Zimbabwe Day 3 & 4: A Day in the Life in Zimbabwe

Today was the day for exploring day to day life in Zimbabwe.  We loaded up on the bus and drove almost 2 hours back to the town of Hwange.

We started out by going to the village “growth point” which is the area where a lot of shops and public services and transport are aggregated.  We visited the shops, most of which sold food or dry goods and chatted with the local people for awhile. It was a very basic assortment of shops, no fancy souvenirs. In the meantime, our tour leader bought a bunch of food supplies to leave with the people hosting us for the day (we donated money to buy the groceries). 

When we arrived at the homestead of Francesca and her husband Peter, they had a number of their grown daughters and neighbors around as well.  We had free rein to wander around the compound, visit the “modern house,” the “boys sleeping room”, the kitchen, the chicken house, the drying platform and finally the “summer house”.  One of the women was pounding millet to make a polenta like dish. We enjoyed chatting with the ladies, most of whom spoke at least some English, and playing with their kids.

The summer house was a round hut with a bench built into the outside wall.  We all sat on the bench and Francesca and her crew sat on mats on the cement floor ( to show respect to us as their visitors).  After introductions, we had an interesting Q and A session, where we asked questions back and forth.  It was fun and engaging. Then, as it is their custom to share  some food with visitors, they served us the “ polenta, stewed okra and some tiny fish (about an inch long including the heads). The fish were a bit hard to deal with as the eyes seemed to be looking at us! At any rate, we ate what we could. 

As it was time to leave we went  outside and gave them the groceries we bought - rice, soy protein, cooking oil, sugar - basic staples to help them get through the next month or so.

From there we went to visit St Mary’s school - the building was built and owned by the Catholic Church, but it was otherwise a normal school being supported with infrastructure improvements from Grand Circle Foundation.  Our group had also brought some school supplies for the school.

The school had over 1000 students, and each of us were connected with a 5th grader to show us around.  They all spoke good English, so it was fun to hang out with them in their own school environment, exchanging information about each others lives. 

Then we headed back to camp - two hour drive, followed by lunch and rest/ packing.

In the late afternoon we had a talk about the pros and cons of trophy hunting.  It was a really interesting discussion - about  raising money to fund anti-poaching through controlled hunting.

We also had a “cultural exchange evening, where the staff performed African dances for us. We joined in a bit, and sang a song as well.