Safari Holiday 2012

In April 2011 I went on a very well organized tour of Israel with Oak Hall Expeditions (www.oakhall.co.uk), a Christian holiday company. Browsing through their website this year I discovered that they are reinstating their safari tours of Zimbabwe, previously suspended during the wilderness years( no pun intended). This time the safari tour was facilitated by ACTS of Mt Pleasant, Harare(www.actsoverland.com), also a Christian holiday company. I joined the camping package tour in its entirety from 17 August to 28 August 2012. It took us to Antelope Park, Hwange, Chobe National Park (Botswana)and Victoria Falls. I had been to all the places before except Chobe.

My earliest memories of Antelope Park date back to a school trip. In my days at Fletcher High School I served a stint as secretary of the Wildlife Club and the trip to Antelope Park was the pinnacle of our calendar. It was a very different game park from the sprawl of buildings that it is now. I remember there being only one building, a small stream with no weir and a modest collection of game. It nevertheless still impressed us.

Now there is enough to impress even the fussy. The documentary series Lion Country was filmed at Antelope Park. They have innovative long term lion conservation schemes in progress.  
As by-products of these schemes, guests are able to go walking and even hunting with lions. 
I found a lot more substance in the lion walk  than was apparent from the promotional pictures (www.antelopepark.co.zw).

The lion feeding was certainly not flattering to the image of lions. It left me with less respect for lions. They are noisy, selfish and filthy feeders  
Totally inconsistent with the royal image of the so called king of the jungle.

In addition to wild animals Antelope Park is also home to wild party animals. Our first night there was not the most auspicious start to the tour. There was a loud party not far from our camp site. The music was loud enough to vibrate my chest and carried on till 3:00am! Fortunately this was probably the only significant downside to the Antelope Park experience. The upside more than made up for it though.

Ivory Lodge Campsite in Hwange was tranquil, save for squabbling elephants at a nearby watering hole.   The salient feature of the campsite was that it was accessible to all animals in the Hwange Game Reserve and beyond. In other words there was no perimeter fence. My first experience of similar exposure was in 1999 at Swimuwini Rest Camp in Gonarezhou National Park. I was traveling alone at that time and on one of the nights I was the only person in the whole camp. The worst part was when I needed to run the 60 metre gauntlet to the ablution block in the middle of the night! After that experience I understood why one of the beds in the chalet I was in smelt of bed wetting.

In spite of the benefit of prior experience, last month at Ivory Lodge I was naughty enough to take excess water. So in the small hours of the morning, the inevitable call of nature happened. I agonized over the risk for almost an hour before the urgency overcame my fear. On emerging from the tent, I was pleasantly surprised to discover Ellie relaxing in front of the camp fire chatting to someone !

Now Ellie  has more courage than most. She was an inspiration to her fellow guests. I was one of her groupies who trailed her when she went bungee jumping
  
That photo looks amusing to me. Doesn't it look like her shorts have come off and dropped to her ankles?! I forgot to ask for her autograph but still got a hug.

Hwange Game Reserve in general is stagnating. There is nothing wrong with it but it just hasn't got it anymore, much like a girl I used to know. In contrast, Chobe National Park in Botswana has little going for it yet is mysteriously magnetic and full of vibrancy, much like another girl I used to know. One morning at the Sedudu gate I witnessed the biggest armada of game viewing Land Rovers I have ever seen. There was an intense sense of mission in the air as the queuing Land Rovers revved at the leash. The game drive that followed was fair for a morning drive. 

I have never had too much luck with morning game drives at Chobe or indeed anywhere else. So I looked forward more to the afternoon game viewing on the Chobe River cruise. By late afternoon, the relentless heat drives even reluctant animals to the river for a drink and/or swim. As expected, the cruise turned out to be most rewarding.

At school we had a handful of fellow pupils who were very hard to please. No matter how good the movie was, they always rubbished it saying they had seen better before. On this trip we had a similarly fastidious gentleman. No matter how good the game viewing was, he claimed he had seen better elsewhere. Fortunately it did not seem to spoil other guests' enjoyment too much.

One of the reasons suggested for the success of Chobe resorts is proximity to the Victoria Falls. Curiously Chobe now appears to have superseded Victoria Falls town in popularity, if number of cars in hotel car parks is anything to go by. I went through some of the Victoria Falls hotels and found further signs to corroborate this. Kazungula border post is very busy with day-trippers going to view the Victoria Falls but using Chobe as their springboard. What it means is that there are factors driving traffic away from Victoria Falls town. One of them could be greed. The last time I went to view the Victoria Falls I did not have to pay anything. This time I had to pay and foreigners have to fork out a whopping $30! I think it is a false economy that could be the tip of an iceberg driving away real big money. There is a growing culture of institutionalized extortion that is pervading many areas of Zimbabwean life well beyond holiday resorts. A plethora of unwarranted toll gates and endless spot fines are a case in point.

After the bad aftertaste of extortion had worn away, I went on to find the falls as glorious as ever in spite of the low water season.

In fact the geological features of the gorge are a lot more visible now (PHOTO13)
than they would be at full flood in May.

My previous camping trips had largely been limited to the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe where the biggest wild animal is probably the common duiker. So the idea of sleeping with only a piece of canvas between me and all the carnivores of Hwange Game Reserve was initially cause for apprehension. In hindsight, it was a dimension that enhanced the adventure. I probably would do it again. More importantly, I feel renewed and ready to get back to work tomorrow.

Diamond Jubilee Celebrations

The other week I was honoured with an invitation to celebrations marking Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee.

Walter

Kevin

Walter; Ambassador Bronnert

Deputy Ambassador Cole (now Ambassador Designate for Cuba)

Dirk

As I reflected on the celebrations it was natural to review my direct and indirect interactions with royalty over the years. Growing up in rural Zimbabwe, I had endless fantasies regarding royalty. Two interfaces invoked most of the fantasies. One was the coins in circulation then, they bore Elizabetha Regina. The general circulation of coins in rural areas was not efficient. So a few King George VI coins would crop up every now and then, more than a decade into Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The other interface was stationery at school that was embossed O.H.M.S.
My family’s contact with royalty dates back to the early fifties. We grew up very proud of uncle Pauro

who was in the British South Africa Police(BSAP). In 1953 he had been seconded to the royal guard put together for a royal visit then. That was well before my time but his fame lives on. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother came to Southern Rhodesia in 1953 for a number of engagements including laying the foundation stone of the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland which was founded as a college of the University of London. Even though uncle Pauro was a relatively new police recruit in the BSAP, he made it into the coveted royal guard , much to the envy of his longer-serving colleagues. The BSAP was a highly respected force, with the respect borne of a mixture of awe and fear. Awe because of their impressive discipline and fear because they were sometimes deployed to enforce racially oppressive legislation. In spite of the latter, they still garnered net admiration.
When I subsequently went to study in the UK, I was a tad taken aback to discover that there were anti-royals among the British populace. It certainly eroded some of the royal mystique. To further compound the exposure, a certain round of public spending cuts hit the royal family too. When the cuts were implemented, the British press ran a cartoon of royal footmen going to a fish and chip shop to buy some dinner for the royal family. I vividly remember the cartoon depicting one of the footmen asking the other whether it was the Duke who wanted a gherkin!
The silver lining was that of the two most powerful women in the UK at the time, the Queen had a lot less enemies than the Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. At least nobody ever pasted the Queen’s portrait to the urinal in the Students Union. Now that I am older and battle worn, I have much respect for Margaret Thatcher too. After recently enduring the ordeal of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, I now understand very clearly why she was averse to printing money.
The only royal I have met in person so far is His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, who is also the chancellor of the University of Surrey. I have met him twice, first when I graduated and then five years later when he hosted a reception for University of Surrey alumni at St James’s Palace in London.

My brother Livingstone (second from left) met the Queen in 1986.He was working for Standard Chartered Bank at the time and had been seconded to the bank’s head office in the City of London for a few years. It was then that the Queen came to open the Bank’s new headquarters building in Bishopsgate. The late Lord Barber (the one nearest to the Queen in the photo) was the chairman of Standard Chartered Bank at the time. That alone must have helped land the Queen as guest of honour.

The Queen’s only visit to Zimbabwe so far was in October 1991 when she came for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. I never got an opportunity to meet her because I was a nobody then. I still am!

The years may have eroded some of the mystique of royalty but they still remain special in my book. So I am proud to have been part of the celebrations to commemorate Her Royal Highness Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee.

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