16:36, December 28, 2011. A beautiful house in Borrowdale neighbourhood, Harare, Zimbabwe.
Happy Christmas! After an amazing holiday week, different from any I’ve experienced before, I’m taking a quick moment on my last afternoon in Zimbabwe to write up this post. It’s a cool, rainy day in Harare, and while I’m a bit fatigued from the past weeks of travel, I’m relishing the low temperatures and verdant vistas of this capital city. Also, there are two birds in a cage sitting about ten feet from me, and they keep saying funny things in a variety of men’s and women’s voices, which is pretty distracting and weird. Ha.
As I mentioned in my last post, I spent Christmas this year with some Zimbabwean friends and their extended family, at a hunting camp in a vast nature reserve called the Save Conservancy. My friend Alexandre (JB and Gigi’s son) works as a professional hunter apprentice for a company with a very large land concession, and he got stuck taking care of the property and camp over the Christmas weekend, so he invited his family (and me!) to spend the holiday there with him.
The Save Conservancy is utterly beautiful at the moment, with an explosion of jungle-like foliage accompanying the arrival of the rainy season. The hunting camp is situated in an area rather like my visualization of Eden: a grove of huge trees, a seasonal river teeming with fish, exotic animals freely walking about, a complete absence of other people, and a swimming pool. It’s an amazing place.
I had planned on relaxing at the camp, catching up on sleep and doing some reading (You may remember a goal I made to read a book per week this year; not to spoil the results or anything, but I didn’t come very close to making it. Stay tuned for some reading highlights in a future post, however.), but there ended up being far too much to do for me to sit around. Here’s a breakdown of the first 16 hours’ activities following our arrival, just to give you an idea:
4:30pm – Pull into camp after an 8-hour drive from Tete.
4:34pm – Head into the bush on an impala hunt. (I believe Alexandre’s quote, as we got out of the car, was “Hi. We need to find some braai (BBQ) meat before dinner.”)
5:45pm – Arrive back in camp with a large impala.
5:50pm – Swim in pool, and dry off by a fire pit while looking at the massive trees around camp.
6:15pm – Borrow the camp’s dirt bike to go looking for animals; see baboons, impala, and kudu.
7:00pm – Stand around braai while meat cooks, and pretend to be useful.
7:15pm – Eat a delicious feast.
8:15pm – Sit around the fire, roast marshmallows, listen to a symphony of frogs (we counted six different types) and animals, and get to know the family members I haven’t met before.
10:00pm – Sleep for 7 hours.
5:00am – Drink coffee by the pool.
5:15am – Walk along seasonal river, see waterbuck, catch 15 fish on a fishing rod.
8:20am – Go swimming in the pool.
8:30am – Eat a delicious breakfast.
Pretty idyllic, right? Other highlights of our stay in the Save Conservancy included more fishing and hunting, amazing food, crazy animal encounters during long walks in the bush (it was ridiculous – sort of like walking around a zoo, without any cages), falling asleep at night to the sounds of lions roaring and leopards growling outside, and quality time with some really neat, really hospitable friends. (See a few photos following this paragraph.) I also shot a gun for the first time in my life, and that was an interesting experience. Christmas Day saw a complete absence of carols and lights and things of that sort, which was bizarre, and I missed my family and friends somethin’ fierce, but I couldn’t help enjoying the novelty and adventure of a holiday in the bush. I’m very grateful to have an adopted family on this side of the world, and for their efforts to make me feel welcome… and I’m also very, very excited about the idea of spending next Christmas at home. : )
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- Edenic.
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- Baby impala.
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- Elephants have big feet.
I’m planning to head back to Tete tomorrow, catch up on life, emails, and my housing situation there, and then return to Beira for New Year’s and a staff meeting next week. This should be the final phase of a nearly-nonstop month of travel – I think I’ve slept in eight beds during the past three weeks!
Peace to you all during this inter-holiday time, and I hope you have a wonderful finish to 2011!
