Andrew Betts

Getting off the plane is quite a relief, but I’m not looking forward to immigration and customs. The queue for the immigration desk lasts about 30 minutes, and when I get there the official says simply “You need to put address here”, pointing to the place on the form where Basil’s address should go. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea where he lives. The official retained my passport while I went to find Basil and get his address. This achieved, I faced an agonising wait for my baggage.

I finally escaped, and found myself being driven into Harare in Basil’s 4x4. We talk about the general election in the UK, intermittently interrupted by Basil’s mobile phone, which causes him to frequently remove his hands from the wheel for worryingly long periods of time.

Some 20 minutes later we arrive at his house, and I’m immediately set upon by the dogs. I go to help remove my suitcase from the boot but find a staff member has already taken care of it. I think it may take some time for me to get used to having a domestic staff around.

My room is that belonging to Basil’s daughter, who is currently away studying at University in Australia. Reminds me of my university hall of residence - just the bare essentials, except, to my horror, no power sockets. Not one. At home my room has at least 15 wall sockets, and most of the time I have something plugged into all of them. Now as I write this journal watching the battery power in my laptop slowly dwindle away, I think I might just have to rough it some, in the electronic sense at least.

No point wasting all of the power I’ve got left, so I’m off to make some dogs like me. Can’t be hard, surely.

summary

location

trip

day:2