Rest day 3 at Dave (Scruff) and Jan in Harare
Distance 8431
Total from Amsterdam 13831
We lay in bed snug as bugs recovering from the late night and only got up around 10. This laziness will change in a day or two. A sunny and cloudless day and I’m still wearing Jan’s lovely warm jacket, Peter says I look like Michelin Man!! Scruff and Jan dropped us off at the Bon Marché supermarket to buy some groceries. As we have very few bond notes, we used Scruff’s credit card and paid him in USD afterwards. USD is in very short supply in Zim.
When changing USD to Zim Bond notes at the Zambian border we got ZBond 1.35 to USD1 and through a contact here have managed to buy USD400 more at 1.40 giving us a total of ZB580. This should see us through to Vic Falls.
Who knows how long these bond notes will be around for. Everyone is hoping that after the elections things will improve and that includes the money situation, though friends who visited said they had managed to draw, new crisp, USD30 a day, for a few days, at a certain ATM. So there’s hope.
Peter and I both got haircuts, this time from Jan, who was a hairdresser until a year or so ago. Peter’s is still longish – I think he’s trying to hang onto the Branson look? We had bought ingredients for a chicken broccoli bake and I started the ball rolling in the kitchen while the others watched TV and 7’s rugby in San Francisco. Forgot to mention when we collected Scruff’s keys on Saturday at partner, Graham’s house they told us this story. Graham’s 10 year old son, Connor, had a sore throat and his mom gave him the nozzle and spray to spray his throat … fast forward a bit to his teacher phoning his mom to collect Connor as he was behaving odd, putting his head inside his desk, running around the classroom behaving like a crazy person. Turns out Connor empied the spray bottle down his throat and containing alcohol, he was merrily pissed. The story continues … he had a game of rugby the same day and played a humdinger, scored two tries and while charging to the try line for his third, got tackled and had to be carried off the field. He had an MRI (I don’t know the results) and when we saw him on Saturday was hobbling around with a sore knee.
I asked Jan last night in which suburb their house was located and it’s in the Glenlawn area. We went, in separate cars as I wanted to finish off supper, to visit friends who sold their home in Harare and have bought in Kariba. The price they received, having sold after Mugabe got ousted was considerably more which is a sign that hopefully things are changing for the better in Zimbabwe. We met some lovely people at the farewell drinks get together … Julie and her husband who hosted Sara and Scott 18 months ago for a few weeks and Claire who relieves at Mana Pools from time to time. We weren’t there long enough to meet and chat to everyone. Scruff and Jan left to collect Jan’s daughter, Shay, who had returned from a few days in Kariba and we left shortly thereafter to sort out supper. Priscilla, their cleaning lady who also cooks, made a delicious salad which went well with the chicken and broccoli bake and leftover chicken and butternut stir-fry. We watched 7’s rugby semifinals where the Bokke gots blitz by the Poms and the Kiwis beat Fiji. At 02h30 while we were in dreamland NZ beat England 33-12 in the final, all this in lovely San Francisco. Cheers folks xx
– Our cottage at Scruff and Jan’s
– A lovely lapa on stilts overlooking the valley
– The local grocery store, Bon Marché about 9 km away
– Jan trimming Peter’s hair
– With Julie. Scott and Sara stayed a few weeks with Julie and her husband while in Harare
