(This is part of an series of stories about my first visit to Zimbabwe or Africa in general. All the stories are true and based on my own experiences. They are also part of my one-man theatre production, Coming to Zimbabwe which was published in Germany, and has toured both the USA and parts of south-eastern Africa.)
After my day in Imire Game Preserve, my new job began today. (You can find that story Imire Safari Ranch – Zimbabwe 2012 in the section African Travels in the right side menu) I woke up the next morning and met my boss, Gavin Peter. We loaded into his incredible small car and we headed out toward the small city of Gweru located in the Midlands section of Zimbabwe. This drive should have taken about 3 hours but the engine was so small and tired in Gavin’s car, we were in for a 5 hour ride.
We headed out of Harare on the A5 Highway or Gweru-Harare Road. This was really the first time that I was going to see the real countryside of Zimbabwe. Of course on my journey to Imire, I had seen country. But that was in such a rush and I was so on edge from Kathy’s driving, that I did not pay much attention to the scenery.
Now because the slow nature of our drive through the mountains toward Gweru, I had time to take in the countryside of this lovely country. Yet I could also see that field after field and farm after farm nothing was growing. There were no crops in the fields that I passed on this major road through the heartland of Zimbabwe.
Whether is was the outcome of Mugabe’s land reforms or for some other reason, it was plain to see that this part of the economy was hurting. Zimbabwe during the Ian Smith years, during the civil war for independence, and even during Mugabe’s first years in power, was known as “the bread basket of Africa”. The farms were so successful and abundant and Zimbabwe grew so much food, that it exported it surplus food stuffs to countries all around Africa. Now they had to import food items just to be able to eat.
As we drove south, we passed through the village of Chegutu and the small city of Kadoma. We drove through beautiful mountain areas, over rivers and across savannas where the sky seem to stretch on forever. After driving for a couple of hours, we stopped in Kwekwe to stretch our legs and get some coffee.
Kwekwe is a city of about 100,000+ people located right in the center of the country. At one time, it was a very lovely little town, but it is very poor there now. It is located in one of the most mineral rich areas of the country and there should be jobs galore, but unemployment in the area is about 80% or more. The town has become very dusty and dirty, the gutters are filled with trash and there are 100’s of men standing around with no work and nothing really to do.
As we pulled into this dusty, rundown town and went around the roundabout, I was wondering where we were going to stop. We passed the tiny but beautiful mosque on the right as we entered Kwekwe. About 3 blocks passed that on the same side of the road, we stopped in front of this seemingly brand new building made of chrome and glass. It was like an illusion in the middle of this shabby town. The place was buzzing as people came and went from the double glass doors.
As we walked inside, Gavin told me the place was called Ripperz and that is was a fairly new place. The place seemed to be a combination of a restaurant, bakery and food market. Gavin and I walked in and went over to a coffee bar. And to be honest, I was surprised at the thought of a coffee bar in a worn-out city in the middle of a 3rd world country. As I was to learn my misinformed first world impressions of Zimbabwe were going to be radically altered in the next month in this surprising and lovely country.
As I sat down at the bar, I realized that I was the only white in the very large shopping area. For just a moment, I experienced a momentary disquieting feeling that I was truly alone in this country. I did not know one person in Zimbabwe or this part of Africa. Further, that I was truly a minority in this country. You can read tons of information about a place and hope you understand it on an intellectual level, but the feelings that you get on the ground in a place are what truly define your experience and attitudes.
Not that I was in fear for my safety because of my race; on the contrary, everyone so far in Zim had been very friendly and helpful. Yet, at that moment, I realized how different I was from anyone in the room. I had only experienced that feeling once before while standing at a bar in a nightclub in Mazatlan, Mexico trying to get a drink, and not even the bartender would speak to me because I was the only Angelo there. Both of these moments were profound for me, and reminded me that I was “a stranger in a strange land.” That I had so much to learn about this country, her people and her culture, and that was on me to do.
Many times as I have traveled in the world, I have found Americans who are visiting a place and act like it is still the United States. They forget that they are visiting a new place, yet they expect the people there to treat them like they are still in the USA. As the visitor, you are the one that needs to adapt to the new place, because the new place is not going to adapt to you. That has always been my guiding principle when traveling. As Mark Twain once said, “…traveling doesn’t lead to a new destination, but to a new way of seeing things.”
After ordering some excellent Zimbabwe coffee, one of the owners, who also happened to white came from the back and walk over to us. He was from Canada and had settled in Kwekwe to work the farm that his family had owned there. They later had lost it to the Mugabe land reforms which consisted of the government taking legally owned land away from the professional white farmers and giving it to black citizens of the country. Many of whom did not know how to farm or did not want to work that hard or were not capable of running those large farming concerns, so the farms began to fail in record numbers and the food production bottomed out for Zimbabwe.
I, in no way, disapprove of the idea of the original people of a country that had been colonized by white Europeans for 300 years getting their own land back. Yet, to remove at gun point and in several cases by death at the hands of gangs of Mugabe’s thugs, farmers who had worked that land for at least 3 to 4 generations, who provided jobs and about one quarter of Zim’s GNP seems wrong on any scale.
Plus the farmers did not do themselves any favors when they made the mistake of thinking that Mugabe was running a democracy. They provided funding to the rural party (MDC) in government elections against Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and thus provoked Mugabe to take actions against them. This whole misadventure that resulted in poor food production, lost jobs, ruined communities and families, and in many cases death could have been done better and gotten the same results without the ruin and bloodshed.
Mugabe took an ax to a situation that needed delicacy and the resulting decline in food production and lost economy is proof of its failure.
We are soon joined by the owner’s partner, whose story was much the same. His family owned a large farming operation and when Mugabe’s thugs showed up, they were given two hours to get off the land. I believe he was from Greece. In my one-man show, I have the second owner be from Greece but to be honest I do not remember. He just had a very strong accent. The following conversation is what truly happened at the moment of our introduction:
Gavin – (to the Greek owner) “This is James from Hollywood, CA.”
Owner – (to me) “You are from Hollywood?”
Me – “Yes, I am.”
Owner – “Do you know any famous people?”
Me – “Yes, I know some famous people.”
Owner – “Do you know Tom Cruise?”
Me – “No, I don’t know Tom Cruise.”
Owner – “You don’t know Tom Cruise?”
Me – “No I don’t. Never had the pleasure.”
Owner – “I love Tom Cruise. I have seen all of his movies. Risky Business, Top Gun, Rain Man…” (at this point the Greek owner continued to name several more Tom Cruise movies and talked about how much he liked the movies and Tom Cruise himself.)
I should also point out that during this entire time, the owner never asked why an American was sitting in his store, what I was doing in Zimbabwe or how I liked the county. It was Tom Cruise 24/7 with this guy, or so it seemed. Gavin realized that the conversation was going south and asked for “take away” coffee for us, and it was provided. We left and had a good long laugh about Tom Cruise and the Greek owner.
Yet, two days later, as we returned toward Harare, we stopped again at Ripperz for coffee. As I walked through the front door, the Greek owner who was working the front counter greeted me with, “Hey, Tom Cruise.”
I would pass through Kwekwe about 8 to 10 more times over the next 4 weeks as I traveled around the country with Gavin. Plus Gary Killilea, the Irish consulate and his family as they took me around Zimbabwe to places like Great Zimbabwe, Victoria Falls, and Matopos National Park. I would stop in Kwekwe as a mid-point for several of these journeys, and every time I would eat and shop at Ripperz. Every time I walked through the doors, the Greek owner would greet me with “Hey, Tom Cruise.”
Now in my one man show, I make this part a comedy high point of the show and enlarge the number of people who began to call me “Tom Cruise” including great numbers of people on the street. Yet in truth by my third visit, a couple of employees had started to refer to me as “Tom Cruise”. Several times, I was greeted outside the store by customers as “Tom Cruise”. The topper was the day as I walked down the main street in Kwekwe with Gary’s son to the local internet cafe when a perfect African stranger, someone that I had never seen before exclaimed, “Oh you are the Tom Cruise guy.” Gary’s son was knocked out that I was recognized walking down a street in a city 10,000 miles from my home in Los Angeles.
So that was my 15 minutes of African fame in a small city in the middle of Zimbabwe – Kwekwe. For a month, I was known as “Tom Cruise of Kwekwe”.
About the Author –
James Carey is an avid world traveler, blogger, writer and award-winning theater and film director based in Atlanta GA. He writes about travel worldwide, entertainment, and lifestyles. You can find out more about him at his personal websites listed below.
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