Chapter 46 - Rural Zimbabwe

I visited a rural town which is the type of place where most Zimbabweans live, and where most of the difficulties are being felt. This is the biggest commercial development area in this village. The last building on the end is the only restaurant in town. They serve the Zimbabwean staple food called Sadza. It's a large pile of corn meal that is eaten with your hands. It isn't very nutritious but it makes the hunger go away.

Zimbabwe has an estimated unemployment rate of 80%. This is what the majority of the men in Zimbabwe do for a living. The sit in from of liquor stores and wait for a better life to come along. Like most African towns I've visited, it's the women who do all the work and the men do exactly this...nothing. To their credit, these guys did pose for this picture and then one them asked "do you have something for us?" I don't pay for modeling services so they were out of luck.

We found out about the hospital in this village from a Canadian guy, Colgan, that we met at Vic Falls. He'd been volunteering for about 8 weeks and suggested that we come out for a visit. We felt that we wanted to see Africa's good and bad sides, so this seemed like a worthwhile opportunity. It turned out to be one of the most shocking experiences of my life, but I'm glad I saw what I did. I don't have any pictures because I'd have to be a horrible scumbag to take out my camera and point it at dying people. Extremely poor villagers from miles away would come to the hospital for two reasons. Either to get Anti-retroviral medications (which are paid for with U.S. aid money), or they come to die. The roughest part was when we walked through the children's ward. I'm not sure what "the smell of death" is, but this room smelled dusty and old. It was so quiet except for the sound of someone vomiting in the next room. Right in the center of the room I saw a boy that shocked the hell out of me. It was like seeing a celebrity that you've seen on television a hundred times, only to see this person in real life, I thought I recognized him. This kid was living skeleton. The same kid that I saw on TV during the famines in Ethiopia, Rwanda, and now Sudan. Every bone in his body was visible behind his skin. His head had an alien-like shape, just a skull with skin and big sad eyes. As long as I live I won't forget his eyes. When I saw dying kids like him in the news or in photos, I was concerned but never shocked. I could tell myself that they're mostly dead and they probably don't know what is going on. In real life you can't write him off so easily. His eyes were as active and alive as mine. He was slowing looking us over and probably wondering what kind of doctors we were. When our eyes made contact, I tried to smile and wave, but I got sense that he didn't have the energy to show any response. Another detail that I remember is that he had a bony little fish on a plate that he was slowly picking at, eating the tiny bits of meat. This told me that he was hungry, and this surprised me. He wasn't minutes from death. He was hungry and he wanted to live. I felt like my presence was totally inappropriate. Like I'd crashed in on some body's personal tragedy, because of my own selfish curiosity. We left the room and I couldn't get the images out of my head for days. It was too damn heavy for me. My hat goes off to people who can actually work in situations like that, because I'm not man enough. Now with that sadness behind me, I'll show the fun and lively parts of the visit. The people were so incredibly friendly. They wanted desperately to make us enjoy ourselves. This old fella explained one of the major economic problems right now is that imported fertilizer is too expensive to buy. They may be headed for a poor harvest, higher prices, and hunger. The pants he is wearing were bought in 1996, and he hasn't been able to afford a new pair since. He still gave me some free carrots out of his garden, which demonstrates his generous spirit.

This neighbor kid drew a portrait of me. I thought it was a pretty good likeness.

On the far right the little boy has an A-Team shirt. Most poor Africans wear old vintage clothes that were probably dumped in Salvation Army dumpsters in America. Now the same clothes could probably get sold in Thrift Stores for a premium.


These girls came running across this field shouting"Murungu!" That means "Whitey" in the Shona language. I've found that if you scream real loud before taking a picture, the kids make better expressions for the camera.



I visited this High School and observed some classes. The students are well behaved, but frightened as hell to raise their hand and speak.

With no lawnmower, the students do the grounds keeping themselves.

The time spent out in this rural village was really good because we saw how most Zimbabweans are living these days. It isn't good and they deserve better. It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming months and years if the economy doesn't start to improve and Mugabe retains control.

Thanks for Reading. Next Stop: Malawi.