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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.
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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.
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Day 10
The day of the solar eclipse arrives, and I find myself and Coombi (Basil’s five year old daughter) the only people home when Mike and family arrive to accompany us the the eclipse. My map shows the eclipse happening at 13:16, but I don’t realise this is GMT, and panic Mike and gang into leaving immediately. Basil, Chico, Simon and David arrive home soon after, and we all get into Basil’s 4×4 for the drive to a suitable viewing area. We arrive with plenty of time, despite some erratic driving from Basil, who has no problem treating a single lane road as a dual carriageway, provided there doesn’t appear to be anything coming in the opposite direction.
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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.
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Day 7
Waking up to the sound of dogs barking and general commotion outside, I start wondering what the time is. Gadgets fail me, for I have not a single thing in the room which could tell me the time. I get up anyway, and find eventually (had to resort to looking up the time on my camera) that the time is about 5:45 am. Groan. Have a shower anyway. We leave at around 8am for the factory in Rusape, where this season’s shelling is about to begin. Basil strides around the plant checking the place out, stopping occasionally to talk to the workers in Shona. It’s all I can do just to keep up with him and so I spend the day following him around like a lost puppy. At the plant I feel doubly conspicuous for the fact that I am clearly the only white person in attendance, amoungst a workforce of over a hundred.
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Day 6
This morning we go to Basil’s ‘village’, which is to say the village actually belongs to him. On arrival we attend a midday church service, at which I am conspicuously the only white person in attendance, although no-one else seems to notice. The church is very small, just to service the small community, and the service lasts about half an hour, much of it singing in Shona, while moving from standing to sitting to kneeling. At the end a gong sounds about six times, and the service is over. This type of thing is repeated morning noon and night every day of the week, and I’ve no doubt every member of the village regularly attends. I am to stay overnight here and return to Harare tomorrow evening, after spending the day at the Rusape factory where shelling is to start in the morning for the season’s crop.
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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.
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Day 4
Leaving at 7am again, Basil and I go to his office, via the Lyons office (tea company), to strike a deal. At the office I download my email and find that although the internet connection is not good, I can get on ICQ, which is actually more than I can do at home. I spend the rest of the day at the office, observing proceedures and chatting to Pam and Joyce. At the end of the day Basil gives me a guided tour of the complex, and then we drive home. Dinner is take away pizza while watching “The House on Haunted Hill”.
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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.
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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.