Tagged with: location:Harare

  • Day 54

    Back in Harare, I spend a week gradually shedding skin from my slowly-healing sunburn, finish deploying the new system, and then return to London.

    summary:Back at work
    location:Harare
    ihave:Bribed a Zimbabwean customs officer
    trip:zimbabwe01
    day:54

  • Day 13

    Simon runs a small shop for the community surrounding Basil’s Harare office. Today Simon, David and I go to the local supermarket (significantly less local than you might expect), to get some stock for it, and fill up three big trolleys with consumables. The prices are generally about three or four times lower than the UK, but in some cases the difference is staggering. Cigarettes are over fifty times cheaper – no doubt due to far lower taxes, and natively grown tobacco. Good job I don’t smoke.

  • Day 12

    Apart from more Playstation and TV, highlights of the day include going shopping for some new clothes, which are about three or four times cheaper than in the UK, and CDs, which are not. In the evening I go to the local cinema with Simon and Rosemary (his cousin, Mike’s daughter – keep up, willya?) to see The Exorcist. Although I’m a fairly anti-horror person, as many of my friends will attest, I was quite curious to see this famous film.

  • Day 11

    I wake up late, to find Basil has already left for work. I’m not sure if he intended me to join him but there wasn’t anything I could have usefully done so I’m glad I have remained here. It’s just as well actually as the DHL documents dad sent me on Monday arrive at about 09:30. It’s the security questionnaire I have to complete in order to work for the National Air Traffic Service back home. Question 35: Have you ever been involved in activities intended to overthrow or undermine Parlimentary democracy by political industrial or violent means? Well, I hope not, but I have a few parking tickets if that counts.

  • Days 8-9

    Both Tuesday and Wednesday are fairly uneventful – I spend both days at the Reapers office in Harare talking to various people and creating my plan for the new stock control system. I also contact MWeb to find out about upgrading the internet service to a permenant connection. On Wednesday evening Basil and I have dinner with Basil’s cousin, Mike, at an enormous colonial-style house that probably would have cost several million in the UK but was only about £100,000 for Mike to purchase three months ago.

  • Day 5

    This afternoon I go with Simon and David to the Lion park. This is like a safari park back home, but more wild. The lions were very impressive, walking right past the side of the car, or lounging on the rocks. There were even a family of cubs playing in the undergrowth.

  • Day 3

    What a busy day. I am awake at 6am, and leave with Basil by 7 for his office a short distance away in Harare. Here I am introduced to Pam, his personal assistant, and get to see some photos he has taken of Reaper’s operations over the past few years. With cheques signed and business generally attended to, we depart again for the rural town of Rusape, where Reapers own a petrol filling station. The trip takes about an hour, and when we arrive I am surprised to see attendants at each pump, before realising that self-service stations are simply not present in Zimbabwe. I am introduced to Davina, the station manager who gives me a tour while Basil conducts a meeting. “I hear that you have to fill up the cars yourself in England?!” she observes.

  • Day 2

    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.