11/24/06

Thoughts \ Developed Thoughts \ Rants \ Raves \ Writing

12/07/05 23:45 +0200 GMT

Victoria Falls for a Slice of Bread

Here we sit, plunderers from the West, soul-seeking in our urge to help mankind, and yet our culture of affluence presents such drive-states in us that we have the luxury to spend a $20 to get to Livingstone, and a further $20 to get back to Lusaka, and minimum cab fares and park entry fees and dinners out and what, what, what...here we sit...here I sit, beholden to my riches, as we enjoy the splendour of God's creations, and the suffering continues, even beneath our noses.

Sometimes it's easier to face one's weakness when it's comfortably couched in the plural, we.

We UASOMers went to Livingstone this last weekend - Eva Clark, Stewart Hill, Michelle Downing, and Aggie Mumbi and myself. (OOZ was out-of-country, on mission in Harare.) I wanted Aggie to come because she hasn't seen this beautiful part of the world, so close to where she grew up in Lusaka, about 500 Km away, but so far away because economics betrays the availability of such beauty.

We rode in first class seats, the five of us, stopping along the way, in Monze, in other small towns in Zambia...Five and a half hours...we arrived before noon. We found restrooms in Livingstone, and foreign exchange. We were flashed keys from taxi drivers eager to separate us from our currency. With Stewart's recent trip here, we knew our path, and were easy in our choice to walk the few blocks to the Jollyboy's backpacker's hostile.

I read a bit of Paul Farmer's book, Pathology and Power, which takes firsthand account examples of his experiences in Haiti, and illustrates the plight of the poor in light of the economic prosperity of we rich. I learned some of the lessons he provided in his book, in my own experiences in Livingstone, Zambia, and in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.

We stayed cheaply in Livingstone, for about $4 per night, in dorm-style accommodations. The first day, we stowed our bags, paid the two nights rent, and went straight for the Falls. Victoria Falls is a truly beautiful place, but after 7 or 8 trips there, the place has lost it's luster, to some degree. The Zambian side used to hold a certain charm for me, in that there were few tourists - they were all on the Zim side - and so there was a natural, peaceful countenance to the place. No longer.

Now the Zam side is replete with tourism. This is where the rich come to see their seventh natural wonder, and for me, 'tis too crowded. God though, in infinite power, does still check the cynic such as myself. The Victoria Falls is one of the most amazing, engrossing sights I've ever seen, despite my familiarity.

Aggie loved it, and so did all of us, I think, even Stewart, who was here just last weekend.

The evening we spent back in Livingstone, eating at a nice Indian restaurant the likes of which are not found often anywhere in the US. True Indian cuisine, as spice-filled, and succulent as you can imagine. Eva, Michelle, Stewart, and Aggie endured and I daresay were interested in my finally telling the whole story - perhaps for the first time for me, verbally - of the rise and fall of Project San Francisco in Lusaka in 1998 and 1999, from the labour unrest, to the Permanent Secretary of the Minister of Health, on up to the Office of the President, to the evacuation to Harare, to the safe house provided to by the US Department of State, the blindfolding of Maggie for our "last supper", the driving away from the city, seeing the skyline for the "last" time, and the inner workings of email, muzungu shenanigans, and the politics of AIDS in a developing country. For icing on the cake, my UASOMer colleagues indulged me in a quick recount of being adopted and finding my biological parents. It felt good for me to share that, and moreso, to get it off my chest, to relent that this all happened here in Zambia, and to move on, to the New Lusaka.

The next day, Stew-dog, Eva, and Michelle went elephant-riding as Aggie and I went to Zimbabwe for lunch, with a visit to that side of the Falls on the way. To hear it later, the elephant ride was wonderful. Stewart got in a forehead-to-forehead confrontation with a baby elephant, until the baby had enough, and proved itself to be superior in a very clear way, to hear Stewart tell it.

Aggie and I saw the Falls from Zim, and I have to say, if you can't cross over far on the Zam-side by hiking, when the water is low, then the Zim-side is a better view. We took our time. I constantly reminded myself to linger since Aggie was a first-timer. Wasuma sana - it's is beautiful. It is more panoramic on the Zim side, in my opinion. The Falls stretch for over a mile, putting Niagra to shame ten-fold, so these photographs don't capture a substantial minority of the vista.

But these days, my interests lie in more economic, man-made motifs.

We walked the click-or-so to the town of Victoria Falls. When I first went there, in late 1997, the place was a burgeoning tourist town, with new shops opening, and crowds of tourists eager to part with their money for thrills of bungi jumping, white water rafting that is unparalleled anywhere else on our planet, microlight flights, helicopter views, safaris, and what-not, other African touristic adventures.

In 1998 Maggie and I took a holiday in Victoria Falls, stayed in the plush, Mosi Au Tunya lodge just up the hill, very comfortably for less than $30 per night, saw birds and ant colonies and wart hogs on our peaceful, unblemished stroll to the Falls in the mornings.

In 2005, the shops that were just being built in '98 are completely vacant of tourists. Money-changers are the only humans visible, save for two tourist police we saw. I was reminded of Cairo tourist police, whom I felt were there more to keep an eye on criminals than to assist...I digress.

We went into Vic Falls, and the shops were open, but empty. The only people to be seen on the streets were money changers, whose activities are strictly illegal under the Mugabe administration. On the Black Market, the Zim dollar changes for 20,000 Zim Dollars, but at the Forex places and in shops and restaurants, and in hotels, the exchange rate is 9,000 to 1 US.  So If one changes a $100 bill at Forex, one gets the purchasing power of about $45. Your money devalues instantly, to less than half of it's real purchasing power. This is the economic state of affairs in Zimbabwe.

We followed pizza signs to a place upstairs, in the main mall, if you will, a two-story shopping quadrant, and scoped the place out. There was one woman at reception and one man in the kitchen. The woman advised us that this was the only place to get food. Skeptical, we retraced our steps, downstairs and back, and stopped at the backpackers where I had once been impressed by the book exchange operation they had. (One can leave a book in exchange for another book - a perfect arrangement for travelers with plenty of time and little money.) They advised us that the Mosi-au-Tunya lodge was now 500,000 zim per night (~US $50) and that to eat, we should go to a touristic monstrosity on the other side of the main road, clearly built in the interest of separating high-end tourists from their Forex...We retraced again our steps to the pizza place, passing for the third time a blind woman seated on the sidewalk, flanked by three children all under the age of 4 who were primed to present begging bowls to the rare tourist who might pass by.

We sat in the pizza place, having passed a number of money-changers whose hawking solicitations we outright ignored. We sat, we ordered two pizzas, a Zambezi beer, and a a fanta. The woman had to run to the store to get the beer - there were none in inventory. During the course of our solitary meal, the only transactions the restaurant facilitated were those of selling single cigarettes to various money-changers for a few 100 Zim notes each.

The town of Victoria Falls felt like a ghost town - it was eerie, a little forbidding, and vacuumed, as if the life had been sucked out of the place, leaving only the most hearty to survive, by their wits and cunning, and nothing else would do. 

During our meal, I regretted eating there, in small part, because the windows of the place gave us a view of various money-changers strolling back and forth, but worse, that they had a view of us, we wealthy tourists, and potential targets for theft. But I studied them closely, and their eyes were not constantly peering in to see the possible prey. The desperation hasn't hit the bottom as yet, but I fear it is not far from now when these persecuted people of Zimbabwe will hit a level of desperation that will lead them to no other choice than to what we call crime.

We ate for $US27, an astronomical sum by Zim standards of yore, and I paid all I had, which was $25, which the woman accepted reluctantly, particularly because we only had small bills remaining after the fees associated with seeing the Falls.

We walked back down the hill, stopping to give the blind woman and her children the several slices of pizza we had remaining from our belly-filling meal, and I felt more safe after having crossed back to Zam.

Victoria Falls is a ghost town now, compared to just 4 or 5 years ago. The economics there have suffocated all business, in ways I don't understand. I learned later that people no longer buy bread by the loaf. They purchased by the half-loaf for a time, and now they buy their bread by the slice.