Mugabe's mess is Africa's problem

Many of you will know my opinion on the tragedy that is Zimbabwe (see my earlier Zim posts if not), but Mugabe's regime has truly outdone itself over the last few days. If you haven't come across the latest so-called "excesses" - which include police brutality that borders on torture and the police shooting of a protester at a prayer meeting, in a country already trying to cope with the highest level of inflation in the world - take a look at http://www.zimbabwejournalists.com/. The site is run by exiled journalists, and their incredible effort to get information about the crisis out there, while avoiding biased reporting, is truly laudable.

Now, please, please, will someone explain to me why it takes the torture of a 60 year old grandmother, amongst the scores of other people beaten, for the international community to even admit that there is a problem? How could it get to this point? When thousands and thousands of people protest a terrible situation for years on end, why does it take actual physical injury for the economic power houses to suddenly be up in arms? Freedom of speech is all well and good, but if no one listens to what you say, well, you might as well be living in Zimbabwe.

"Up in arms" is, of course, a slight exaggeration - the reactions have seemed closer to embarrassment than outrage from the African contingent, while the rest of the world appears suitably unimpressed but are waiting to see what Africa will do about it. So what will Africa do? The eyes of the world are on our continent - is she going to step up to the plate? Zimbabwe managed to get into this position while Africa merely looked on. As wonderful as it is that the world as a whole is suddenly noticing the problem (I saw Tsvangirai's injuries as a headline in a Jamaican online paper today), it is fairly obvious that we cannot rely on people with no stake in Africa to solve this. We cannot always assume that someone will step in and rescue us. So where are our great African leaders now?

It would be very good to see Mbeki exercising his right to speak up. If he remains close-mouthed over this (which he has up until this point), it does not bode well for the future of South Africa, particularly given the rather quiet land reclamation programme underway there. You know what they say about good men who do nothing...

Man coffee

So much for the progress of women's lib...

We've just started work in new offices in Namibia. On our first day here, I went to find a cup of coffee, work starting a little too early for my taste. As I started to pour the delightfully strong looking filter coffee from the pot in the corner, the cleaning lady walked in. She asked me who I was pouring coffee for. I said it was for myself. She looked extremely shocked... Now I'm busy wondering if the coffee's laced with arsenic or something (not impossible in a mining town) and thinking what a sweet, caring woman this must be, when she says, "Not that coffee, that's for the men". She points to the "chick"ory mock-coffee in the corner, says, "Ladies' coffee", points at the filter coffee, "Man coffee".

Really. I'm not kidding.

Katherine and I drink man coffee. It puts hair on your chest.

The journey to Tsumeb

A 2 day car trip with a lot of our stuff and our dog (Sam) and cat (Grimma) in the back of the bakkie was the beginning of it all. To get a bit of a better idea of where everything sits, take a look at the trip as I've marked it here...about 2000km from Johannesburg to Tsumeb.

We traveled from Johannesburg up to Botswana, entering the country from just below Lobatse. Lobatse happens to be the town that my grandparents spent many years in, possibly the dullest town in Botswana. Not much seemed to have changed from the last time I saw it, which was probably 12 years ago.

We crossed the border at around 6pm, but realised pretty quickly that we weren't going to find anywhere to stay that would accept the animals too. So we decided to just carry on driving as long as we could. The trip to the closest border post to our goal of Tsumeb took us along what is known as the Trans-Kgalagadi highway. This roads heads straight through the Kalahari Desert, a rather boring, repetitive piece of countryside, redeemed by it's stunning sunsets and sunrises and abundance of game (apparently, though we only saw jackals, mostly very close up while avoiding running them down). You can't lose focus for a second due to all the cattle and game not fenced off from the road, which made for a rather strenuous night's driving.

Ended up getting a couple of hours sleep by the side of the road. Just before we napped, we foolishly released the cat for a couple of seconds so that she could pee behind a bush. She promptly decided she'd like to live in the Kalahari. Ensue hilarity, which almost ended tragically under a truck...anyway, eventually we got her back :)

Crossing over into Namibia was such a relief - the freezing cold night drive was over, we could see a few metres down the road, the animals had finally exhausted themselves, and the border was a dream. No funny questions, no bribes - just straight through, with no trouble, as long as your paperwork was sorted. What a difference from the chaos that is Beitbridge (SA to Zim), or even Ramatlabama (SA to Botswana)! And then we got past the border, and there were fences on the sides of the roads. Joy of joys...

Several very hot sweaty hours of driving took us through some fairly uninteresting country, and then we neared Otavi and the mountains appeared. To go from flat expanses of pretty much nothing, to one of the prettiest little mountain ranges around was so unexpected that we both just started grinning. And then we finally arrived in Tsumeb...we had been told it's the loveliest town in Namibia and they weren't kidding. Full of parks and well kept historical buildings, with a colonial edge, but desire for modernity, Tsumeb is a marvel!

Well, that journey took place in February, so quite a bit of time has passed, but still loving Tsumeb...

Richards Bay & Botswana

After New Year, we headed down in convoy to Johannesburg from Harare - a very long, hot, dusty trip, not improved by the lack of a radio and air-con in the car I traveled in. Spent a night in Joburg and then headed straight down to coast to visit my folks.

Spent a couple of weeks in Richards Bay in the end. Was supposed to head back to Botswana in early January to finish up the project there, but had a miscarriage the day before I was supposed to fly. Was 10 weeks into my pregnancy. It was all very scary and awful, made worse by Ian already being in Botswana, with no phone or Internet at the time. Anyway, that was a while ago now, and we seem to have bounced back just fine from it all. Certainly not an experience I'd like to go through again though!

So I got back up to Botswana a bit later than planned, just in time to get the project finished up and get ready to head to Namibia. It was really good to get finished in Botswana - it felt like the right time to move on.