Great Zimbabwe

I had no idea what to expect when we ventured into Zimbabwe. I'm not exactly well versed on my African politics from 1980 to present, meaning the end of colonialism and each country's own civil was and how it is currently. But I knew Zimbabwe had had it rough, like most countries I guess. I had just finished reading Paul Theroux's "Dark Star Safari" where he travels Cairo to Cape Town overland. He came through Zimbabwe in the early 2000s, in the height of the farm invasions and the economic crisis. (If you don't know the President basically told the war veterans that they should take the white farmers farms, and so they did, many times violently.) The currency was horribly inflated at the time and as we all know it eventually got much worse. But that was the time period everyone seemed to be referring to when they said to stay away from Zim. I was interested, and a little anxious to see what it was like now.
We went from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo on the night train, celebrating my "birthday" with some gin and tonics. (i'm the only one without a birthday on this trip, so we made one up) We got to Bulawayo in the morning and after some hassle finding an ATM that would take our foreign cards, we hopped on a khumbi to Masvingo, and arrived in the late afternoon before jumping into a shared taxi to the Great Zimbabwe National Monument 25K outside of town. The public transport system is interesting here. There are a few khumbis for longer distances, hours or so, and taxis for short distances, but for middle, and even short distances, there are shared taxis, which are just 8 passenger mini vans that they cram as many people into as possible. We had 16 people in ours on the way to our campsite. But we made it and walked the kilometer in as the sun was setting. The next morning we rose early, as usual, and set off to explore the Great Zimbabwe. It was an extremely interesting morning, wandering around the ancient ruins of an 11th century city. Archeologists spent 100 years trying to attribute this city to anyone and everyone except the african people, but in the end it has been proven that a great civilization lived in this area far before people had realized. The most awesome part was the city slash fort they built on top of a hill of rock. It was full of so many little passageways and nooks we couldn't help but think how fun it would be to play capture the flag or other random games in it.
We wandered around for a few hours before we hitched a ride back into town on a school bus full of the politest 6th graders in the world on a school trip. They had some sports tournaments in some random towns and were getting in some learning in between their games.
After a stop for some take away of chicken and sadza (lipalishi), we got into a khumbi to the capital, Harare.
We got in at night and have spent the last few days trying to figure out busses and visas to get to Malawi. We'll have to go through the Tete corridor of Mozambique to get to Malawi from here, a grand total of 6 hours maybe, that will cost us $85, four times as expensive as our Mozambican visas for our vacations in Swaziland... "it's called reciprocity" they said with a 'tude. But we were successful in our Tanzanian visas, but not without griping about the $110 it cost to get it.
But tomorrow morning we'll leave Zimbabwe for Malawi, so I guess the question is, how was Zimbabwe? It's hard to say after only a week. The people are the nicest I've met since Swaziland, so friendly and smiling. The only trouble we have encountered are police officers giving absurd tickets to khumbi drivers, to the point where they are losing money on trips with bribes and silly tickets. It's been weird being in an African country and using US dollars. In 2009, the Zimbabwaen dollar had inflated so much, it was practically worthless (i an currently in possession of a 25 billion Zim Dollar note) and so they switched to the dollar. It's weird being on a khumbi in the middle of nowhere and some random grandma from some random town pulls out USD to pay. They don't use American coins though. I had some random quarters I tried to pay with when my total came to $1.50, and the lady said "we don't take that, we only take Rand coins." What?! How can a country use one currency for bills and one for coins and neither are their own? And they usually don't even have coins. Today I got change for my $3.30 in 7 suckers.
But all in all, Zim has been good to us, I've enjoyed my time here. But it's time to move on... Lake Malawi is calling. ;)