Are You A Believer?
Another long day of travel from Francistown, Botswana to Gweru, Zimbabwe. Kaya tells me it’s better to just hitchhike across the border by taking advantage of one of the private cars delivering Zimbabweans and the goods they purchased in Botswana on a routine trip back to Zim. With so many shortages and unpredictable prices in Zim, this is apparently cheaper for most.
I woke early in order to get some money from the bank and some groceries. The usual unimaginable obstacles make this a longer process than it should (at least this time a horrified manager helped me make my transaction after one of her tellers blew me off, telling me I was out of luck) and I don’t get to the hitchhiking spot till around 9:30. I finally get a lift after an hour and a half in the blazing sun. It took me a little while to learn the sign-language of the road: I learned four different signs that signified respective destinations, mine was an outstretched arm with a wave of the wrist and hand as if your face-down palm was flowing over waves of water to signify that I wanted to go over the border. I looked pretty ridiculous.
Was well worth hitching though; I got a ride with a man and his daughter - Mr. Dube and Lindwe; great conversation, very comfortable and his resident status in Botswana helped me skip some queues at the border, which still proved to be nearly a two-hour process.
Mr. Dube moved to Botswana a few years ago for a teaching position in the Kalagadi region (Kalahari Dessert…) near the SA border. The pay there was better than Zim. and of course the currency is stable. Just how unstable is inflation in Zim? At the border I exchanged 100 Batswana Pulas; about $17. I got a horrible rate, but this still yielded over a million Zim, most of this in 50,000 dollar notes. However, some of my ‘small’ change was in 20s and 50s. When I began my studies in Zim., this 50 Zim. Dollar note was about equal to US $1, and had a nice nostalgic value in mind as well, though I hadn’t really even begun to comprehend how little it was worth at this point, back to that later.
The Dube’s and I sped from the border to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, and Mr. Dube, who’s quite the naturalist (he was even smuggling seeds from Botswana), described the vegetation, geography and agriculture of the region between his queries about the same topics in North America.
Finally arriving in Bulawayo, where I began the hitchhiking game again; finishing-off the last 160 Km of the journey to Gweru. This time I didn’t even raise an arm (and definitely not a thumb, this digit isn’t even used in the game here) and a woman was pulling over pointing at me saying “you.”
This was Dorothy, on her way from Bulawayo to Mazoe, a citrus-town near Harare. I was one of two hitchhikers and we all had a nice time drinking soda and eating Biltong (beef jerky). Then the inevitable question from Dorothy: “Andrew, do you attend church?” Most folks in Zimbabwe love them some Christianity. Non-believers are hard to come by and other religious groups are all but ostracized.
“Actually, I went to Church a few weeks ago,” I say – very true…joined Kele and Asante…good times…everyone was freaked out when I refused communion though.
“And are you a believer?” She asks immediately.
“No, I must say, I’m not.” Here we go…
“And what will you say when you get to the gates of heaven and The Lord asks you what you believe in?”
I think for a second, thinking about lying actually and telling her I’d break down at that point and am reminded of the book I just read, Elizabeth Costello by JM Coetzee, in which the last chapter is about just such a circumstance for a non-believer (great book by the way), but: “I’d tell the Lord that I believe in the inherent good within the human spirit that lifts our kind above violence and evil and exists to potentially help us achieve what I believe is great and divine in its own rite.”
“That’s nice,” Dorothy replies, “but you know what the Lord will say? He will say ‘I don’t know you, go to hell.’”
I think I fell asleep shortly after this, and luckily woke up in Gweru and not Mazoe, where Dorothy dropped me on the side of the road, carefully counted her money and wished that God would be with me on my journey…and gave a nice chuckle after that.
I must say though, it’s great to be back in Zimbabwe. The people are friendly, helpful, and still have a spark about them that gave Zim an intangible glow to it the last time I was here. Surprisingly, there is an air of progress too…
I meet Terry at a bar in Gweru and as I expected, the drinking begins – me on a completely empty stomach, Terry not caring. Terry is my former professor’s partner, and he splits his time between their homes in Gweru, Harare, and Swaziland, where I saw both of them last at the end of my time in South Africa.
Still trying to make sense of currency values here. The exchange rate I got at the border is less than half of what I could get on the street, so from here on out Terry is in charge of converting my Botswana and US currency. When he sees the Z$50 bill that aroused such nastalgia for me earlier, he’s astonished: “man, that’s a collectors item.” It’s literally worth less than the paper it’s printed on. The Z$20 bill I got at the border as well is worth about .08 of a US penny. A cab ride here costs 1 Million Zim. Dollars. Everyone carries duffle bags to transport bills, rubber-bands are a constant necessity, and Zimbabweans are very good at counting money. I didn’t know one could be good at this. I’m not.
Anyway, we make our way out of town to the house around 9pm. The plot is overwhelmingly beautiful. Like a long wait for a great meal, I don’t mind once I feast. Likewise, Terry makes some wild-mushroom soup, a special recipe that he says is designed to sober me up, which I needed after all the beers in town. We then begin to smoke some meat and sit under the full moon amongst the fruit trees and gardens in the backyard. This felt like some kind of retreat and recovery, and the wild mushroom soup was just the beginning.
I woke early in order to get some money from the bank and some groceries. The usual unimaginable obstacles make this a longer process than it should (at least this time a horrified manager helped me make my transaction after one of her tellers blew me off, telling me I was out of luck) and I don’t get to the hitchhiking spot till around 9:30. I finally get a lift after an hour and a half in the blazing sun. It took me a little while to learn the sign-language of the road: I learned four different signs that signified respective destinations, mine was an outstretched arm with a wave of the wrist and hand as if your face-down palm was flowing over waves of water to signify that I wanted to go over the border. I looked pretty ridiculous.
Was well worth hitching though; I got a ride with a man and his daughter - Mr. Dube and Lindwe; great conversation, very comfortable and his resident status in Botswana helped me skip some queues at the border, which still proved to be nearly a two-hour process.
Mr. Dube moved to Botswana a few years ago for a teaching position in the Kalagadi region (Kalahari Dessert…) near the SA border. The pay there was better than Zim. and of course the currency is stable. Just how unstable is inflation in Zim? At the border I exchanged 100 Batswana Pulas; about $17. I got a horrible rate, but this still yielded over a million Zim, most of this in 50,000 dollar notes. However, some of my ‘small’ change was in 20s and 50s. When I began my studies in Zim., this 50 Zim. Dollar note was about equal to US $1, and had a nice nostalgic value in mind as well, though I hadn’t really even begun to comprehend how little it was worth at this point, back to that later.
The Dube’s and I sped from the border to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, and Mr. Dube, who’s quite the naturalist (he was even smuggling seeds from Botswana), described the vegetation, geography and agriculture of the region between his queries about the same topics in North America.
Finally arriving in Bulawayo, where I began the hitchhiking game again; finishing-off the last 160 Km of the journey to Gweru. This time I didn’t even raise an arm (and definitely not a thumb, this digit isn’t even used in the game here) and a woman was pulling over pointing at me saying “you.”
This was Dorothy, on her way from Bulawayo to Mazoe, a citrus-town near Harare. I was one of two hitchhikers and we all had a nice time drinking soda and eating Biltong (beef jerky). Then the inevitable question from Dorothy: “Andrew, do you attend church?” Most folks in Zimbabwe love them some Christianity. Non-believers are hard to come by and other religious groups are all but ostracized.
“Actually, I went to Church a few weeks ago,” I say – very true…joined Kele and Asante…good times…everyone was freaked out when I refused communion though.
“And are you a believer?” She asks immediately.
“No, I must say, I’m not.” Here we go…
“And what will you say when you get to the gates of heaven and The Lord asks you what you believe in?”
I think for a second, thinking about lying actually and telling her I’d break down at that point and am reminded of the book I just read, Elizabeth Costello by JM Coetzee, in which the last chapter is about just such a circumstance for a non-believer (great book by the way), but: “I’d tell the Lord that I believe in the inherent good within the human spirit that lifts our kind above violence and evil and exists to potentially help us achieve what I believe is great and divine in its own rite.”
“That’s nice,” Dorothy replies, “but you know what the Lord will say? He will say ‘I don’t know you, go to hell.’”
I think I fell asleep shortly after this, and luckily woke up in Gweru and not Mazoe, where Dorothy dropped me on the side of the road, carefully counted her money and wished that God would be with me on my journey…and gave a nice chuckle after that.
I must say though, it’s great to be back in Zimbabwe. The people are friendly, helpful, and still have a spark about them that gave Zim an intangible glow to it the last time I was here. Surprisingly, there is an air of progress too…
I meet Terry at a bar in Gweru and as I expected, the drinking begins – me on a completely empty stomach, Terry not caring. Terry is my former professor’s partner, and he splits his time between their homes in Gweru, Harare, and Swaziland, where I saw both of them last at the end of my time in South Africa.
Still trying to make sense of currency values here. The exchange rate I got at the border is less than half of what I could get on the street, so from here on out Terry is in charge of converting my Botswana and US currency. When he sees the Z$50 bill that aroused such nastalgia for me earlier, he’s astonished: “man, that’s a collectors item.” It’s literally worth less than the paper it’s printed on. The Z$20 bill I got at the border as well is worth about .08 of a US penny. A cab ride here costs 1 Million Zim. Dollars. Everyone carries duffle bags to transport bills, rubber-bands are a constant necessity, and Zimbabweans are very good at counting money. I didn’t know one could be good at this. I’m not.
Anyway, we make our way out of town to the house around 9pm. The plot is overwhelmingly beautiful. Like a long wait for a great meal, I don’t mind once I feast. Likewise, Terry makes some wild-mushroom soup, a special recipe that he says is designed to sober me up, which I needed after all the beers in town. We then begin to smoke some meat and sit under the full moon amongst the fruit trees and gardens in the backyard. This felt like some kind of retreat and recovery, and the wild mushroom soup was just the beginning.
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