There is
no shared border between Zimbabwe and Malawi… So I will have to go through
Mozambique. And since Im there, I may as well go for at least a little bit of a
ride to see more than just a highway, so I decided to spend a couple of days
and detour to the coastal city of Beira…
But first
a few closing notes about Zimbabwe… Compared to Botswana/Namibia etc, there are
clearly fewer “white” people about. Note that Im gonna go with the descriptive
words that the locals use… Black and White, but instead of “coloured” Ill use “mixed”..
I hope people don’t find it offensive but given time every politically-correct
label becomes tainted with the same brush of prejudices so Im not even going to
bother with “indigenous” or “aboriginal” or “colonial” etc. The best I think I
can do is state why Im using the words Ive chosen and that I am not trying to
offend! In the earlier countries as I traveled about Id say there were
consistently about 10% white people and 90% black or mixed… But, once I got to
Zimbabwe the ratio changed immediately and white people were very uncommon. Id
say less than 1% are white in Zimbabwe! That’s all because of the big changes
that happened here back in the 80s when the government appropriated all the
farms, and the economy collapsed as both foreign and local money fled the
country and pretty much all the people who could leave the country did… and the
white people were mostly in the more affluent group. The few who stayed mostly
could not afford to leave and they toughed out the hard times that followed
with the rest of the people who stayed. Since then things have been slowly
improving but they still have about 65% unemployment (down from about 90%) in
the hard times. Anyway, all that being in the past, I have found everyone Ive
met here very friendly and easy to get along with regardless of skin colour…
They really all seem to treat each other as equals as far as I could see. But
times are still pretty tough here and in the more significant towns I passed
through, there was a definite “all shops are the same” effect in that any shop
that you go into tends to sell pretty much whatever products they can get their
hands on wholesale. So, there are furniture and clothing and hardware and book
shops all combined… It really makes it tricky to find something in particular
and the only option is to ask around and wait for the “local knowledge” to help
direct you… But most mandatory stuff is available somewhere in town J… But there is no question, Zimbabwe is definitely
significantly less well-off than Bots/Nam/SAf! I will say though that I did get
stared at a bit… particularly when Im on the motorbike… There are no big local
bikes that Ive seen at all and only a few small ones. But even when Im walking
around without the bike or bike gear, I find I do get a few stares… Though I
admit Im not dressed quite the same as the locals and my skin is very pale from
wearing the full riding gear all the time. But on the whole I found Zimbabwe a
very friendly and helpful place J
