Making a comeback and dollars in Zim

Its been a long time since I wrote anything for this blog, but I thought that today is as good a day as any right?

I love traveling to other countries, who doesn’t right, but unlike most I want to travel to different African countries before I spread my wings further. And my count is increasing. So far I have visited, Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Kenya, and Zambia.

If you had to ask me which country in Africa Id like to visit least. Zimbabwe is up there along with Somalia, Ethiopia, and the Sudan. But low and behold. The company sends me to Zimbabwe for a mining indaba last week.

You know that a country is F’D up when you are reading up on the internet about travel requirements to Zim and you get a random bitch and moan like this:

I’ve always said that traveling into Africa is interesting and has its challenges. Seems like Zimbabwe has more challenges then most. The Harare International Airport is quite nice and more sophisticated then Lusaka International and has its walls adorned with pictures of their beloved president for life Bob Mugabe with his ridiculas F***ING Adolf Hitler moustache. Anyway, we had to fill in a yellow form on the plane stating who we were, where we came from, and what our occupation is. For the whole flight I was contemplating as to whether I should put down that I am a journalist. I did, and well I got asked every question under the sun at the immigration desk. They then took my camera’s batteries away and gave them back to me when I left the country.

I was given my own bodyguard in Zimbabwe as they love to rob white people who they perceive as tourists and hate journalists even more then they love robbing the whites. Anyway, on my way to the ministry of information in downtown Harare you pass the only construction site in Zimbabwe, which hasn’t seen any work in over 2 years, a power station that doesn’t work, and potholes that resemble craters. You see a lot of stray dogs running around the capital and people walking around with domesticated warthogs on leashes as pets.

The political landscape in Zim is also interesting. At the conference, Mugabe was calling for a stop to international sanctions from the international community. The next day, Prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai said that there was no international conspiracy to undermine Zimbabwe. Two points of view, who do you believe?

One comment that went down very well was when Mugabe told the organisers of the conference: "Its so nice to see some white faces in the audience, I thought I cased them all away."

And don’t believe for a minute that traveling in Africa is cheap! Zimbabwe has caught on pretty nicely. Since the fall of the Zim Dollar last year, the country has adopted the Rand in the South of the country and the US Dollar in the North of the country. I was put up in the same hotel as the indaba and internet access is $6 an hour, a bottle of water is $6 and a can of coke is $2.

I made it back in once piece and rest assured….I will not be wanting to go back anytime soon.