Back to Harare

Saturday, 29th February

We had agreed to leave at 7.30 in the morning, but this being Africa, we left an hour later. The unrest in town had quietened down enough for the borders to be reopened so Tom drove me back to the River Zambezi, over which I had entered Zambia. Although they had been officially shut the past two days, when I signed in my information in the obligatory 'guest book' I noticed that people had been crossing over, probably with a few extra kwacha exchanged into the pockets of the border guards.

As we drove over the customs area which spanned the length of the dam, we stopped and I got a quick photo opportunity, not least to honour the photo of my grandparents' honeymoon in the same spot several decades before.

However it was after a fond farewell to Tom that it became clear the rest of my journey would not be plain sailing. After managing to slip past a border guard who offered to drive me personally all the way to Harare with a wink at the end of his shift, I went in search of someone who could take me to Kariba town to catch the bus. The jolly Zimbabwean lady who was sitting by the gate called over one of the mostly redundant taxi driver, a portly, smiling man whose name slips my memory.
          "Where would you like to go, Kariba?" he asked, beaming.
          "Yes please, I'm trying to catch a bus to Harare," I replied in earnest.
          "Oh no, no, no," he laughed at me. "All the buses have left already!" (It's worth mentioning that it was still before 9am, well before any meaningful western work gets off the ground on most days.) "But don't worry," he continued at seeing my panicked face, for having paid no small fee for my visas I couldn't skip merrily back across, "I can take you to a place where you can catch a lift from."
Right.

Clearly trying to ease my nerves, we bumbled along the road through the emerald bush - much denser than the Zambian side - listening to a local radio station and him asking me about my time in Zambia. Not seeming to grasp the concept that I was actually from a different continent altogether, I gave in and pretended that it had been family I had been staying with and now I was going back to an aunt in Zim. Well, not too far off the truth anyway.

Said promised place to catch a lift from turned out to be a T junction in apparently the middle of nowhere called Nyamhunga bus stop. It comprised of two dirt roads meeting at a centre with around 50 Zimbabweans sitting on the grass verge all waiting for lifts. I asked my taxi driver to help me actually catch a lift, not fancying my chances as a small white mzungu girl holding out her thumb in the middle of the road. After about an hour of waiting and discussing with locals - during which time I was trying to form some sort of Plan B which could work without having to use my phone, which wasn't working thus leaving me with no way of contacting either our friends in Harare nor the family in Siavonga - a kombi bus appeared like a mirage of a camel out of the desert. The driver said it was going to Karoi, a large town halfway between Kariba and Harare, so I found myself sat on the cup holder, squidged between the driver and another passenger and fending off memories of reading on an African travel blog back home that warned to avoid kombis whenever possible on account of their safety. 

The best way to describe a kombi is a small, outdated campervan type car in which the driver and passengers play human tetras. The aim of the game is to cram as many people inside and strap as many bags and trading goods to the roof as is possible without the van either failing to move forward, keeling over or downright exploding. Across the front and back windows are emblazoned the buses' reassuring names, usually reassuringly related to asking religious intervention for a safe journey. When asking some locals later, I found that the drivers got their fuel by lining up in the fuel queues at night and driving back and forth throughout the day to make a living. (Zimbabwe has a huge fuel shortage, meaning for the average car owner refuelling involves waiting hours in a queue that stretches back for several miles.) Whether or not these drivers ever got any sleep was questionable, however there no illicit substances popped into view this time so that was a bonus at least.

So there I was, sitting preciously on this cup holder, bombing it as the speedo climbed to over 120kmph down the bush roads with the upbeat music of wooden xylophones and djembe drums coming through the speakers. I had even made friends with the passenger next to me named Sylvester (it seemed rude not to introduce myself seeing as I was practically sitting in his lap) who happened to also be going to Harare and said he would help guide me through Karoi to find a connecting kombi. I was starting to relax and enjoy the experience, soaking up the music and sites of the bush with troops of baboons frequently scampering across the road.

Until I noticed the fuel guage. Whereas I had been impressed with the speedo at the power of the engine given its cargo, the fuel guage alarmed me. Having taken a note of where it was at the start of our journey (less than a quarter) I watched as it dropped with increasing speed towards empty. I calculated that we definitely did not have enough fuel to make the 2 hour journey down to Karoi, and this being Zimbabwe we couldn't simply stop at a petrol station; we would be stranded for potentially the whole day. Even more alarmingly, the driver also started glancing ever more frequently down at the guage; this wasn't the norm then. I started crossing fingers and toes, watching the pin fall as everyone else in the bus carried on their conversations in blissful ignorance. Then the orange light came on. Down, down the pin fell until empty. We had just passed a sign that said "KAROI: 156KM". I won't be getting to Harare tonight, I thought, more than a little panicked. And then the pin kept on falling, way down past zero. In fact we spent the remaining 90 minutes of the journey apparently with negative fuel, still zipping along at the same, if not higher, speed. We crawled into the kombi ranks in Karoi, to the driver's evident relief, after a journey that certainly defied any highway code.

The main street of Karoi which housed the huge kombi ranks was heaving with people. Kombis and larger coaches rolled up and down, trying to attract customers while drivers ran alongside, hustling me and asking where I was headed. Hawkers lined the pavement waving bunches of bananas and crisp packets and all number of people simply sat at the side, passively regarding the hubbub. My new friend Sylvester led me through the melee where a few kombis sat at the side of the road leading out of town. We chatted as we walked and it turned out he was currently on leave from being a reserve in the army - so probably not a bad friend to make.

We found a kombi heading to Harare and sat for about half an hour whilst passengers and the driver attempted to arrange bags on top tied down with ropes through the windows in a gravity-defying feat. Once again we made off through the countryside; this time I was squashed in behind several crates of Chibuku, a potent local brew. It always amused me whenever we came to a rail crossing, as despite the fact Zim has no working trains, the driver cautiously stopped and diligently looked both ways, only to then continue bombing it along the road. After another couple of hours we pulled into another town called Chinoyhi, where most of the other passengers disembarked. It became apparent however that the driver too wanted to join them and was going no further. This left me, Sylvester and three other passengers confused and rather irritated. As a compromise, one man jogged down the road a few hundred metres to where a large lorry was parked and asked if the driver was headed for Harare. He was indeed, so a portion of our bus fares were handed over by the kombi driver and the five of us crammed into his cabin, with four of us sat bent over double on his bunk bed behind his seat. This is how we spent the next two hours, with the others chatting in Shona and occassionally in English to be polite and include me, as Shona culture dictates exquisite manners. There were a couple of hiccups with the engine, which proved to be not in finest fettle as every time the driver wanted to change gear it sounded like a family of hyenas were crunching down on bones made of brittle metal; there was only one moment where the engine stopped completely and we were left coasting down the highway for a few minutes, wondering for the second time if Harare was actually on the agenda for tonight.

 

view from the lorry cab

The lorry driver was not going into Harare centre, so we jumped off on the outskirts of the city, wished each other the best and split off into different directions. By luck, Sylvester was heading to a similar area to where I needed to go so he offered to guide me there. Onto another kombi we jumped, this one belittling the others in how many people it contained as it was rushhour, with the driver's assistant hanging out of the open door shouting Harareeeee as we bombed along the streets, weaving in and out of other vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians and the odd chicken.

The centre of Harare looks very modern, much like Bridgetown, with a collection of shiny, high-rise buildings interspersed with bustling malls and markets. I marvelled at the modernity of it, a stark change from rural Zambia, my mouth watering at the assortment of fried chicken shops (I realised I hadn't eaten anything except for a slice of bread at 6.30 that morning). I ended up meeting some relatives of Sylvester in a shop in one mall, before thanking him for his genoristy and then heading off through the central park to find a taxi rank to take me to the guest house I was staying in for the night. The central park was much like Parker's Piece in Cambridge on a midsummer's day; the grass was covered with people sitting and sleeping on it, however these were not care free sun-worshippers, I realised, these were some of Harare's many homeless and it was a sober reminder of the poverty of where I was. Given the rest of this day, the taxi ride of course was not uneventful either; it turned out the driver had misheard the name of the road I had given and drove 10km in the wrong direction. I then had to borrow his phone and direct him via Google Maps, at last ending up at the guest house just after dark, safe and sound.

The whole episode was a testament to the kindness, hospitality and willingness of the Shona people to go out of their way to help you, so for that I thank all the people I met on this journey.