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Through the Matopos by mountain bike

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Jezza:
Harare or bust
We loaded up in another freezing dawn. We had to head towards Maleme to join up with the main road out of the park. I watched the sun move across the land, creeping into the pools of shadow and glinting off spider webs thick as tripwires. The road was deep sand, and despite wearing my parka and struggling to make headway through the sand, I was cold. Into a dip the temperature dropped dramatically and made my ears burn, and then the road climbed up the other side into the sunshine again. We passed the carcass of an impala by the roadside; its hindquarters had been torn off, and the beautiful lyre-shaped horns, head and front legs ended abruptly, like a pantomime horse.

I felt rotten. My head was thumping, and every time I moved my eyes to look at something I got stabbing pains in my temples. All I could think about was having a hot bath. Suddenly an unfamiliar sound reached us – a car engine. We made out a trail of dust coming towards us. The road was narrow, and we had to get off it. I wobbled onto the verge, and half fell on the grass. My legs ached. Round the bend came a Toyota Land Cruiser towing a large caravan, and as it passed I saw the ZA sticker on the back, indicating South Africa. It was followed by another, and then another – three of these enormous trucks, that flew by a few feet from where I sat, covering us with dust. I doubt they even saw us.
After a few minutes the dust settled. I looked at Dan, and said: “How are you doing?”
“I feel rough.”
“Yeah, me too.”

We carried on, crossing the cattle grid into the communal areas. Once again, barefooted schoolchildren ran alongside us, shouting: “Hello, how are you, where are you going?” Only this time we couldn’t even keep up with them as they ran. At the bottle store we asked about a bus. No bus today, sorry. How about tomorrow? Yes. Perhaps. Or maybe Friday.
My bones ached. It felt like they were being twisted in their sockets. There was a packet of aspirin on the shelf, and I bought them. The best before date was six months earlier. We bought a carton of Ndhlovu to wash down 4 expired aspirin each. That was breakfast.
“We can’t stay here. There’s no bus. I think I’m ill. Bulawayo is only 40 miles away, and it’s a good road. Or we can stay here and die.”
“That won’t take long then.”
“Dying, or 40 miles?”
“Either.”

We set off. After an inordinate length of time, most of which was thankfully downhill, we came to the crossroads where the bus had dropped us two weeks earlier. Ahead of us the long, black strip of tar unfurled like a ribbon, coiling around itself up a hill, disappearing into a dip and then appearing again, narrower but still visible.
‘One bloody foot before the next bloody foot. One bloody mile before the next bloody mile’. Trucks roared past us, hooting merrily. We came to a roadblock. Two ZRP men cradled Kalashnikovs and watched us approach.
“Good afternoon my friends. Where are you going?”
“To Bulawayo, then to Harare.”
“Where have you come from?”
“Matopos.”
“Ah! It’s too far. OK, you can pass”

There was masses of rubbish on the roadside. Bits of chewed sugar cane, plastic packets of some vile liquid rich in E-numbers that was sold by bus-station hawkers, empty Ndhlovu cartons. Cars whizzed by as we wobbled up the verge. Suddenly a Mazda pickup that was overtaking us braked to a halt. We pulled up. It was a young white couple.
“You oans look finished. Need a lift?”
“Oh god yes.”
“OK, just throw your stuff in the bakkie. Where you bin?”
“Matopos. For two weeks.”
“Shit man, bandit country.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”

We lay in the back of the pickup truck cradling our bikes and groaning. The driver’s name was Roger, and he carried on a shouted conversation out of his open window, fuelled by a stream of cigarette smoke. His young wife sat and smiled at him all the while that he spoke.
“There’s no bleddy rain. It was nothing last year, just guti, and the tobacco price is terrible. Those guys in UK don’t smoke enough now, hey. Nobody is buying Zim beef any more, either. Our local MP just got himself a new Mercedes, and the funds we raised for the clinic we gave to them have just disappeared. We try to help, but this is how it is. I’m thinking maybe Canada, or Australia. But we’re Zimbo’s, hey. Third generation. We are from here, our kids are from here. How can we leave?”

We drove down wide avenues lined with shops. OK Bazaar. Edgars. Bon Marche. Old Mutual. Buses roared past belching out black smoke, and an army truck drew alongside us – it was one of the diagonal shaped ones called rhinos. A row of soldiers on a bench watched me impassively as I lay in the bakkie, until I lifted a hand in salutation, and suddenly a grin broke out all down the line. Advertising hoardings rolled past – Lifebuoy Soap, Katiyo Tea. Envi skin lightening cream. Roger went out of his way to drop us at the train station. “Go well, hey.” We waved him off into the traffic. There were a couple of hours before the Harare train so we found a bar. People were so clean. They glided past in dazzling white shirts and snappy suits. Occasionally young women teetered past on high heels, wholly capturing our attention. They smelled of flowers.

The barman wasn’t sure whether to kick us out or get us a drink. In the end his commercial acumen won over, and he brought us two Castles. It was ice cold. I drank it straight out the bottle, half in one go. I could taste the hops, wonderful flavours, each ingredient distinct. Two more. We cracked open the aspirin and finished the packet. My eyes still ached every time I moved them, but it didn’t seem to matter so much.
“Hey Dan, you’re bleeding again, you scabby git.”
“You sir, are drunk, whereas I am only ugly.”
“I don’t think you’ve got that quite right.”
“We’d better get on this train. Can you walk?”
“I expect so.”

The train was half-empty. At least second class was. We had stowed the bikes in the guard’s van, and he promised to look after them. We had a couchette, with three folding bunks. It was wood-panelled, and the bunks were of green leather. Polished metal fixtures contained reading lights, table and a foldaway washbasin. There was a logo on the fittings, of two R’s intertwined. Rhodesian Railways.
“Ooh, nice.”
“Ya”.
The train began to move, and soon we were dozing, swaying our way across Matabeleland, climbing across Midlands province, rattling through Gweru in the middle of the night, across the border into Mashonaland and the highveld. Sometimes I woke in the night and could see the orange glow of bushfires in the distance, but the metronomic drumming of the wheels soon lulled me to sleep again.

The sunlight streamed through the carriage window as we clanked over a set of points, and I looked out to see the cooling towers of a power station go slowly past. We were coming into the industrial suburbs of Harare. An ice cream vendor in a red hat and overalls sat with his back to a wall and shaded his eyes to watch us as we passed. I was wrapped in my bivvy bag lying on the bunk, and every jolt of the train was excruciating. From the opposite bunk Dan’s head emerged. He groaned.
“Any more aspirin?”
“Hapana.” – none.
“Oh.”
With painful slowness we got up. My head was heavy on my shoulders and the glands in my throat stood out like golf balls. Again this curious sensation as if my bones were being bent. Bone-break disease.
We got the bikes out, wheeling them down the platform past our fellow travellers who were emerging from the carriages. Out through the main station we emerged onto Robert Mugabe Road. In a practiced routine we kicked our legs over the bikes and set off. We made very slow progress, but still managed a couple of near-misses. Up Second Street, right onto Herbert Chitepo, past the college, left into the Avenues. Finally we wheeled round the corner and into Josiah Tongogara Avenue, Dan’s road. Halfway down it he began to pedal harder, and I matched him briefly for all of ten seconds before resuming my plodding pace. He started to shout out greetings:
“Cherub, shamwari, where are you?”
“Ah! Mistah Dan! You are back!”
“Mangwanani, Cherub, mwarara ereh.”
“Tarara kana mwarara wo, ishe, and how are you?”
“Tarara.”
All this as he frantically unbolted the gates, pulling them open just as we swung round the corner, over the bump of the drainage ditch and into the driveway, freewheeling up to the house and coming to a halt against the gleaming whitewashed kitchen wall.

I got an appointment with the doctor the next day. I described my symptoms.
“Oh, you’ve got tick fever. Lyme’s Disease. Course of antibiotics should sort that. Have you had any insect bites in the last few days?”
“One or two.”
“You know, when I was in the army I was told the best way to get rid of ticks was to smear margarine on them. Like Stork or something. Never tried it myself, though.”

Jezza:
Epilogue
As I sit here I can hear the soft hush of rain as it shines the roofs of the town, and TV aerials dance in the wind outside. Through the window the waves roll in towards Southwold beach, breaking and hissing over the stones, one after another. Looking at them my eyes lose their focus and I can see towering boulders and balancing rocks, white clouds that sit motionless above the land, shafts of golden dust rising from the ground. I can hear the guitar notes of Kwasa Kwasa and smell the woodsmoke of burning gum trees. But the images break up, merge into one another; it is slipping away.

I left Zimbabwe ten years ago. The Matopos trip with Dan was my last major expedition there – after it was over I went back to the Outward Bound centre for a few more courses, before one day boarding a 747 to London and watching the people and trees and houses get smaller out of the window as Africa fell away beneath me.

The country that I knew and loved has gone forever. We didn’t see it coming, nobody did, but anyone who has lived in Africa for a while knows that life there can be a precarious existence. Events spin out of control and the mood changes, becomes sullen and fearful. I wonder how the people we met have weathered those events. Knowledge, the tall policeman. Could he reconcile his innate decency with orders to destroy the homes of his neighbours? The woman on the bus who handed me the chicken – would she still wear a dress covered in pictures of Robert Mugabe? Does Bili still ride down that insane road over the escarpment carrying wood? Is he even still alive? Them, and so many others like them. I think of them all the time.

Dedicated to the people of Zimbabwe.

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