Day 4: 19 December 1996
19 December 1996 … the 4th day for me, the 2nd day away with the group. It was already 7h40 , when we left the camp site. That night we had an enormous thunder storm. Annelise and I jumped out of the tent to close our windows, she took the opportunity to go to the toilet … at that moment I didn’t know she would do this until the end of the trip …When she came inside she was terrible laughing … she almost slipped on a frog… After laughing a lot we slept for the rest of the night without other disturbances. That morning everybody was already awake at 5h30. Robert and Sharyn were also already awake, so I had no change to prepare his birthday breakfast. The first went already to the toilet and took a shower and took their tents down. I made the coffee and helped by making the breakfast. In the meantime I swept the aquarium , so we could start with a clean truck. After a quick breakfast, some cereals and milk, we took the last tents down and drove direction Masvingo and saw for the first time a group of baboons running over the road. The atmosphere in the truck was really funny. Annelise was demonstrating the performance of an air hostess. How to wear the life jackets and how to breath through the gas masks … and all this while driving on a road with already too much wholes. The Maccarena was playing and I observed the landscape , again it was different then the day before, mango plants and cane were the main cults which could be detected that morning. As it started raining and as the landscape remains identical for a few hours so I did a first step into the learning of the different game which look so identical in a first view too me. After a few hours the landscape turned into a change of huge granite rocks and very very green areas. Once crossing the Rundle River , a wet one , this time, with a lot of massive granite blocks along it shores , we could detect groups of huts, always a 4 or 5 together in the middle of this very humid mountainous area, where the fog became really dense. In that rain , women were working on the fields , children were waving to us and some men tried to sell their craft work along the road. So this area between Messina and Masvingo is really pure nature , a hilly landscape with huge granite blocks and at the sleeps of the hills some small villages were located. It almost gave the impression like it was a ribbon building, almost like in Europe, but then instead of some houses we had to do with huts.
At 10h45 we arrived at Great Zimbabwe …. As long as the 16th century the Great Zimbabwe was recognized as one of the world ‘s premier capitals. It contained an impressive array of dry-stone structures spread over a 720 -hectares area. The remaining stone walls are the dominant remains of a large city inhabited between the 13th and the 15th century by an estimated population of 11.000 to 20.000. This populace lived in thatched huts built with a mixture of clay and granite gravel (daga) while the dwellings of important families were located inside the stone-walled enclosures. It is proved that Great Zimbabwe was a product of the indigenous African -The Shona. Its influence spread into Botswana , Mozambique and South Africa. A basically strong indigenous economy with a possible cattle bias was reinforced by trade links with the East coast to further consolidate Zimbabwe ‘s position. Gold and ivory found their way out while beads, cloth porcelain and other items rolled in from the Middle and Far East. By the end of the 15th century Great Zimbabwe was no more. Ecological factors, for example pressures exerted on the natural resources by the large population could have led to a weakening of the political , social and economic fabric of the state of competition for dwindling resources intensified. Both botanical and oral traditions seem to substantiate this. The conical tower is one of the main architectural features of Great Zimbabwe 10 meters high and 5 meters diameter at the base, all that can be ascertained is that it is solid with no space inside but its symbolic meaning is open to conjuncture . The enclosures were build with a untrimmed face stone blocks and wavy courses with the bottom ones running on unprepared foundations. They have been dated to the 13th century. The enclosures were ravaged by amateur archaeologists and treasure hunters between 1892 and 1894. Soapstone bowl fragments and 14th century painted glass have been found here. The great enclosure is the massive outer wall with a 255 meters in circumstance is built in anti-clockwise direction commencing near the north-west and were blocks were poorly matched and ending at the north -eastern end were the wall were the highest and the stone wall matched and dressed. It is really the largest single ancient structure in sub-Saharan Africa. It is over 250 metres in circumference , 11 meters high and 5 meters thick in parts. Its mammoth size and the existence of a large 10 meter high Conical Tower has led to a great deal of a speculation as to its function. A court for the king’s wives , the king’s residence an initiation school - these and other theories may remain unsolved because regrettable from 1890 to 1910 the Great Enclosure was ravaged by treasure hunters and unskilled investigators who removed all trace of upper deposits that bore testimony to the function of the complex. ….
So we started at our walk, we first visited the museum , where a lot of animals were explained, … and it almost looked real. After the explanation of the Great enclosure we started with Charlotte, Annelise , Heading and Sharyn to climb to the top of the ancient path , the way to the Hill Complex became very slippery due to the first small raindrops.
Overview of the Great Zimbabwe
The imitation of snakes …tssss … tsss was the new game of that afternoon, but was quick finished the moment a real one appeared and slipped away through the wet stones. The panorama we had from the top of the Hill Complex was marvelous, with a superb view on the Lake Mutrikwi and on the Great Enclosure and some other valleys enclosures and the conical tower and the Shanon-city .
Once we came down after a long walk we run into the rain towards this Shanon-city in which an artist executed some craftwork, a blind man was reading a bible and we did a chat , he asked my address and wanted to write me.
Shanon-city
Annelise asked how it was possible he would write letters, so he told us, his friend is writing the things he ask him to write down.
The blind writer
Some other tourists entered in one of the huts to listen to their future … I didn’t want to try this. Children and women were singing and dancing on tam tam music in the rain. The raindrops became bigger and we became totally wet, so decided to shelter in the hut of the blind man. No changes in the whether , so Annelise and decided, just to walk in this heavy rain, to find the Great Enclosure .No indications, only high grass in all directions, so we hoped to follow the good direction, fortunately after a while we arrived at an impressive wall, this must have been the Great Enclosure. We rambled through the different walls, a real labyrinth. After the photo sessions we tried to find our way back to the entrance. Again no indications, so we gathered some nice flowers, to dry afterwards, which I still have. Of course what would be a day without gathering stones, so in one of my pockets the wet flowers and in my other pocket a few stones. So I have granite stones from the Great Zimbabwe. After a while we found the truck, and all the others laughing with us two, they were already eating in an open hut, trying to get dry. We were really hungry and happy we found the way back, the others were almost finished but fortunately kept some food over for us, a few small breads with cheese and tomatoes were sufficient to keep us alive. Enough energy to drive further direction Masvingo via Buluwayo . While driving, the cloths were drying everywhere in the aquarium, most of us were sleeping and Dylan did his best to pass all the military control posts. I couldn’t understand why we had to stop so often any way we could pass always after a few minutes of discussion. I was still thinking to the Great Zimbabwe , which had made really impression on me, the silence , the birds the landscapes , a mystery was hanging over that area.
In the late afternoon we passed Zwishavane and around 16h00 the whether became very dark and we had our last pi-stop for that afternoon, the men left, the women right from the truck, the only tricky thing was that we of course had to go on all fours under the barbed wire to reach the hidden area, during my return to the buss I succeed to touch the barbed wire , with the knowing consequences. While cleaning up my injury we arrived at 17h00 at our municipality camp site in Bulawayo , where it was really time for a Zambezi with a dish of lime for Annelise and for me. We all acted like fools, I think we staid too long in the bus … this was hopefully the only reason. We started immediately with the build up of the camp site, the small tents, the kitchen , the chairs and the huge batch, only needed in case of rain showers. It was really cold, so after redressing in warm cloths I helped Dylan with making the spaghetti for our 16. After a warm shower, we could eat and chat around the campfire, chats about the St. Nicolas and the Christmas man. Important discussions occur, because the Australian only know the St . Nicolas, who is coming on Christmas … I could only reply that the children in Belgium have more change than those in Australia, they get double surprises. After a few beers we all went to bed, to get up very early again the next morning.
Next day: Day 5 : 20 December 1996
Previous day: Day 3: 18 December 1996