see changes in technology here.

 Finally, there was another set of walls built in the valley that are believed to have been a visual representation of the continent of Africa and the Shona migratory route from the north to this area.  I’ve never seen anything like that before.

map of Africa and model village seen from hill complex

 In the valley, there was a small constructed village with crafts for sale and some people who played drums, sang and danced traditional dances.  The dancers wore pairs of large gourds with some small stones in themaround the calfs of their legs.  When they danced, these made rhythmic sounds, but I couldn't figure out how they could dance without tripping on them!

Shona drumming and singing