However, another principle I have is to be polite. So, my new ‘friends’ and I continued to talk about things, including relationships. They said all men were dogs and could not be trusted. Michelle, the sexier of the two, told us how she had had a relationship with a married pastor for 18 months and nobody had suspected anything.
I was not surprised about that. I have always known that pastors are worse than politicians. Politicians just lie and cheat, but pastors lie and cheat in the name of the Lord. Michelle was a real bad girl. She also related how she, while shagging the pastor, was involved with her older sister’s husband for six months. The relationship was cut short when her sister caught her husband in bed with another man and divorced him, and he moved to the United Kingdom. These stories were very interesting, more so because they were cementing my opinion that some men get married in order to try and hide their homosexual tendencies from society.
By then only a handful of us were left in the bar and our conversation had evolved to sexual fantasies. The Mosi had attacked my nervous system in a big way and in next to no time I found myself describing to two strangers my deepest fantasy, which, before then, I had not confided to anyone: ‘In this lifetime I have to have a threesome with two nuns.’
I explained to the girls that I was not a bad guy or a pervert. It was more out of curiosity that I wanted to get into bed with two nuns. I had always been intrigued to know whether nuns would genuinely be virgins or whether it was just a myth, I said.
‘Have you ever had a threesome with two students?’ Michelle asked with a straight face.
‘No, never. My focus, at least for now, is on nuns …’
‘No, no, I have never, and I would not mind,’ interjected a tall white guy with blue eyes and light brown hair who had obviously been listening to us.
I knew then that it was time to go to bed, so I zigzagged my way to the dormitory. Lizzy and Dave, my dorm mates, were already in dreamland.
The alarm clock woke me up against my wishes. I had a pounding headache and was feeling sick. Nevertheless, I had to get up as it was time to go microlighting over the Victoria Falls.
Peter, a Zambian national, picked me up from the backpackers to drive me to the airstrip. By sunrise I was already going through the formalities (payment, signing an indemnity, etc.). As it was still early in the morning and a bit cold, I was given a fleece to wear. Another Peter, this one from Sweden, was the pilot and the one who was going to take me for a flip.
A microlight is not called a flying lawnmower for nothing. The engine looks too small to have enough power to lift off with two adults on board. The seating is arranged in such a way that the passenger sits at an elevated position right behind the pilot. Although there is nothing wrong with this seating arrangement, the seats are so close to each other that, as a passenger, you have to open your legs in order for the pilot to be able to sit up straight. I could not help but think that if I were a microlight pilot carrying a woman passenger I would crash the damn thing because I would keep looking back.
As soon as I was comfortable in my seat Peter started the engine. By then I had on earphones so that I’d be able to communicate with him. This was the second time that I had worn earphones in an aircraft. The first was at East Rand Airport in Johannesburg while aerobatic flying on a Pitts Special as part of my 28th birthday celebration. I had almost forgotten how much time a pilot spends talking to air traffic controllers and the importance of this in ensuring a safe flight. As a passenger on a commercial airline you are totally unaware of all this exchange.
The very first thing I asked Peter was, ‘So how long have you been flying?’
‘Well, my man, that is the most frequently asked question by first-timers,’ he said over the earphones as we were taxiing to the main runway.
He never really answered my question.
It was my maiden flight on a microlight. The first few seconds were uncomfortable and everything felt very unstable. Within a minute or so, however, the wind on my face made me forget my splitting headache completely. Even a bit of turbulence and having no side panels or roof did not deter me from enjoying the experience and I decided that flying in a microlight, with just two seats, handles and a motor in the back is what floating free in life is all about.
We soon levelled at 1 500 feet Above Ground Level (AGL) and, Peter told me, were doing 42 m.p.h. (about 70 kilometres per hour). From above, the view of the Victoria Falls was amazing, incredible, awesome. On the Zambian side I could see Livingstone and the Zambezi Sun and the Royal Livingstone Hotel, as well as the bungee-jumping steel bridge at the falls, which separates/connects Zambia and Zimbabwe. On the Zimbabwean side I spotted the town of Victoria Falls and the Kingdom Hotel.
Nothing, however, could beat the view of the falls themselves, rising like a column of smoke. Were it not for the sound of the microlight’s engine, which drowned out all other sounds, the sight would have been accompanied by the thunder of the water as it plunges through the gorge. Studying the twisting course of the river from above, I could half-understand why I had thought we were heading for the falls while we were cruising upstream the previous day. Even in retrospect I was happy to see that it was impossible to have plunged over the edge.
A slight increase in wind suddenly made flying over the falls bumpy and also very scary. I was still enjoying the view, however, and the wind on my face, when I realised that on that very day I was 11 000 days old. I felt that, although unplanned, this was a glorious way to celebrate my 11 000th day on this small blue planet, Earth. In fact, quite honestly, we should not celebrate our date of birth but instead our day of conception because that is when we become part of life.
I had figured out a long time ago that the way we calculate age is not correct: since we determine months according to the Gregorian calendar, the number of days in a month fluctuates between 28 and 31. The better way of measuring how long you have lived would be to calculate your age in days, hours and minutes. Mind you, the way we measure days and hours is itself arbitrary. Why should it be 60 and not 100 seconds that make a minute, and why do 100 minutes not make an hour? And why 24 hours in a day?
In no time Peter started the descent to the airstrip. The 15 breathtaking minutes of microlighting over the falls had flown by. They felt much shorter than that.
Back in Livingstone, I attended a church service. I knew that during this trip I would need divine intervention now and then and, as if bargaining with God, I had decided to go to church although I felt more like going to bed. The service was held in an old, white-walled school hall, right next to the Livingstone Museum.
Since it was a Pentecostal church, there was a lot of singing and clapping. The congregation was led in song by a band and three vocalists; everyone prayed with arms raised as if they could see Jesus and God, reciting, mantra-like, ‘On your left, possess your land. On your right, possess your dream.’ The leading devotee would chant ‘On your left’ and the entire congregation would reply ‘Possess the land’, upon which the leading devotee would follow with ‘On your right’ and the congregation with ‘Possess your dream.’ It was a very appropriate song.
Pentecostal churches emphasise the importance of offering your best. As a congregation, we were encouraged to give our best to the Lord. Everyone who was visiting the church for the first time was then asked to stand. All of us newcomers received a round of applause, hugs and handshakes.
I had spent an hour in the church but, to the displeasure of one of the ushers, I had to leave before ‘hearing the Word’. Otherwise, I would have missed the free transfer from the backpackers to the Zimbabwean border. I rushed back to my hotel, picked up my bag and got into the pre-arranged minibus taxi. There wasn’t even time to say goodbye to Michelle and her friend. I felt bad that I had to leave Zambia so soon. I loved the spirit, friendliness, cheerfulness and bubbliness, and the enthusiasm of Zambians. I didn’t know then that I would be back soon.
Although going to Zimbabwe from Livingstone meant that I would be
turning south instead of continuing north, I had decided to do so for two reasons. Firstly, I wanted to witness for myself the effect of Murambatsvina (which translates as ‘drive out the trash’), Robert Mugabe’s recent urban clean-up campaign, which had destroyed the homes of 700 000 people in the middle of winter. It appeared that the people who lost their houses were suspected of having voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.
Secondly, I wanted to visit Matobo (the colonists corrupted the name to Matopos) National Park just south of Bulawayo. My mission there was to see the grave of Cecil John Rhodes on Malindidzimu Hill, or what the locals call Hill of the Spirits. Legend has it that Rhodes, while standing on this hill, proclaimed that you have a view of the whole world. The hill, hence, is also referred to as World’s View.
Rhodes was not only a die-hard imperialist but firmly believed that the British were the superior race, especially when compared with indigenous African people. It is reported that, among other things, he had said, ‘I contend that we [British] are the finest race in the world and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race.’ Also: ‘Remember that you are an Englishman and consequently have won first prize in the lottery of life.’
It has always fascinated and amazed me how a teenage boy who had dropped out of Oxford University could come to South Africa and, through his BSAC, make so much money that when he died in 1902, aged only 49, he was one of the wealthiest people in the world. Luckily, those university graduates among us with an equal measure of intellect, character and physical ability (if Rhodes’s instructions are to be followed) have inherited the greater part of his vast fortune, amounting to millions of pounds sterling, in the form of Rhodes scholarships to his alma mater. Bill Clinton is probably the best-known recent recipient.
I discovered later that our very own father figure, Nelson Mandela, had agreed to have his name linked to that of Rhodes, whose scholarships are now administered by the Rhodes-Mandela Trust. Rhodes’s former mansion, called Groote Schuur (Dutch for ‘big barn’) until it was renamed Genadendal (‘valley of grace’) by President Nelson Mandela, has also seen some changes. Bequeathed to the government of South Africa to serve as the official residence of the prime minister of the Cape, it was the venue where Mandela and the then President FW de Klerk signed the Groote Schuur Minute, the commitment to stability and peaceful negotiations that led to our first democratic elections. It is now the Cape home of President Thabo Mbeki. Enough to make an imperialist turn in his grave.
Having started my trip in Cape Town, where Rhodes’s statue in the old Company Gardens outside Parliament points north and proclaims ‘Your hinterland is there’, it felt almost as if I were following Rhodes’s directions. There was another reason, however, why I wanted to go to Matobo National Park – I wanted to visit the grave of Mzilikazi Khumalo at Entumbane, which, I had been told, was not far from the Matobo. According to African tradition, Mzilikazi must have been my great, great, great grandfather. Between the two of them, he and Rhodes left a lasting legacy in southern Africa and I thought it was important that I see their graves, even if it meant a detour to the south.
Mzilikazi, the founder of the Ndebele (Matabele) kingdom, was a military genius, second only to King Shaka. He rebelled in 1823, while still one of Shaka’s lieutenants, and left Zululand with a large following, moving from one place to the next, warring wherever he went. He settled in Matabeleland in the south of present-day Zimbabwe, 12 years after Shaka’s death in 1828. During that time Mzilikazi expanded his army into a formidable machine. Ironically, it was his son, Lobengula Khumalo, who signed the Rudd Concession in 1888, which granted the mineral rights of Matabeleland to Rhodes’s BSAC. Lobengula, they say, was manipulated by Rhodes’s business associate, Charles Rudd, as well as the doctor who treated him for gout. That medic was none other than Rhodes’s friend Sir Leander Starr Jameson of Jameson Raid fame. Like his friend Rhodes, Jameson is buried on Malindidzimu Hill.
Getting stamped out of Zambia and into Zimbabwe went very smoothly. My Achilles tendon, however, was starting to be painful and I decided to take a cab from the border to Victoria Falls station to purchase an overnight train ticket to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second largest city (which should actually be kwa-Bulawayo, in Ndebele style).
My cab driver, Sipho Ndlovu, hated Robert Mugabe with a passion.
‘He, together with his Shona people, look down on us because we are Matabele,’ he told me in Ndebele, which closely resembles Zulu. ‘All senior government positions are occupied by Shona people. He is a stupid man who was put in power by the whites. Our leader Joshua Nkomo predicted we Zimbabweans will regret his appointment. Look at the mess he has caused. After how many years of democracy he starts talking about land! Nkomo said a long time ago that we cannot say we are in power if we don’t have land. Nobody listened to him.’
‘This Shona has messed things up,’ he added as we stopped in front of the station building, which, in appearance, could not have changed much since the time of Rhodes and Jameson.
That conversation was an eye-opener for me because, before then, I did not know that ethnicity was so deeply entrenched in Zimbabwe and that the Shona, more than 75 per cent of the population, lived in the north and east of the country while the Ndebele, about 18 per cent, occupied the south and west. Since I was in the southwest of the country, it made sense that I would bump mostly into Ndebeles.
The station was closed, and I had four hours to kill before the ticket office reopened. Sipho took me to the outskirts of town to exchange 65 000 Zambian kwachas for Zimbabwean dollars. According to unofficial blackmarket rates, offered under a big tree, I should have received 433 000 Zim dollars, but our dealer gave me only 430 000 in 10 000-dollar notes. Sipho explained to me that 3 000 was worth so little I should not bother to try to recover this money. The whole thing was very confusing. In reality, I was not sure how much money I had.
I decided to buy a cheese burger and a soft drink at a local Wimpy. The total cost came to 225 000 Zim dollars. Although flabbergasted at how much money I had paid for an admittedly juicy hamburger, the transaction kind of put the value of the local currency in perspective for me.
In the four hours that I had to pass before returning to the station I walked to the Victoria Falls National Park to see the falls once again. Although this was my third visit, it felt like the first. The sheer volume of water plummeting through the gorge, despite its being the dry season, was breathtaking. At a width of 1 700 metres, the Victoria Falls are the greatest curtain of falling water in the world.
Sitting back and enjoying the view, I made a promise to myself (Resolution No. 3) that one day I would make love to my fiancée/wife in the rainforest in the park. Considering the noise made by the water crashing through the gorge, we would not have to worry about our moans being heard by people passing by.
After a quiet and serene two and a half hours, I walked back to the station to buy the ticket to kwa-Bulawayo. When I got to the ticket office there were already about 15 people in the queue. With 90 minutes to spare before the train’s departure, I was quite relaxed about having to stand in such a long line of obviously local travellers. The last time I had been at Vic Falls station, about seven years earlier, there were a lot of backpackers milling around. Now I was the only one. I was amazed how things had changed in a few years, thanks to Mugabe.
I must have moved up by just a metre or so during the first hour. Only five of the people who had been standing in line when I joined had been issued tickets. By now, 40, maybe 50, prospective travellers had fallen in behind me in the queue, which for some reason that I could not understand was simply not moving. The ticket officer looked busy enough, although one couldn’t tell just what it was he was doing. The odd person joined the queue at the front, but even that was not enough to cause such a long delay. It was Sunday and most of the people in the queue were clearly waiting to take the train back to work in kwa-Bulawayo after the weekend.
Forty-five minutes
later, with about six people still in front of me, the train suddenly pulled into the station. All hell broke loose. Everybody simultaneously rushed to the front of the queue, catching me unawares. Most of the people behind me ended up in front of me. All was chaos. Everyone was shouting and trying to speak through the small window, demanding a ticket. On the other side of the glass the ticket-issuing officer looked very relaxed.
I soon realised that I had spent one and a half hours in the queue for nothing: there was no way I was going to get a ticket. I was so angry that I did not have a hard time choosing between the two options that I knew would be open to me after I had found accommodation for the night: either to take a bus to kwa-Bulawayo to try and get a travel company there to take me where I wanted to go – or stuff Cecil John Rhodes, Mzilikazi and Matobo National Park and leave Zimbabwe at first light, head back to Zambia and continue north.
Of course I chose the latter.
I took a cab to a budget hotel just outside town. The hotel was good value for money, except that there was no toilet paper in the toilets, as I discovered a little too late. That night, just to de-stress, I went to the entertainment centre at the Kingdom Hotel, which I had spotted from the air earlier while microlighting. I was the only person besides the depressed-looking barman at the Wild Thing pub there.
After consuming two beers and walking around what looked as if it had once been a thriving city centre, I took a cab back to my hotel. I arranged with the driver, Thulani, to pick me up early the following morning to take me back to the border post. Thulani asked that I pay him in advance so that he could fill his car’s petrol tank that night. He needed 3 000 000 dollars, he told me. I had only just met him, but he looked like a trustworthy guy. So I paid him for the following day’s services in advance and went to bed with some anxious thoughts about what was going to happen.
Dark Continent my Black Arse Page 5