Stamps 3 & 4: Departing Botswana & Entering Zimbabwe

Useful travel tip – When crossing a border ensure that you have enough currency on your person to pay your way through, especially when travelling on foot.

Our party quickly learned this lesson as we complacently attempted to enter Zimbabwe (incidentally, a country with which the US of A is not on the best of terms, although I’m pretty sure every single computer in the building was stamped “USAID”). The purpose behind entering this economically and politically tenuous nation for most tourists is to soak in the glory, and the mist, that surrounds Victoria Falls, aka Mosi-Oa-Tunya, aka “The Smoke that Thunders” – what an awesome name. This humungous precipice over which millions of gallons of water flow every instant acts as a border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, and most guide books encourage travelers to purchase value-added dual-entry visas so that they may comfortably travel between the two nations and see the falls from both sides. (Another reason for this that we had yet to fully appreciate was that travelers continuing into Mozambique – us – usually cross through Zimbabwe, not Zambia, but more on that in a later post.) Extremely reluctant to walk or find a car back to Kasane to find an ATM, we opened our safety travel belts and dumped out our cash. Luckily, for us at least, Zimbabwe is so unbelievably unstable financially that they will accept basically any form of currency at all so long as it is not their own. Using this to our advantage we were able to compile all of our Botswanan Pula, South African Rand, and good ol’ US Dollars into a pot large enough that the three of us could each squeeze by with a single entry visa into Zimbabwe. Not so bad, we just had to stay in Zambia once we left Zimbabwe and cross into Mozambique from there. Our financial situation had effectively made a significant itinerary decision for us, and with plans as roughly drawn as ours, as we left the border we could look back on our poor monetary preparation as a boon.

The first non-taxi-driving Zimbabwean beyond the border to speak to us offered to make us trillionnaires. A few years ago the country experienced one of the most extraordinary spells of hyperinflation anyone has ever seen, and is trying to phase out their old currency. “Street boys” go to bank back doors to get wads of the old worthless bills and try to, illegally, sell them to tourists who think they are legal tender or who think it is hilarious to have a 100 trillion dollar bill as a souvenir. After this particular street boy followed us a good 50 feet (a relatively short distance for a Zimbabwean street boy) the second and third locals we met said this, “We are the Zimbabwe Tourism Police. It is our job to keep you safe. Where are you going? We will escort you.” We told them the name of the local hostel, “Shoestrings”, and they strutted a few yards in front of us for the short walk to the gates.

A digression: Zimbabwe is a poor country, with a whole host of things that make life difficult to endure (One big one is a corrupt government. When we asked locals what they did for independence day, which we learned was “celebrated” a few days prior to our arrival, we got mostly head-shakes and grimaces in response). The town of Victoria Falls is the tourist town, where foreigners come to spend their comparatively enormous incomes, and street vendors, craft makers, and beggars are fairly relentless when they see you passing by. I patronized the country. I paid to enter, I rode in taxis, I paid the Victoria Falls Park entry fee, I paid for a few nights stay in a hostel, I utilized the transport “system” to visit the Great Zimbabwe Ruins in the heart of the country, I spent time in an internet café, and I bought food at the supermarket. As heartbreaking and tragic as it is, I simply could not be dropping the little money I did have (which admittedly is far more than the beggars had) into the tin-can or outstretched hand of every adult or child that demanded it, and I could refuse with a relatively clear conscience because my tourist dollars were contributing to many salaries in diverse economic areas. What at first is exciting and humorous (billion and trillion dollar notes!) or dispassionately interesting (is this guy really willing to trade me art for my socks or is he just trying to get his foot in the door in this bargain?) quickly becomes trying and by the end of just three days was, for me, almost unbearable. The beggars and vendors obviously get enough from the tourists to survive because they are on the streets every day. But how much economic disparity justifies training toddlers to recognize and chase after white people with cans parroting evidently rehearsed requests in English, or following someone who has politely and clearly said “No” half a mile, or grabbing someone by the arm and demanding that they take your bus and not someone else’s? And is it a form of discrimination to only ask people with white skin for money? After all, black people from all over the world visit the Falls too, and there are Zimbabwean citizens who are capable of giving as well, but in my brief stay I never saw anyone other than white people stopped. The answers that I tentatively came to were, there is a limit when excessive solicitation is rude, even disrespectful, and that while the prejudice ultimately is harmless and largely justified by the evidence (when white people come to Victoria Falls they tend to have more money than the black people that live there) an obvious prejudice does exist. I apologize for the digression.

Another digression: One thing that I love about the WorldTeach Volunteers as a whole is their limitless curiosity and energy. When any two volunteers meet in the same place and time, they will do something. When Kristen, Kyle, and I arrived at Shoestrings Backpackers we dropped our bags and rested for a few hours; it had been a long day. Lounging in the hostel were some other backpackers. Maybe these people will be interesting to talk to, I thought to myself. I hadn’t had a chance to find out by the evening, and our group set out to see the Victoria Falls full moon lunar rainbow. The next day Kristen rode on the back of an elephant on a safari tour, and that afternoon Kyle and I jumped off a bridge overlooking the river dividing Zimbabwe and Zambia. That night we arose to dodge elephants in the darkened streets (we saw several during our stay in the road literally right outside the hostel gate) and catch a 3am bus to reach the Great Zimbabwe Ruins by around 7:30pm (one of our buses failed to reach the top of a hill forcing us to get out and push), and the next day we hiked around, learned about, and took in the Ruins before trekking back to Shoestrings and arriving after midnight. In our intervals of rest at the hostel, I saw this small group of travelers: smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, eat food, watch TV, skim travel books, and play bongo drums. I do not know how long they had been travelling or how long they had been in Zimbabwe or what kind of budget they were working with, although I do find it hard to believe their budget was significantly smaller than ours, but what exactly did this group of people do all day? I was worried I was dealing with prejudices myself, and fortunately we did meet plenty of energetic, engaging, intrepid travelers over the month, but let’s just say there is some reason for the stereotype of the consistently half-baked, half-naked, indolent backpacker. Forgive me, I promise that I am finished with that.

Back to the sequence of events, yes, Kristen rode an elephant and Kyle and I bungee jumped. Before jumping and after seeing the employees suggest that people take off necklaces, I asked if I should remove my watch. “No, that is okay” replied the bungee man, “What is important is your life.” Indeed.

Like skydiving, where the scariest portion occurs after the chute deploys, the worst part of bungee jumping is after the first stretch of the cord. After the initial free-fall, an incredible swan dive during which I just whooped and hollered for a few seconds and in the moment actually expected to just gracefully slice into the water below unharmed as I have done countless times in pool diving wells, your momentum rapidly decreases to zero and then reverses direction. The jerk isn’t comfortable, but it is expected, unlike the seemingly endless series of bounces that follows during which you SPIN THE WHOLE TIME. After completing an unknowable number of full circles while suspended upside down with the sides of the gorge and rushing water swirling uncontrollably around me I said aloud to no one in particular, “I want to go up now.” A man, suspended upright, eventually snags you, and performs what I considered to be a much more daring and treacherous mid-air exchange of bungee clips than ought to be necessary to secure you to him. After Nick (I asked my savior his name) set my feet on a bottom layer of the bridge I gave him what I suspect was only one of the bear-hugs that he receives every 10 minutes for 8 consecutive hours a day. After all that I even managed to seriously conk my head on a bridge beam as I walked back up to the top level. So, with only a few seconds of free-fall and the terrifyingly protracted process of safely returning to your friends, I highly recommend bungee jumping.

Oh! P.S. Street sellers are even on the bridge asking you to buy things right before you jump! Kyle wittily pointed out that he doesn’t often carry change in his pockets before he leaps off bridges.