Newsletter 2011

Accountancy still surges through every inch of my being even though I have been out of it for years. Simple decisions like the order of a newsletter leave me agonizing whether to adopt a FIFO(fist in first out) or LIFO(last in first out) approach. Perhaps I should try LIFO for a change. Which reminds me of a funny accountant (yes, funny ones do exist!) who suggested yet another policy called FISH (first in still here).

Talking of fishing, I had the privilege of going fishing on Lake Kariba

on the Zambezi River earlier this week. Ever since I left National Foods Limited, opportunities to go on decent houseboats have been few and far apart. The last time I went on the lake is almost four years ago on this boat

So I really appreciated this week’s trip on a comparable boat.

The fishing was disappointing for December. It is not clear whether it was the fish or skills lacking. However we still had a grand time, not least because there was a good cook on the boat. I was skinny when I embarked

but four days later a boerwors belly was already evident

With more festive flab on the way, I may need an Olympic effort to get back in shape next year.

Last month Gwatamatic hosted an honoured guest. Tim Cole, the deputy ambassador at the British Embassy in Harare came not only to see the Gwatamatic in action but to taste the sadza too. And he survived the experience!

The business continues to recover, albeit slowly. Three years ago it was in a net liability position (the technical definition of insolvency). Fortunately I had structured it as well as my personal life to restrict overheads to an absolute minimum. You can read about my business model at http://www.wipo.int/sme/en/case_studies/algorhythm.html
Now I can not only keep body and soul together, but I even managed a proper holiday this year. What I cannot afford yet is to take a wife. Hopefully it will be possible sometime before I retire. In common with other businesses of a contract nature, the Gwatamatic fortunes follow a feast-or-famine cycle. So far the frequency of famines has been higher than that of feasts.

Murombo haarove chine nguwo (The poverty trap is very hard to get out of.). My finances suffered a major setback when I had serious hassles with the car in October 2011. For a while I thought the Isuzu had finally given up its ghost. It has been quite a survivor in its life and this time was no exception, which is just as well because I really can’t afford to replace it at this stage. Over the years it has survived high speed collisions with a dog as well as a cow. On 11 October I was hurtling excitedly along the new Polokwane bypass

en route from Johannesburg with 800km to go to Harare when there was a loud rattling racket, the whole dashboard lit up and the engine seized. I had cracked the engine block!

The farmer at a nearby farm was very kind to me. He gave me not only a wheelbarrow to cart my baggage

but also the use of his rondavel

while I got myself re-organized. While my car was in the garage having an engine transplant, I ironically had access to much better cars.

So I was bitterly disappointed when it was time to go back to my Isuzu.

While I was carless in South Africa, I had to rely heavily on the new Gautrain.

It was an interesting experience for a number of reasons. Post-independence African governments have generally run their railway systems into the ground. That makes South Africa an illustrious exception. They have bucked the trend and actually built a new railway system. Africa has been waiting for a post-independence success story for more than sixty years! There could be hope at last. The only threat to the Gautrain’s viability I could see is excessive security. Sometimes security personnel seem to outnumber passengers!

The rolling stock on the Gautrain lines is identical to the trains I have used in Sussex in the UK. That put me in mind of some good memories. The main difference is in the train rules. Two of the Gautrain rules caught my eye:
“The use of helmets, hoodies, balaclavas and soiled clothes is not allowed.” I guess it is a fair interpretation to say that soiled clothes without the Balaclava are allowed. So there could be hope for tramps after all.
The other rule that I found interesting goes:
“Eating, drinking or chewing gum is not allowed.” The chewing gum part reminded me of Singapore.
By far the most interesting train rules of all time were found on Rhodesia Railways trains. I clocked a lot of milage on those trains between Salisbury and Gwelo on my way to and from Fletcher High School. The first rule on the list was “Please do not expectorate.” At that stage my English vocabulary was very limited, it was three years before I found out what to expectorate means. So for three years I carried on expectorating with reckless abandon!

Fletcher High School

was one of if not the premier Black school in Rhodesia. In October this year I was honoured to be the guest of honour at the school’s speech and prize-giving ceremony.

Looking at the current pupils

there took me back to the time I arrived at Fletcher at the age of eleven. I was two years younger than the average age in my class and Eddy Mazambani was probably two years older than the average age. So he looked really ancient to me. I never thought I would ever live to be as old as he was. One advantage of being so young was that he never considered me a threat to his dominance. So, unlike the older boys, I was largely spared his Neanderthal territorial savagery. He looked very much like a Neanderthal tear-away too, especially his jaw. So his nick-name was “missing link”. No one was ever killed, so that means he never found out. The current pupils looked so innocent there isn’t likely to be a present day Eddy Mazambani among them. If the pupils’ vibrancy is anything to go by, then there is plenty of hope for Zimbabwe.

However some things never change. The pupils heckled one speaker who used broken English. We were equally cruel in my day! So I had to be extra careful when I delivered the keynote speech later in the proceedings. Fortunately there weren’t too many cobwebs in my public speaking.

A month earlier I had been one of the presenters at the Innovation Summit in Johannesburg.

There was a lot more pressure there because of the high average standard of the speakers.

In September I received my first ever export order for a sadza machine. It was only for a Baby Gwata

but remains nevertheless a major milestone. For that building I had to design an adaptor flange

to couple an electric motor to a gearbox.

It turned out to be the highest precision design I have ever been required to do and it worked first time! The services of a highly skilled fitter and turner certainly helped too.

During the year, the Gwatamatic successfully migrated to a new PLC (programmable logic controller) based control system.

It has made the rigs considerably more robust. The old embedded control system was designed ten years ago when the national electricity grid was more stable. So it became progressively less appropriate as the quality of power on the national grid deteriorated. In contrast, the new PLC based system takes power surges and under-voltages in its stride. Clever these Koreans!

In May I was privileged to be invited to a reception at the British Embassy in Harare to mark the Queen’s official birthday. It also doubled as a farewell for Ambassador and Mrs Mark Canning

who had completed their tour of duty.

For the whole month of April 2011 I was away on holiday. It was the first proper holiday I managed in years. So it had to be special. I settled on a double bill of pilgrimages, to the Science Museum in London as well as to Israel. You can read all about it in a separate blog post below entitled Israel 2011. I also managed to squeeze in a tour of Wales that took me to former business acquaintances and friends Derek and Anne Jones in North Wales

as well as Professor Ian and Jean Wilson in South Wales. Professor Wilson

was my warden at the University of Surrey. For his sins, he also became my microchip procurement agent after he moved to a university in Hong Kong. He managed to find some very obscure microchips for me!
They all really pampered me so I have very good memories of Wales.

At the church in Harare I continued to serve as a commissioner representing our congregation on the council of the Presbytery of Zimbabwe. Sadly it was not an entirely inspiring duty because of administrative difficulties on the Presbytery. At least our congregation remains in good shape, so does my personal spiritual life.

My physical health has been good except for a foot problem that continues to hamper my running. A major contribution to my physical well being has been the arrival in Harare of Fruit and Veg City (a South African franchise).


It has really revolutionized my eating habits. Prior to that we were stuck with miserable shriveled fruit and vegetables and very limited choice.

I wish you all a good Christmas and great memories of the same thereafter.
Finally here are a few Christmas related photos from my Israel trip:
Manger Square in Bethlehem with the Nativity Church in the background.

The fields near Bethlehem, the very ones where an angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds(Luke 2:8-9)

A shepherd in Nazareth Village

Jerusalem

Israel 2011

On my trip to Israel in April 2011, the only instance when I had to use my foot to lift the toilet seat was at the Ein Gedi National Park.

In many parts of the world American tourists are considered to be brash. On closer analysis, it turns out to be just sublime confidence misinterpreted by other cultures. Confidence flows from security and security is under-girded by the strength of the money in your pocket, among other things. The United States (US$) dollar may have its ups and downs, but it remains the top currency in the world. More than 70 per cent of the foreign currency reserves in the world’s central banks are in US dollars. Zimbabwe adopted the United States dollar as the main “national” currency two years ago as a way out of horrendous hyperinflation. Personally, I believe that is the best thing that ever happened to Zimbabwe since sliced bread. While we were going through the hyperinflation, I never imagined anything good could come out of it. We can now travel abroad with confidence. We now have Visa cards that work everywhere. Most importantly, incentive to work has not only been reinstated, but enhanced. There are still a few administrative problems relating to the adoption of the US$ though. One is the state of the notes

There is still no effective system for replacing soiled notes. In Jerusalem an old gentleman at a bureau de change declined to accept my US$ notes because they were too worn. He summarily declared, “Nobody will take notes like that!” I eventually managed to change them at Vienna Airport but even then, the shop assistant had to consult a colleague first before accepting the notes.

Divisibility is also a problem. Small change is hard to come by in Zimbabwe. So pricing resolution remains coarse. Curiously, the monetary authorities in Zimbabwe are taking long to solve these basic administrative issues. But then again the very fact that we are now using US dollars is an indictment of the central bank (which caused hyperinflation by printing excessive quantities of Zimbabwe dollars). So I would not be surprised if, because of bruised egos, they are deliberately reluctant to help the new dispensation operate smoothly.

There is mounting evidence that anything that the Zimbabwe Government touches dies. The national currency is not the only example. Decomposing carcasses of national railways

buses, airliners, national grid generators and municipal water supply systems are all testimony to this theory. Someone even suggested that the Zimbabwe Government should go into drugs. That should kill drug trafficking once and for all!

In the economic meltdown of three years ago the very state of Zimbabwe nearly died. For a while the country was little more than a zombie with one foot in the grave. Miraculously we did not go over the precipice. We survived, but only as people escaping through the flames. My business lost more than everything. It ended up in a net liability position. By late last year I had not been able to afford a proper holiday for three years. So I was out of shape. I needed a good break, ideally with a good massage thrown in. I settled on a double bill of pilgrimages, to the Science Museum in London as well as to Israel. Unfortunately neither had massage on offer. Perhaps I should have gone further East for more hedonistic options.

Ever since my school days I have been an eclectic reader of things scientific. There was a time when I could boast that there was no machine whose principle of action I did not know. However with the pace of technological development, there are now plenty of gaps in my knowledge. A trip to the Science Museum was one way of doing something about it. I had been to the Science Museum before. On that first visit, I went with other people and that proved to be a mistake. I was rushed and could not inspect some of the exhibits as thoroughly as I would have wished. Since then, it had been my ambition to go back by myself, with a clear diary and some packed lunch. In April 2011 I realized that dream. I had initially planned to spend a full week in the Science Museum but after three days I had been through most of the stuff that took my fancy. I probably spent a lion’s share of my time on the flight sections of the museum. It was great to see and touch the Apollo 10 capsule (the real thing)

Then the jet aero-engine section was an even bigger feast for me

I consider the Pegasus engine

as fitted on the Harrier jump jet

to be the engine that won the Falklands War. It is the fighter referred to in Brian Hanrahan’s memorable report from HMS Hermes(an aircraft carrier): “I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid, but I counted them all out and I counted them all back.” In a sense, the Harrier was to the Falklands War what the Spitfire was to the Battle of Britain. I have now seen the both the Spitfire and the Harrier. My next aspiration is to see the other major war winner, the Enola Gay.

It was also great to see an Olympus engine of The Concorde fame

It is surprisingly small for what it can do. Maybe size really doesn’t matter after all! On the long-haul leg of my journey to Europe, I flew Air France because they use an Airbus A380 (the double-decker) between Johannesburg and Paris. On that one size is everything. It is the biggest civilian airliner and has the biggest jet engines I have ever seen

It is amazingly quiet for its size. It rides over turbulence in its stride and glides in to land with the confidence and stability of a science fiction movie spaceship. Together with the constellation of Parisian golden neon lights shimmering below, it produced a stunning final approach, second only to my experience of an approach to Port Elizabeth airport ten years ago. The main downside I could find with the huge size is that it takes the A380 almost twice as long to disgorge its passengers relative to other big jets. This in turn translates to longer immigration service queues.

During the development of the A380, one analyst predicted that the pressure to make money would prevail over style and passenger welfare. That has turned out to be a prophetic piece of analysis. All the proposed on-board restaurants and lounges have been squeezed out by endless seas of seats,

at least in steerage. When I found an opportune moment, I wandered to the first class to check that out too. It turned out to be so spacious and luxurious as to verge on profligacy

I admired it for as long as I could without risking a search party. When I grow up I want to travel first class.

It is just as well that I had more time at the Science Museum this year rather than on the first trip in my student days. There is a lot that makes more sense to me now as opposed to then. Two examples are the lathe and the theodolite. In my work I rely on lathes a lot. So I spent an enormous amount of time admiring Roberts lathe from circa 1816

It is a seminal milestone that passed on robustness and accuracy to modern machine tools

Richard Roberts was a prolific inventor noted for his ability to solve mechanical problems, especially in the field of textile machinery.

I don’t use theodolites a lot in my work but Ramsden’s theodolite from 1791 caught my eye. One of the top land surveyors in Zimbabwe is John Reeler. Five years ago he afforded me the privilege of test-driving his collection of theodolites. I still relish the memory to this day. The theodolite is a key tool that buttressed the march of civilization into Africa. In fact the trigonometrical beacons in Zimbabwe

were triangulated all the way from Cape Town, 2500km away. Needless to say the pioneer surveyors had to walk most of that distance, not only looking into the telescopes of their theodolites but also looking out for lions! They did not stop in Zimbabwe either. They took the system as far north as Kenya. It is a remarkably accurate system with a maximum error of only +/- 5 centimetres (which represents the width of the surveyor’s marker pole).

The other pilgrimage took me to Israel also in April 2011. I had been to Israel ten years earlier. I have great memories from that first trip, not least because that’s when I met Lindy

Unfortunately I wasn’t so lucky this time round. I must be losing the edge in my old age. Apart from that, this year’s trip was in many ways better than the first one. The first trip was on a shoestring and that meant walking everywhere. This time I was on a well organized package tour with air-conditioned coaches

and based in decent hotels. Because of better mobility, we covered a lot more places than I managed on the first trip, particularly in the hinterland. In addition to the sites I covered on my first trip, this time we also took in Bethlehem

Nazareth

Meggido

Qumran

Jericho

Korazin

Golan Heights

and the upper reaches of the Jordan River

This newsletter only complements and updates my observations from the first trip attached as an appendix below. If your memory is anything as bad as mine, then you might want to read the appendix first. The appendix can be found about halfway down to the end.

My first trip to Israel was in December 2001, only three months after 9/11. The world travel industry was still depressed. Only those who were brave or reckless flew then. The security situation inside Israel was not great either. So many tourist sites, especially around the Sea of Galilee were underutilized, if not deserted. When I went for a swim in the Dead Sea I almost had the whole sea to myself
This time it was quite crowded!

During my ten days in Israel ten years ago, there were three suicide bomb incidents. This year I found a considerably improved security situation, but sadly at a cost. They have erected a high wall

and invoked pass laws between the Jewish and Palestinian areas. One wonders how they distinguish between Jews and Arabs. They look similar to me.

Ten years ago my Holy Land travels were largely restricted to the Jewish areas, which are generally cosmopolitan. This time we made significant inroads into the Arab areas, with interesting results. The first hotel was in the heart of the Arab part of Jerusalem near the Damascus Gate. We arrived at about 3:00am and it was deceptively quiet. On exiting the hotel later in the morning one nearly tripped over fruit and veggies that vendors laid out on the pavement right outside the hotel entrance

Beyond that there was all the Middle Eastern hustle and bustle reminiscent an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Bethlehem was similar but the hotel we stayed in there was a lot more sheltered from the “railway-station” traffic factor.

The Nativity Church in Bethlehem gets so much tourist traffic

that I doubt if meaningful church services are still possible in there. In contrast, the fields near Bethlehem, the very ones where an angel of the Lord appeared to the shepherds(Luke 2:8-9), still appear as peaceful

Emma you are a better photographer than you look!

We had an excellent tour guide

who took us to places other tours never reach. I never knew King Solomon’s Quarry existed right underneath the Old City

The unassuming entrance belies the scale of this remarkable excavation. Across in David’s City I had no intention of wading through Hezekiah’s Tunnel but somehow he managed to persuade me to do it, and I am glad I did. He also explained, much better than my history teachers, why archeological ruins often present in stratified profiles called tel – much like the layers of a giant Black Forest Gateau

He also pointed out nooks in ancient city gates that made them ideal conference centres

We also discovered nomadic Bedouins who roam the Judean desert, dwelling in caves

or shacks

Hezekiah’s tunnel is a lot longer than I expected, or so it seemed anyway. Maybe because the first half was a nightmare for anyone over six feet tall. The ceiling was a lot higher over the second half

There were 37 of us in the party. As we went through, I whistled my symphony number 1: Amazing Grace. Afterwards I overheard Lisa commenting how mellifluous the whistling was. She did not know who it was, but I did not own up because I was sooo flattered as to be embarrassed. In other fora, my whistling only ever manages to annoy!

One of my early experiences of formalized quality assurance was in geography lessons at Fletcher High School. The colour maps we used for map reading exercises had rows of little coloured squares at the bottom representing the colours of ink used to print the map. During production of each map, that row of squares was the last thing to be printed. So if any of the squares were blank, it implied that some ink supply could have failed during the printing process.

Today I use a similar principle to assess restaurants. Toilets in restaurants, and indeed other establishments, are generally a Cinderella in resource allocations. So if the toilets check out OK, chances are other areas of the restaurant that I haven’t got access to are well maintained too. Similarly, this year Israel checked out very well once again. My first ever trip to Israel was in the year 2001. Their public toilets then were infinitely cleaner than in any other country I have ever been to. They still are. It appears to be their ingrained culture rather than just a flash in the pan (no pun intended). The only place where that culture is still to take hold is at the Ein Gedi National Park ablutions. They need to fire the manager there.

Nazareth turned out to be a sprawling metropolis much bigger than what I expected

On the YMCA site they are reconstructing a village depicting what life could have been like in the time Jesus grew up there

It is a fascinating project with a lot of promise.

Unlike on the first trip, this time I had ideal conditions to savour the sites and sights particularly around Tiberias. On the first trip I had had to walk in the rain along the shores of Galilee all the way from Tabga to Capernaum. By the time I got to Capernaum I was worn out, wet and possibly smelt bad. My veldskoens were soaking wet and took days to dry! This time it was a breeze in more ways than one. Artif, our coach driver was a star, he would switch on the air conditioner in advance of our return to the bus from the sweltering desert heat.

After Israel I went back to London hoping to support my namesake at his wedding. Unfortunately I was not invited, but I was invited to the celebrations to mark the Queen’s official birthday at the British Embassy in Harare in May 2011

I was also treated to royal welcomes by all the friends I met up with in England and Wales. Thank you all for making my holiday memorable. My apologies to those of you I could not meet. The silver lining is that absence should make the heart grow fonder.

I used to suspect the Zimbabwe Passport was a red rag to immigration officers all over the world. Now I am convinced it is. I feel like a nostril when I travel abroad, incessantly picked on. I wouldn’t be surprised if immigration officers are actually trained to specifically sniff out the “dangerous” Zimbabweans. I suppose you can’t blame them too much. During the recent economic meltdown in Zimbabwe we sustained massive emigration. There are now an estimated 4 million Zimbabweans (one third of the population) scattered abroad with a fair proportion of them having melted away as illegal immigrants.

After often trying passport control, duty free shopping offered no consolation. The “Duty Free” shopping industry has lost the plot. On this trip I passed through six international airports and the “duty free” prices in all of them were unbelievably high. Often a lot higher than at Tesco’s! I am told even Dubai Duty Free is no longer great. It appears the only customers duty free shops now get are desperate unwise maidens who fail to complete their shopping before they travel.

Tesco is an unsung miracle of the British shopping experience

In my student days in the UK, Tesco carried on as a poor man’s Sainsburys. Now it is the other way round! In fact Tesco is now almost a Wal Mart. I remember the old Tesco for miserable shriveled fruit and veggies. Now they have extensive chillers stocking crisp mouthwatering asparagus flown in all the way from as far afield as Chile. Must be a herculean task but they still seem to manage it consistently.

I was quite amused to see self-service checkouts at Tesco

They would never work in Zimbabwe! The gap between the haves and the have-nots is sadly just too wide. In fact some supermarkets in Zimbabwe employ security guards

to check on the check-out operators. One company executive even predicated that in time we may need a second layer of security guards to keep an eye on the existing guards. Raymond Ackerman, a South African retail guru, believes that in South Africa at any one time 4% of checkout operators are involved in a fiddle of some sort.

If you can still handle more Israel photos, I expect to upload more onto Facebook (or Farcebook as Jerome would say) shortly. I took more than 1200 photos in Israel alone but the only let-down is that I still couldn’t get a photo of a real life Pharisee. I am sure they still exist. On my next trip I will have to find ways of encouraging them to break cover.

Bye for now,
Will.
APPENDIX
ISRAEL ON A SHOESTRING 2001
Security
Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv is a Fort Knox. On my way in it took me 30 minutes to clear all the security layers. This was just enough to help me miss the last bus into Tel Aviv, thus compelling me to squander my precious US dollars on a taxi. Murombo haarove chine nguwo!

On my way out it took me one and a half hours get through all the security checkpoints. The luggage was X-rayed, metal detected and then physically inspected item by item. The camera was opened. The only problem my film was still in there. So I lost all my photos of The Sea of Galilee. Fortunately I managed to salvage the Dead Sea ones. The owner of the luggage was metal detected, body searched, body caressed and interviewed by at least two officers. Answers to the multiple interviews had to correlate. I was hapless enough to be interviewed by a junior officer who kept running back and forth to consult her supervisor. I felt sorry for the poor girl. Her predicament put me in mind of a boss I once had, he did not know what he wanted but he certainly knew what he did not want.

It looks like they are still adding more layers to the security checks. In a back room where one of the luggage inspections was done, I saw an array of new detection machines awaiting commissioning. They appeared to be hybrids between a mass spectrometer and a chromatography machine, presumably to “sniff” explosives.

The security checks did try me but at the end of it all I was left more reassured than annoyed.

Security is a big industry in Israel, so big the regular full time personnel are not enough, hence the need for national service. On leaving school the guys do three years national service while the girls do two. Thereafter they are a reserve on standby. They must be a very disciplined lot to entrust nineteen-year olds with M6 rifles. If I had been given a rifle at nineteen I probably would have used it to settle a love rivalry!
They carry the rifles everywhere (Nehemiah 4:17) even in restaurants, with interesting results sometimes. One day I watched this guy collect coffee from a servery. He swayed and the tip of his rifle knocked a salt-cellar onto the floor, shattering it. He was the sullen Clint Eastwood type and did not even bother clearing the mess.

Sometimes it felt like I was the only one without a weapon.

During my stay in Israel, three suicide bombs went off in Jerusalem. Two of them in Ben Yehuda Street. Earlier the same evening I had been sitting in a coffee shop very close to the site of the explosions.
The risk of injury was very real indeed. So it was very important to wear clean underwear everyday.

Accommodation
With an exchange rate of Z$315 to the US$, I was left with little choice but to live modestly. That meant youth hostelling. As it turned out the youth hostels were quite larny. The last time I went youth hostelling was in my student days in the eighties. The general trend then was that the European youth hostels got better as one proceeded up North, with Sweden boasting the best. Israel bucks this trend. Her hostels are better than anything I ever saw in Northern Europe. For me this shattered the myth that Jews are miserly.

I stayed in four different hostels in Israel. The standard of all of them was very high but the Yitzak Rabin Youth Hostel in Jerusalem deserves special mention

The rooms are air -conditioned with en suite bathrooms and eight channels of television. The tourism industry in Israel is quite depressed at the moment so I hardly had to share the rooms. So the name hostel was really academic. All this for US$14 a night with breakfast thrown in was great value.
In the foyer there was an internet machine which could only be operated with credit cards. It left me wondering how many youths have VISA cards.


Communications
I could not afford the regular tours so I had to arrange my own using the public transport system. The public transport system in the whole of Israel is like a breath of fresh air in more ways than one. The buses are air conditioned, there are plenty of them and they run on time. I have often heard transport economists in Zimbabwe say that the population of Zimbabwe is too low to justify good public transport infrastructure. Well Israel has done it with a population less than half that of Zim.
With such a good bus network, I was surprised to see Kombis(pirate minibus taxis)

in Jerusalem. The drivers seem just as aggressive and temperamental as their Zimbabwean counterparts. They must have gone to the same driving school.
While most minibuses in Zimbabwe are Toyotas, I found in Jerusalem they are almost exclusively Ford Transits. This brought back great memories. The Ford Transit holds a special place in my heart. In my student days, the Students Union had a couple of Ford Transits which were used for among other things Cross Country Club tours and trips to Hammersmith Odeon. Sadly the modern day Transit does not look anywhere near as robust as the hardy eighties models.

The cell phone base stations in Israel are very untidy, with wires visible all over the place. Net One could teach them a thing or two in this area. However their signal strength and coverage is very good. It is four bars virtually everywhere even in deep valleys.
I am told there are no telecommunications links between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Israel is not even listed on on-board telephone directory on Emirates Airways planes. So I found it quite amusing that when I was on Masada I received two telephone calls from home via the Jordanian network JOR77.


Food
I found Israeli food a lot more spicy than I expected. For some reason I had forgotten that Israel is part of the Orient. Some of the spices were so strong my clothes ended up smelling of them. If I could smell my own clothes I hate to think what it must have been like for those around me.
The alien smell of spices was even more overpowering in street markets called suks.

The Kosher requirement does limit choices especially at breakfast. The silver lining is that the typical breakfast is very healthy with lots of vegetables and fruit. The main protein components are eggs and cheese. Yellow cheese is surprisingly rare. The commonest cheese is a white cottagy cheese which by itself is rather plain but a lot more fun when mixed with olive oil. The only problem is that the mixture does not look great. It looks like an ointment mingled with juices from a wound. Every meal seems to come with olives. I really enjoyed my olives but the only challenge was how to spit the pips with dignity especially when sitting opposite a pretty girl.

If there is such a thing as a national dish in Israel it has got to be the felafel, a pitta bread filled with fried cow pea balls, chips and many spicy unidentified fossils. You can smell a felafel joint from miles away.

In Tiberias I saw fish that are a spitting image of Kariba Bream, apparently caught in the Sea of Galilee. I also had the privilege of watching fishermen set off on overnight fishing expeditions at sunset. Their boats are probably the same design from the time of Jesus except for the roaring outboards.

Christian Heritage
The prime reason I went to Israel was to explore the cradle of my Christian heritage. Among my objectives was to walk where Jesus walked and to establish what it is that made Israel fit for God’s Chosen People. I achieved the former very well particularly on the Mount of Olives and on the seafront in Galilee as well as on the Mount of the Beatitudes. The latter was however a bit more tricky. Israel is a highly developed modern state but when one peels off the modern infrastructure and archeological/historical wealth one struggles to see even vestiges of attributes that would have qualified the country to be The Promised Land.
The weather is too dry and they had had at least three successive years of drought when I went. Much of the landscape is desolate

Not much has been found by way of mineral wealth. The landscape is beautiful alright but even in my limited travels I have seen many more beautiful places.

The fact remains though that it is The Promised Land. Maybe its attraction was transient, say its strategic location between the key ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. If not then there is bound to be dimensions to the Land that I could not pick up on my fleeting visit.

Fortunately I did not allow this unanswered question to get in the way of my enjoyment. I find the Bible much more readable now that I can visualize some of the places. My trip certainly put into context some of the key Bible stories. Even though the food was alien and the language different, I still identified with the Christian heritage and even felt a sense of belonging. I was however disappointed to note that many fine Christian churches had very few pews, some as few as twelve. I got the impression they might be geared more for tourism than actual worship. Clearly a lot of effort went into creating the grandeur of arches and stained glass windows. Seating space seems to be the Cinderella. A notable exception is the King of Kings Assembly fellowship that meets at the 600-seat YMCA auditorium in Jerusalem. It is a vibrant church but on the day I went the mood was sombre in memory of the victims of suicide bombing in Jerusalem the night before. This church is a must for any Christian worth his salt.


History
As I went along I had some interesting pickings of Jewish history which did not necessarily have direct Christian relevance. One was the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. As I waited for the guide, I went round the gardens and saw a tree planted in memory of Oskar & Emilie Schindler of the movie Schindler’s List, remember? What I cannot remember is whether Emilie was the lady in that lovemaking scene in the movie. I hope it was! Please let me know if you remember.
Talking of Schindler’s List, I could not help noticing that in Jerusalem Central Bus Station there is an elevator called Schindler’s lift.

I have often considered myself impervious to emotional stimuli but some of the exhibits in The Holocaust Museum did disgust me, especially the cyanogenic crystals used in gas chambers. They were securely packaged in large tins similar to those ones used for catering size orange concentrate. This implied that there was a factory somewhere manned by competent intelligent engineers churning this stuff out. It left me wondering if there is anything we are doing today which will equally disgust future generations.

Another historical monument I found interesting was the Masada fortress. It was the Jews’ last stronghold against Roman invasion. When the fortress eventually fell to the Romans, the warriors and their families committed suicide.
They are considered heroes in some circles today but I am afraid in my book suicide and heroism are mutually exclusive terms.


Architecture
More than 99% of buildings in Jerusalem have got the Jerusalem Stone finish. It looks good and the new buildings blend in with the old ones but it soon gets monotonous. By now there must be a very big hole wherever the Jerusalem Stone is mined!

The stone on very old buildings is still in good nick and clean, which means pollution control is very good. The only eyesore on the older buildings is telecom/electrical cables and solar water heater reticulation. When it comes to routing cables the Israelis are not too gifted. Even for street level power distribution they use untidy massive pylons with hideous transformers dangling

I don’t know if they have heard of centralized substations.

Economy
The tourism industry of Israel is in the doldrums much like Zimbabwe. In spite of that all visible indicators give the impression of a flourishing economy. The average age of vehicles is low and there is a lot of building activity. In Tel Aviv I counted five builders’ cranes visible from one spot. Perhaps their high technology industry is managing to hold the fort. In addition to world-renowned irrigation and water treatment technology, Israel has a thriving technology sector. I saw respectable home grown brands of consumer appliances and even some unique gadgets such as this corn flakes dispenser with a pump at the bottom.

The money changers Jesus threw out of the temple(Matthew 21:12) did not retreat very far. They are still alive and kicking at the gates of The Old City. They have been reproducing over the years and now there are lots of them. They still call themselves Money Changers too!

Physical geography
The desert in Israel is rocky and not sandy as I expected. Even the beaches on the Dead Sea are rocky, which poses certain hazards. As I went into the water the lifeguard shouted, “Look out for the salt.” Considering how much salt there is in the waters of the Dead Sea, the advice did not make a lot of sense so I just let it ride. It only made sense when on my way out I cut my foot on salt crystals growing on a rock. It is sore to cut one’s foot but even more so in a saturated salt solution. The consolation was that there wasn’t much chance of the cut going septic.

Contrary to my expectations, the water of the Dead Sea is not viscous. It looks just like normal water but even I floated. So I don’t worry about my weight anymore.

The journey from Jerusalem down to the Rift Valley is reminiscent of a drive from Birchenough to the Lowveld but even more dramatic. It is an inexorable descent without ever reaching the bottom of the trough.

You get to see some interesting rock formations on road cuttings

Some areas of nonconformity suggest oil bearing formations, yet there is no oil in Israel. I really missed a geologist to explain some of the formations. The people I asked just bulldusted their way out.


General

Cyprus Airways staff were just as laid back as Air Zim staff! They still got the work done but there was something missing. I could not put my finger on it. I could have told you a bit more of my opinion but now I cant because my brother was appointed chairman of Air Zim this week. All I can say is that he has got some work to do.

On the Johannesburg-Dubai leg I was privileged to fly on a Boeing 777. It is a truly delightful machine. Even though the auxiliary engine failed, it still did not take away from the charisma. Among other accolades it boasts the world’s biggest engines. There was a bin Laden look-alike on this flight. He kept walking up and down the aisle, presumably doing those anti-embolism exercises. We got to our destination safely, so he must have been innocent or changed his mind.

In Dubai I found true duty free shops at last. Relative to Dubai all other duty free places I have been to are a right waste of time, they are just sharks masquerading in duty free clothing. It was like discovering true love after a lifetime of problematic relationships.

Conclusion
I am glad I went on the pilgrimage to Israel. I was spiritually inspired. I look forward to reading the Bible in new light. The experience placed many Bible events into context. I also feel physically rested. I hope I will get an opening to return sometime, this time off the beaten track and more into the hinterland.