The Road to Nowhere

Unless you happen to be in a game reserve, or one of Zim's famous national parks, don't expect to see much wildlife anymore. We drove in convoy back from Gweru to Bulawayo and the only bit of wildlife we saw was an Aardwolf (Proteles cristatus), and that had come off second best in a face-off with a car. They are beautiful creatures - a smaller, fluffier version of a hyaena, and increasingly endangered... Two years ago I drove from Bulawayo down tio Victoria Falls - a long drive if anyone knows it - and saw a handful of Baboons and a herd of elephants.

Our driver told us that in years recently past, you'd see all sorts of wildlife - plains game, warthogs, you name it...now, nothing. The same animals that tourists came from all over the world to see and photograph, and which sustained the Zim economy for years, have now become sustenance of a different sort. And for the people that would otherwise starve without it....well, who can blame them..?


What you do see on the road are policemen, manning ineffective "roadblocks". At least you should expect to see them. It had been a long days drive, almost to the border with Botswana and back in the Donkey Protection Trust Toyota. I was turning over the days events in my head, and lazily overtaking a VW combi bus when Jeremy said rather nervously..."Er...watch out!". I somehow managed to avoid the policeman by deftly driving at 45 degrees across the carriageway, although i did see him wagging his finger at me in the rear view mirror.

"Didn't you see him" asked Jeremy somewhat incredulously?

"Well, I would have done!" I replied. That didn't sound like much of an excuse as the words came out of my mouth, so I tried a different tack. "Stupid idiot was standing in the middle of the road!"

Jeremy sighed "He is manning a roadblock. That's what he does. In order to man the roadblock he stands in the middle of the road. Manning a roadblock while hiding in a hedge at the side of the road somehow defetas the object."

The truth is that Zim roadblocks are not exactly effective for a host of other reasons.

The poor guys standing there in the sun and rain will have no radios, no cars, (or no petrol in the cars if they do have one), they probably haven't been paid and if (like me) you are intent on avoiding the minefields of potholes, then you never look too far in front meaning that they suddenly loom up at rather short notice.

So had I been a hardened criminal, intent on avoiding being flagged down by a nervous looking cop, I might just have wound my window down, given him a cheery smile and said "Sorry mate..not today..bit busy OK?"

We stayed at the Cresta Churchill Hotel in Bulawayo. It was half-timbered, oak panelled and was festooned with Olde Englande hunting and stagecoach prints. I half expected to find Miss Marple sipping a dry sherry in the saloon bar, or Bertie Wooster recounting a round of golf with Gussie Finknottle.

In the 1950's it must have been achingly trendy, and as a refuge for homesick Brits its two bars were carbon copies of the sort you'd find in a small home counties guesthouse or club.

We were, I am almost certain, the only paying guests. Again the staff were perfect models of courtesy, charm and attention. You could almost hear the dust beginning to settle once again as we left.

Simon Pope

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Curiouser and Curiouser

“Hello Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. I’m afraid the fox is back on the runway again so we’ll now have to wait until they move it on.”

Its 8.20pm. I am on the tarmac at Heathrow. It is a cold, wet winters evening, and I’m in a cramped aeroplane seat next to a huge and equally cramped South African. If the captain had said, over the tannoy, that there was large white rabbit running around the runway with a pocket watch and saying “I’m late. I’m late.” it would have been no stranger or more surprising than much of what we were to see over the next few days as we began the long slog down to Zimbabwe.

Having lived in Namibia for two years, I realized (when I saw Zimbabwe for the first time) that this was the picture-book idea I had grown up with when I was small. All redolent of “Daktari” and “Born Free”. Namibia with its sweeping, cinemascope type grandeur, breathtaking desert colours and huge skies, is an Africa all of its own. But Zimbabwe was the Africa I thought I knew – the Africa that made me want to go there in the first place.

The strange thing about Zimbabwe now is that it's not even the place I thought it was. It now has this indefinable, mercurial quality about it, which is further fogged by the fact that it's not that place I’m reading about in the newspapers, or watching on TV. For a start it's green. There have been plentiful rains, which means that driving across Northern Matabeleland land from Bulawayo to Gweru, there are fields of grass, waving gently in the breeze. You might be in Wyoming, or Kansas. It doesn’t seem or feel like the sort of place where people are going to rise up against anybody. Elsewhere in the world, indignant Icelanders were rioting in the streets and throwing custard at the Parliament building. Bulgarians were holding rallies and railing against the ills of capitalism. In Zimbabwe, where the people are oppressed and subjugated, they are going about their days with a smile, a wave and (nearly always) the most important thing they want to know is “Did you sleep well?”.

This is perhaps because a good night’s sleep is something that can be achieved with no money (which hardly any of them have) and then you begin to realize that encapsulated in that question and answer may well be one of the most precious things they have – the chance to sleep, and rest, and forget.

Maybe the people are broken, dispirited, have no fight left. But I didn’t get that feeling. The smiles are still there, but other things are missing and I’m still trying to work out what they are.

Simon Pope

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Zimbabwe

The flight to Zimbabwe is long and hard – not made any easier by sharing the London / Johannesburg stretch with what appeared to be an Afrikaner Rugby Club reunion dinner and booze up. Several chaps, with very little neck, in khaki shirts and shorts, drank and sang and squabbled their way throughout the eleven hours – one even deciding he needed to change his clothes in the aisle halfway through. Then there’s a charming five hour wait in the airport for the flight to Bulawayo.

Finally arriving at the ‘temporary’ Joshua Nkomo Airport Terminal (the new one has rested, unfinished and unloved, swathed in scaffolding – which is gradually being stolen – for the last ten years), it is a shock to be ushered into the customs and immigration hall by smiling customs officers, asking whether we have slept well, and whether we are enjoying our visit.

Now, say what you like, but the Zim economy is a basket case. The day we arrived the Government issued a new set of bank notes – ten to fifty trillion dollar bills. The morning paper costs six hundred million dollars. Now even our own dear Gordon Brown doesn’t have problems like that.

Though come to think of it, the two Supreme Leaders do have quite a lot in common: both unelected, both in charge of collapsed economies, both arrest opposition MPs and neither have got much of a sense of humour.

And by God you need a sense of humour to survive in Zim. It’s hard to believe, but the people are unfailingly polite and cheerful, gentle and optimistic.
There’s 92% unemployment, bread and meat queues outside the few shops that have anything to sell – most are closed and boarded up. And everyone gently reminds you not to drink the water – “We don’t want you to catch cholera” – it’s rampant in the countryside, where perversely, the much needed rains also wash sewage into the streams and rivers used for drinking.

The hospitals have no drugs or equipment, and the schools are on strike, probably because the teachers’ pay – in Zim dollars – no longer even pretends to put food in their families’ mouths.

Yet they stay cheerful.

Someone quips: “There are so many potholes in the Bulawayo roads, it’s the only town in the world where the police arrest you for drink-driving if they see you driving straight".

So it’s a little miracle to see the SPANA funded Donkey Protection Trust out every day on the roads around town and in the surrounding countryside, gently treating the animals that pull the carts that now service the region’s economy – whatever little that might be.

We went north to Gueru to meet two brave young vets, Keith and Lisa, also trying to help the donkeys of the struggling people up there. They also happen to be wild-life specialists – many of the game parks and reserves are being decimated by hungry poachers.

Before we had fully grasped the severity of the situation we had been recruited to help them dart and immobilise about ten fully grown lions. Somehow that Pope fellow got himself the safer end, sticking a thermometer up the unmentionables, while poor little me got the sharp end. Literally. I had to open the jaws of recumbent lions, draw out their tongues, slip an electronic sensor on the end, and try to concentrate on the readings (blood oxygen level and pulse rate), while Lisa kept asking disquieting questions, like “Is he coming round yet?”.

I can tell you, when he started growling, I “came round” pretty blooming quickly. I went out through the gate like a whippet.

I wish I could be as nifty in that blessed marathon.

Jeremy Hulme

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Training Blog Number 2

Ooh! Ah! Ouch! - Now the commonest words in my vocabulary as I hobble to work in the mornings, or even try to get down the stairs. Even have to sit down to get dressed in the morning.

It's mostly the knees, I must admit, but almost anywhere is capable of acute pain. I even managed to pull some strange muscle or other just putting on the little back-pack that I now carry (sometimes) to simulate the donkey head I will be wearing.
I thought it was perfectly reasonable to use three or four bottles of wine as suitable weights in the pack, but I have been subject to much mockery.

And chemists - wow - I'm now a real expert. I remember as a boy seeing slightly seedy shops marked 'surgical appliances' and seeing dubious looking leather straps and pink plastic thingies in the windows - but now I head straight for that sign in Boots looking for 'elasticated bandages' and 'supports' - just for the knees, you understand.

And I'm sorry to be a bit sexist about this, but there seems to be any amount of strange pills and potions on sale for 'ladies of a certain age', in fact a whole aisle-full. "Menopause-R-Us" seems to be the theme. But what about us blokes? Why can't we have the 'oil of grotweed capsules or pond-bog weed oil to soothe the aches and pains? Must be a credit-crunch breaking opportunity in there for some enterprising allotment holder.

Meanwhile, I'll just have to stick to the wine. Probably tastes better anyway. Nothing like a nice Welsh claret.

Jeremy Hulme

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Training Blog Number 1

“Lucy, Lucy, come quickly! Look out the window, there’s a lunatic running round the field!”
So the encouraging words of my son-in-law, supportive, sensitive, understanding, helping me to cope with this awful nightmare that has descended on me since that terrible day last autumn when I, very much against my better judgement, agreed to this lunatic proposition.

I have always hated running – at school, in those antideluvian times – it was a punishment, equally so in the army – and here I am doing it voluntarily. I just can’t believe it. Truly madness.

There’s an old abandoned airfield behind the house – I’ve got to know every blade of grass and every tree on the three and half miles or one hour, that it takes to stagger around it.

Even the small group of fallow deer that I regularly disturb from their slumbers are jarred off with me waking them up so early in the morning. They’ve taken their revenge by coming into the garden every night and eating every leaf, every rose bush, every plant. But they’ll be sorry! One of these days I’ll wear the full donkey outfit, and then they’ll really get a shock.

Talking of outfits, Lucy replied “He’s really green – not wearing any of that Chinese sweatshop imported sports equipment."

What’s wrong with wearing wellies, I want to know, it’s jolly muddy out there.

http://www.justgiving.com/spanamarathon

Jeremy Hulme

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