As a Harare airport customs agent looked at my passport, a grim look concreted his dark chiseled features. His stony concentration raised from the passport to glare at me through the glass window of his cubicle. He angrily demanded, “Why you visiting Zimbabwe?”Explaining that I was an invited “photo-journalist” only increased his agitated state of mind.
Then he asked where I was staying. Not a little intimidated at this point, I nervously searched for the Harare hotel’s name on the itinerary furnished in advance by my host. It wasn’t listed.
He threw my passport, rudely, to one side of the cubicle safely out of my reach, stating, “When remember hotel’s name, you have it back.” He then brusquely ordered me aside to make room for the next entrant. He would not allow summoning my host standing on the other side of customs waiting to deliver me to Meikles - Harare’s world class five star hotel - courtesy of the same government paying him to harass me.
It was a strange greeting in 1995 for an invited guest from the U.S. who came to proclaim Zimbabwe’s merits - even for the comparatively calmer times then versus the critical political turbulence currently in flames there.
Though I arrived at the invitation of Mugabe’s government, I caused knee-jerk reactions from any government personnel within earshot. My host, quite unnecessarily I might add after this customs confrontation, strongly advised that I drop the phrase “photo-journalist” from my vocabulary for the remainder of the visit.
Once called Southern Rhodesia, Zimbabwe is renamed after the “The Great Zimbabwe” ruins located in southern Zimbabwe. The name, Zimbabwe, loosely interpreted, means “Great Stone Walls” in the Shona dialect. Those ruins are rumored by some to be relics of Ophir, a thriving biblical city that various histories alleged funded Solomon and Bathsheeba’s lifestyles.
A chain of smaller, but similar, circular stone ruins extends from The Great Zimbabwe World Historical Site northeast into Zim’s Nyanga Highlands. Connecting the dots these ruins track across a map shows their line of travel once intercepted ancient Phoenician trade routes that visited this darkest part of Africa centuries before Europe began its climb out of the Dark Ages.
At 7000 feet in the Nyanga Highlands and on ancient rocky escarpments in the Middle Veldt, massive boulders rest precariously atop each other on majestic scenic overlooks. Descending to Zambezi River rock-bluffs at 300-feet msl (mean-sea-level), I viewed various ancient native petroglyphs. They depicted rhinoceros, elephant, giraffe and various antelope from eland to impala. Usually carved, yet sometimes painted, they posed on stone canvasses.
Painted silhouettes of handprints from long-dead native artists finger-printed or signed the stone canvas art. Their spirits, long ago, joined the ghost stick-figures of spirit ancestors depicted amongst the animals in the artists’ primitive rock-paintings and carvings.
African black natives, traditionally, are subsistence farmers; a lifestyle difficult to escape once one is trapped in its web. Cash in such an economy is of small significance. Conversely, a white minority managed the bulk of the country’s nationwide economic endeavors prior to Mugabe’s land grabs from white farmers. Their removal as a driving force in Zim’s economy strongly answers for much of the country’s recent global economic collapse.
Prior to 2000, Zimbabwe’s white economic leaders convinced the black dominated government that tourism dollars offered significant income to this cash-poor country. A tourism bureau sitting at the highest level of government once included two whites on a 12-man board. One of those white directors, John Gould, was my host in 1995. He was to showcase Zimbabwe so I could photograph and write about its assets - which at the time were considerable.
Before departing Missouri, I worried about the lack of sterile drinking water, contaminated food, malaria. More dreaded than malaria’s infected mosquitoes was a nasty microscopic critter called bilharzia. It enters the body through the skin’s pores when wading infested waters. If untreated, it eventually settles in the urinary tract with devastating results. It definitely was a matter of concern when canoeing the legendary Zambezi River.
I carried an expeditionary water-pump and filter to guarantee safety of the drinking water. Allegedly, you can pump water out of a cow-track in a feedlot with one of these gizmos and drink the result with perfect iodized-safety.
Never used it. Either bottled water was furnished daily or, better yet, various camps boiled ample supplies for drinking. Tasted a little “smokey” but then so did supper’s bar-b-que.
During sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the U.N. during this country’s bloody revolution, Zimbabwe learned to raise all their necessary consumables within Zim’s borders. Metropolitan grocery stores were amply stocked with the same cereals, citrus, canned goods, etc. as U. S. shoppers expect. You bought Kellog’s Wheaties and Coke right off the shelf. Made in Zimbabwe of course.
However, fresh produce proliferated compared to packaged (as in frozen) or canned products. And, invariably you bought bread, fresh baked, out of automatic bread-bakers. Food preserving nitrates were virtually eliminated from Zim’s packaged food, therefore their shelf life was considerably below that marketed in the U.S.
I took a malaria prophylactic prescribed by a family physician for six weeks prior to departure in 1995. However, in the homes of Zimbabwean friends (Zimbabwe’s B.A.S.S. professional bass fishing team), they do not prescribe for malaria prophylactics. Yet, they are no more immune to the disease than we are.
Prophylactics pose serious side-effects when taken for long periods. Therefore, my Zimbabwe acquaintances simply sought treatment if they contracted malaria - the same for bilharzia. Tourists there, or elsewhere in Africa (particularly when visiting “bush” locales) should take a malaria prophylactic prescribed by their doctor well before departing their home for Africa.
Travel into Africa’s bush incurs moderate risks even without political issues clouding that horizon. So does a weekend on your favorite lake during its prime boating season. With care, thorough preparation and acquiring the knowledge how to cope safely with each location’s physical challenges, usually your chances of surviving a trip to either site virtually parallels a cross-town trip to your local zoo. Africa programs memory-chips in the mental computer for a lifetime.
My heart still escalates several beats when jumpstarted by memories of Zimbabwe lions’ nightly calls to hunt. Soon after the sun fell, hyenas’ derisive repartees to the lions’ throaty challenges chillingly reverberated around mopani-log campfires. These nightly dramas usually played out while also contemplating the proximity of gravel-voiced hippos coursing the Zambezi River gently flowing by in the blackness just beyond the campfire’s 
flickering circle of light.
Canoeing the Zambezi River was a magical voyage through a window in time. For a time, it was Africa as it was. Africa as Hemingway, Ruark, and the Bucks intimately breathed it, drank from it, wrote about it - filmed it. All life force springing from it - man, beast and bush - was regulated then only by the ebb and flow of river and time.