29 August to 4 October – Matusadona and Harare

28 August –  Matusadona   Our last night in Matusadona National Park was a memorable one. Firstly, the Area Manager of the Park (originally titled the Warden), Hardwork Chikumba came and see us.  He arrived at 7pm by vehicle and we saw from his headlights that he had stopped for a few minutes less than a hundred yards from our campsite before driving on to us. When he arrived he told us that an impala had leapt across the track just ahead of his Landrover with a leopard inches behind it in the final seconds of making a kill.  The vehicle split the two animals up and the impala got away, leaving the leopard hungry. 

He stayed with us for an hour to brief us on the problems he faces in running the Park and the shortfalls he has in equipment.  We took notes and promised to discuss his concerns with Lynne Taylor: it is important that we always deal through Lynne on these matters as she has the trust of the Parks staff, knows how to deal with them and is enormously experienced in handling their demands. 

As I have mentioned in an earlier blog, the problems this particular Park faces are enormous, due to the low budget they are given to work with by central government.  This hampers their efforts to protect wildlife from poaching and leads to poor maintenance within the Park; the latter resulting in fewer tourists and a further drop in income.  The roads (or more accurately the tracks) within the Park are now virtually impassable in places, due to erosion, flood damage and a lack of maintenance; the lodges and campsite lack electricity and hot water and some of the toilets in our lodge were not working on our arrival; cooking in the lodges now has to be done on wood fires outside as the stoves no longer work.  Parks vehicles lack spares and a number are no longer on the road; the two diesel generators we donated to Matusadona in 1995 urgently need servicing and one has been cannibalised for spares to keep the other going.  Lynne Taylor has done miracles with the funds she has raised to date and is using them to install solar panels to power water pumps and radio equipment for the main camp and outstations. She has a 4 year plan in hand to make up for some of the shortfalls and we in Conservation Zambezi hope to help her fulfil a small part of this plan if we can raise sufficient funds.  But the upgrading of roads and living accommodation etc will require big inputs of money from larger conservation trusts and charities and Lynne is constantly preparing and submitting proposals to them in the hope that some might help.

The second excitement on our last evening happened in the middle of the night.  I woke to hear wood snapping and looked out of the window of the lodge.  A large bull elephant was contentedly eating the branches of a tree only 5 metres from the veranda.  I tiptoed to the next bedroom, mindful that I was almost within reach of his trunk, and told the others.  We all crept onto the balcony and watched.  We could not have been closer to a wild elephant if we had tried.  He paid no attention to us however and just carried on eating, slowly moving away as he did so until he was finally lost in the night gloom.  This final spectacle gave us a wonderful ending to the rewarding and fruitful week we had with Lynne, studying her projects and seeing at first hand the problems she and the Parks staff face.

29 August - The Drive to Harare  We were up at 5am the next morning (29 August) to load the vehicle so we could depart at 6.30am for the long drive to Harare. The road out of the Park is in terrible condition and it took us 3 hours, often in low ratio, to cover the first 40 miles of the journey, then another three and a half hours to cover the next 85 miles.  The tsetse flies in the Park were out in force to bid us farewell and we all got bitten a dozen times in the first couple of hours.  At one stage there were several hundred on the bonnet and windscreen so we kept the windows closed, despite the heat. 

Harare    We arrived in Harare some 280 miles and eleven hours later, just as dusk was falling, to a tumultuous welcome from the Taylor family.  At first Harare seems much the same as it did 20 years ago until one looks more closely. Then you see the ravages of time and the lack of essential maintenance.  The roads are all potholed and the tarmac is breaking up everywhere.  Some wag said one needs a 4x4 in Zimbabwe just to negotiate the potholes in tarmac roads! The once carefully cut verges are overgrown.  There is an air of dirtiness and neglect, but the people are as wonderful as ever - smiling and charming and always keen to help.  There are electricity cuts almost daily, some for up to 12 hours at a time, and the Taylor’s now have a diesel generator to power the lights when the cuts start.  Cooking without power has to be done on a wood fire in the garden.  There is no longer any running water in much of the city but residents still have to pay the monthly charge for water rates!  The Taylors have overcome the water problem by installing a borehole in their garden but I hear that the increasing number of boreholes for private dwellings is lowering the water table under the city which may well lead to a further water crisis one day.  Theft is on the increase and all houses have extensive protective systems to combat this – alarms, electric gates, strong rooms and electrified fences on top of garden walls.  Food (for European consumption) is more expensive than in the UK but the shelves are fully stocked again, after years of shortages.  This turn around has happened because Zimbabweans no longer have their own currency, having adopted the US dollar some three or four years ago.  As a result of this move inflation, which was the highest in the world, has now dropped to about 8%. 

Most of the people I have spoken to are very positive and believe the situation is improving.  They know best, having endured the nightmares of the last fifteen years, but an ignorant outsider like me tends to feel more cynical - I hope they are right and I am wrong.  The white population, once nearly 250,000 strong at the height of Rhodesian rule in the early 1970s is now down to perhaps 20,000.  No one knows the true figure as there has not been a census for some time.  Despite these problems though, I hear that many businesses are booming and there is money to be made by the more astute white and black middle classes.  The poor though remain very, very poor.

The next three days were very busy ones as the Taylors were in the final week of preparations for their son Wintston’s wedding on 3 September and my Landrover had to go to a garage for a major service after 5000 gruelling miles of driving, mainly on dirt roads.  I was delighted to find it came out with flying colours a day later, the white garage owner telling me he had not driven such a ‘tight’ Landrover for a long time- I was not quite sure what he meant by this but it sounded reassuring!  He said nothing had broken but in addition to the service, he had decided as a precaution to change some rubber bushes on the suspension.  The filthy, dirt encrusted door locking mechanisms which had been causing increasing problems of late also had been pressure cleaned and then washed out with paraffin and are worked well again.  The sand covering the engine after the sandstorm in the Hoanib River in Namibia had been removed and the chassis pressure hosed.  The vehicle almost looked new!

3 September - Winston's Wedding   On Saturday 3 September we attended Winston and Laura Jane’s wedding.  This took place in the open air on the shores of Lake Manyame, an hour’s drive out of Harare.  Winston has married into an old Zimbabwean farming family called the Breitensteins who emigrated from Denmark to Zimbabwe many years ago.  The event lasted the whole weekend, starting with supper on the Friday night and ending with breakfast on Sunday morning.  We all camped in tents near the lake shore.  It was a marvellous event. 

The bride and bridesmaids arrived in two ox drawn carts and the service was conducted under a simple arch of wood interwoven with leaves and oranges, erected by the lake.

After the marriage, we all repaired to a marquee nearby for drinks, dinner, speeches and dancing until the small hours of Sunday morning.  Many had hangovers the next day but a healthy breakfast of bacon and eggs under a hot African sun the next morning helped to dispel these.

Our Plans for the Next Week    I am writing this blog after our return to Harare.  Tomorrow (Monday 5 Sep) we will drive with the Taylors to Nyanga in the Zimbabwean highlands where Russell Taylor and Mike Moody will fly fish for trout and the rest of us will probably go for long refreshing walks in the cool mountain air.  On Thursday we will return to Harare and pack again in preparation for the second phase of our Drive for Conservation which starts with a 24 hour game count in Mana Pools on the banks of the Zambezi River.  Then Mike Moody will leave us for England and Ian and I will continue driving north into Zambia, en route for Malawi.