I went for a long run this morning since it was nice and cool. I did a better job than my first run in Avondale and I only had to stop for directions once since I didn’t do my typical route. I ended up running past the area where I got lost the first time and if I had known to keep going straight then instead of turning like I did, the run would have been much shorter. Oh well, that’s how you learn.

After breakfast I went with Vee and one of her friends to a craft fair sponsored by the German society in Harare. I didn’t know that there were many Germans in Zimbabwe, but it makes sense since it’s quite close to Namibia which was a German colony at one point.

The fair was pretty similar to what you would see in the States around Christmas time: there were tables selling handmade soaps, jewelry, knitted and crocheted things, etc. Nothing was exactly German and only some of the stuff was truly African but I thought it was interesting to walk around and see what creative things people are making. Vee and her friend were a bit disappointed in the selection and lack of German things; I guess past years have been better in those regards.

I bought a pair of shoes which are super cute. They are a local brand (made in Zimbabwe) but have been cut up and recovered with fabric and fancy stitching. The woman making them was really nice and she had all sorts of colors and sizes. I also learned that the shoe sizing is very different here. In the US I wear a 9 or 9.5, but here I wear a 6! And there are no half sizes. It made me feel like I have small feet. And now I don’t feel so bad when Salome brags about her size 5 feet (which I think are really a six because her shoes are too small for her).

We spent about an hour browsing but then came to the end and headed back.

I didn’t have much going on for the rest of the day so I worked on some presentations then did some reading. By that time it started raining and I didn’t feel like getting wet so I spent the remainder of the day indoors.

After the cool rains of last weekend, it is hot again! It’s been getting warmer since Wednesday, but today has been the worst. It hit 33 degrees this afternoon (that’s 92 degrees F) and it was miserable. Even with all of the office windows open and the fan going I felt like I was melting. I am so glad I bought these new dresses because I’m wearing them twice a week.

The project is starting to wind down a bit for the year because everyone goes on holiday on December 16. Even though that’s two weeks away, the lab doesn’t want to take in any more samples because no one will be around to finish processing them in a few weeks. John was a bit upset about that when we spoke to him on Skype, but I kind of like it because I have enough other things to do in my remaining two weeks here.

After work I was reading in my living room, trying to not be so hot, when I heard a call from outside: it was Vee inviting me down for a glass of wine with her and Gabriel, the woman who lives directly below me and who returned from a holiday in the US just yesterday. I went down and sat at the picnic table under the tree for the first time and nearly felt cool. The evenings are quite pleasant here after being so hot during the day and it’s really nice to sit outside in a sleeveless dress at 8 pm and not be freezing. That’s something I can never do in Berkeley.

It was really pleasant to sit and chat with these two older women. They gave me a lot of advice on my upcoming trip to Victoria Falls, which was great. It’s about 1000 times better here than at the other place I was staying!

Eventually we all got hungry for dinner and went our separate ways but I got invited to a craft fair on Saturday morning with Vee so at least I have one thing to do this weekend.

My life has gotten rather boring here and I’ll spare you the details of work, which of late has mostly involved sitting at an uncomfortable desk and working on an Access database or entering data all day. Even my evenings are not exciting: I walk home from work, read, eat leftovers for dinner, perhaps watch a movie or read some more and go to bed around 11. Nothing interesting happened on Wednesday, so I’ll leave that out entirely.

Jake left to go back to Colorado today so now I’ll have even less to do in the evenings since I don’t have anyone to hang out with.

Tonight, however, I did manage to go to a play since our Skype call with John was postponed until Friday morning. A local theater group (which I think is associated with a school) opened a new play, “Robinson Crusoe” this evening at a theater not far from my house. Since the show started at 6:30 pm, I was able to walk there before it got dark which was great.

Since it was opening night all tickets were half price ($6 instead of $12) and pensioners (retirees) got in for free. The pensioners came by the busload, literally! There were several shuttle buses from what I assume were retirement homes in the parking lot. I think most of the audience was either above 65 years old or related to one of the case members; and then there was me.

The play was advertised as a pantomime and at first I thought that meant no talking and I was a bit skeptical at first. However, by “pantomime” I think they really mean “cabaret” or “vaudeville” because there was definitely talking, and singing, and dancing. A number of the actors were adults but there were some children as well. The children didn’t have many lines, but they sang some songs and danced around. Robinson Crusoe’s mother was played by a man which was quite funny and for the most part the actors were good. You could tell it was opening night, because there was some stumbling over lines and such but nothing awful.

And there was a lot of audience interaction. Every time Blackbeard the pirate came on stage people booed and at one point some kids were brought up on stage to sing a song. At the end they passed out candy to everyone and had a sing along. It was mostly meant for kids and families, but it was really cute and had a happy ending. It was certainly worth $6 and was a great value for two hours of entertainment.

Nothing of note happened on Monday so I won’t even bother with a separate entry.

On Tuesday, I invited several co-workers and Jake over for dinner at my apartment. Since Salome lives far south of town and I live on the north side, she came home with me and hung out while I cooked. Her sister, Ruthie, joined us a bit later and it was nice to have some company.

I made lentil stew with plenty of vegetables, homemade bread, salad and apple crisp with ice cream for dessert. I made everything myself except for the ice cream.

In addition to Salome and Ruthie, Jake and Lucy came over and we were a merry party of 5. None of the Zimbabweans had ever had lentils before and don’t often eat that many vegetables in one meal. I think they were sincere when they said they liked it, but they may have been polite since the meal was quite out of their normal eating habits. Zimbabweans typically eat a lot of meat and the girls were surprised that they could feel so full without beef or chicken in a meal!

Over dinner we discussed many things, but one topic of conversation was weddings because Lucy announced that she just became engaged. Zimbabwe is a bit behind the times in this regard because when a young couple wants to get married, the bridegroom has to pay the bride’s father (in cash) and it can be quite a lot! There’s a big ceremony involved before the actual wedding, which is organized by the bride’s aunt and the groom’s uncle or male relative. The man has to pay the bride’s father some money to enter the bride’s house to negotiate a price. Then he sits on the floor and his family pays more money for permission to sit on the couch. Then the man pays money so he can sit on the couch. Then the guy presents food to the bride’s mother so she can prepare a meal. There’s a lot of back and forth and at some point the bride comes out to confirm that the guy is the one she wants to marry. Eventually a price is settled on, which always includes some cows for the bride’s mother even if they live in the city. I don’t know all the details but it seems quite complicated. Lucy said she won’t know until afterward how much her boyfriend paid, but she was estimating it could be $10,000 USD!!

After the ceremony they are officially betrothed. And then comes the white wedding, which should be within six months of the betrothal. The wedding is also expensive because all family members, no matter how distantly related, are invited and most people come. The guests do not bring gifts, but might expect food or housing to be provided. I didn’t quite get all of the details since it was beyond my range of experience.

People used to marry quite young here but that is changing. Salome and Lucy think that the average age of a bride is now in her mid to late 20s but a woman is still expected to have a child before her one year wedding anniversary. Luckily, the average number of children is also going down. A generation ago it was not uncommon to see a family with 8 children, but now it’s two or three.

A woman is still expected to do all the work around the house: cooking, cleaning, laundry, taking care of children, (or getting the maid to do all of that) on top of working full time if possible. There is certainly no such thing as gender equality in Zimbabwe.

It was really fascinating to learn all of this but I am very glad I was not born here; it’s very hard to be a woman and they surely get the short end of the stick!

Sunday was a very lazy day. It was raining on and off throughout the day which made me feel like staying indoors. I did a lot of reading and even took a short nap in the afternoon, otherwise not much to report.

My next door neighbor (and landlord), Veronique (she’s half French) or Vee for short, has been in South Africa this past week visiting her brother. Vee has two cats, the first ones I’ve seen here. One is quite shy and I haven’t really seen him, but the other, Toby, is quite bold. This past week he’s been coming into my apartment whenever I’m home. Since it’s been hot I’ve been leaving the door open, with the gate locked and Toby can just come in through the bars. But he’s been so desperate for attention that a few times he has climbed in through the kitchen window when the door has been shut! He’s a nice cat and likes to be petted and to sit on laps. Vee says he bites sometimes but we’ve come to an understanding and he hasn’t nipped me yet.

I haven’t seen many cats here but there are a lot of dogs. When I go running in the mornings, I see several people walking their dogs, mostly larger ones, the size of labs or bigger, but a few smaller ones as well.

There are a number of veterinary shops around and in every grocery store there’s half an aisle of pet food. There’s even a frozen pet food section! I guess Coal is not the only one who gets hot breakfast!

This is quite different from Zanzibar where there were no cats at all and few dogs. And the dogs that I saw were very skinny and looked to survive on scraps. Here, animals are well taken care of although I think it’s still hard for them with wild animals and whatnot.

I could tell the moment Vee got back this evening: Toby was sitting near my feet while I watched a movie on my computer and suddenly he was off like a shot and I didn’t see him again all night. Even though I was good company for him, he still knows where he gets his food from!

I went for a nice long run this morning since I didn’t have much going on during the day. It was a great morning after the storm: not too hot or humid and with a bit of breeze. During my run I also tried to locate a specific grocery store, the Kensington Spar (it’s like a Safeway or Kroger) where I could purchase data for my portable internet modem. I found a store that I thought was right and remembered where it was.

After breakfast and a shower, I set off back to the shop to buy the data voucher. When I got there, I enquired about it and the girl at the cash register looked at me like I had two heads: she had no idea what I was talking about. So I asked, “Is this the Kensington Spar?” No, it was the Strobridge Spar.

“Okay, do you know where the Kensington Spar is?”

“No. You can go to Avondale and ask someone there.” Avondale is where I came from. That girl was useless, so I asked another. The response I got was:

“Yes, just get in a taxi and tell them you want to go to the Kensington Spar. They will take you.”

I didn’t bother to try to explain that I actually wanted to walk for the exercise because I knew that would be futile. I left the store and asked a woman in the parking lot. She gave me very specific directions: “Go down this road to the robots and turn left then go to the next set of robots and turn right. It will be right there.”

At least someone seemed to know what I was talking about so I set off. From looking at the map earlier her directions seemed sound so I followed them. After walking for 20 minutes and finding nothing, I asked an older guy walking down the street. He said, “It’s this way” [pointing in the way I had come]. To which I responded, “Isn’t that the Avondale shopping center?”

“Yes, but Avondale is here” [gestures vaguely with his left hand] “and Kensington is here” [gestures vaguely with his right hand]. I wasn’t going to trust some hand waving so I thanked him and continued on my way.

When it was obvious that the woman gave me bad directions, I asked someone else and was pointed back in the way I came. This guy was very specific so I followed his directions and finally found it. In reality the shop was only a 10 minute walk from my place, but with the wrong directions I spent nearly two hours trying to find it!

Luckily they had the data voucher that I needed and my long errand was successful. Later I looked on Google maps and found a sign for “Kensington shopping center” on it so from now on I’ll trust Google a bit more.

It rained some more in the afternoon so I spent some time reading and browsing the internet.

In the evening Jake came over and we went out for a drink at a bar/restaurant that neither of us had been to: Mekka. Mekka is in the Sam Levy village where all the Mickey Mouse cutouts are. They have now decorated all of the trees with Christmas lights, but it’s like a small child did it because all of the strings of lights are different and are just thrown on the trees in any fashion. Some lights blink while others do not; it’s quite the spectacle.

Mekka is on the second floor of the outdoor mall and from the outside you can see blue and red lights shining from within. I was expecting something with low lights and Eastern music, perhaps some chukkas based on the name. However, when we got in I was a bit surprised to see a very modern place with some high tables and chairs and low couches and a lot of open floor space. Then on the walls were pictures and carvings of Mayan Gods and sculptures. And they were playing 80s music! It was amazing.

They have a good selection of drinks, at reasonable prices (alcohol is quite cheap here) and they serve sushi! What a mix of things. Neither of us was very hungry, but we ordered a small sushi platter, just to see what it was like. We ordered the plate that contained: avo sashimi, veggie California roll and “fashion sandwiches”.

What is a fashion sandwich? It is a two bite sized piece that contains two layers of sushi rice around two layers of Nori (seaweed) with some avo or salmon in-between. The sushi wasn’t great but it was awful and actually the fashion sandwiches were the best part and we both wished we had just ordered more of those.

Perhaps the best part of the evening was the people watching. There was such a wide variety of people at the bar that it really blew me away. The rest of Sam Levy village contains almost exclusively white people, but Mekka had whites and blacks and a lot of Indians. Some people were dressed very nicely while others were more casual. A whole group of guys were dressed all in white and we imagined they were a cricket team. A lot of guys have mustaches and they look ridiculous. Overall it was a great evening of chatting and observing and three hours went by very quickly.

On Friday, I met Salome in the office then we headed to Mbare to enroll our final patient for the week. Mbare is one of the closest clinics to the office so the drive time was short but we had to wait for the patient to arrive so the overall amount of time was no less. Everything went smoothly once he arrived though, and after dropping the samples off at the lab, we headed back to the office.

Fridays are a bit tough for me because by then I’ve spent a bit too much time with just Salome and I grow weary of her talking. To avoid saying something that I didn’t mean, I set off by myself at lunch time to go in search of a 60 mL syringe to clean some plastic tubing on our nebulizer. Salome showed me the area where some veterinary supply stories were and was shocked that I would walk all that way (about 20 min) but I firm and I left her to drop off a letter at the public health department in town.

The walk was a great chance to get a bit of fresh air and I had no trouble finding the syringe that I needed. On my way back I stopped that the Zimbabwe tourism authority and got some information about Victoria Falls. It was a great outing and a good time alone.

The rest of the afternoon passed away slowly. I had spent so much of the week developing this database that I was no inspired to stare at my computer screen anymore so I puttered around until 4 pm when everyone goes home.

I walked home again to attempt to find some good bananas but was not successful. I made it home just in time though because about 10 minutes after I walked in the door it started raining. Then the wind came up with thunder and lightning and it stormed for the rest of the evening. I had thought of calling Jake to go out, but it was raining so hard that the thought of leaving the house was not appealing. I had leftover Thanksgiving dinner and spent a nice evening snug inside with my Kindle.

Just another note on a few things I keep forgetting to mention: there’s a seatbelt law in Zimbabwe, but it only applies to people in the front seat. And no babies can sit in the front. However, pretty much no one has child safety seats for their cars. Babies and young children are just held in laps in the back. Car seats are a status symbol for rich people.

There are a lot of pregnant women here and a lot of young children. 40% of the country is under 15 years old and it shows on the streets. Salome told me that women usually get married by their early 20s unless they are well educated and they are expected to get pregnant immediately after the wedding. If a woman has been married for a year without having a child, her husband’s family (mothers and aunts) will start to call her barren!

Most marriages here are informal arrangements that families and friends understand and respect but don’t have a marriage license. A formal marriage is quite expensive with the license, church, guests, etc and most people can’t afford it. Zim is mostly Christian so there not much polygamy, but there is quite a bit of divorce. Households are quite different than in the US: there’s no such thing as the nuclear family here, or at least it’s pretty unusual. Young people will live with their parents until they get married and even after that, there’s often a brother, sister, cousin or parent staying with them as well. Sometimes when we are trying to identify all of the household contacts to screen them for TB it is quite difficult to work out how everyone is related.

Happy Thanksgiving! Obviously, Thanksgiving is an American holiday and not celebrated in Zimbabwe so I went to work today. It was a very boring day, spent entirely in the office, working on database development. Luckily I think I finally finished it, although I still have to test it to make sure all of the tables are related correctly. The chair I have to sit on is basically a cheap kitchen chair and it is not comfortable to sit in for long periods of time. I would stand up and stretch every 30 minutes or so but by the end of the day I really just wanted to leave. And of course the day never seemed to end. Time goes by very slowly when you are constantly looking at your computer clock.

Since it was a nice day and I hadn’t gotten much exercise during the day, I decided to walk home so I could stop at the carts and buy some bananas. Salome was shocked that I was going to walk that far. “You want to walk all the way to Avondale?!?” In reality, it’s about 2 miles and is completely flat with pretty nice sidewalks all of the way. “Yes, I’m going to walk home. It’s not that far.” Salome shook her head at the crazy white girl. Again, people don’t really exercise here or understand the value of a good walk. I sort of feel like Elizabeth Bennet sometimes. 😉

Sadly, the banana stands didn’t have any good looking fruit today so I’ll have to try again tomorrow. Remember: there’s always money in the banana stand!

I had invited Jake over for Thanksgiving dinner since he’s the only American I know here but he had other plans so I was on my own. I baked the stuffing that I made the night before and made butternut squash soup for the main course. I even treated myself to some wine and ice cream for dessert. It wasn’t Thanksgiving at The Alameda house, that’s for sure, but it wasn’t awful. I talked to my parents on Skype which was nice and talked to Jacob as well. I missed everyone a lot and thought about all of the gatherings going on back home.

Wednesdays are the busiest days for us because of the MDR-TB clinic at Wilkins Hospital. The sisters (nurses) there have gotten to know us pretty well and they are great at calling up patients and having them come in to talk to us. It’s awesome for the study because recruitment is going really well, but it’s quite exhausting. We enrolled three patients and one household contact today and talked to two others. We were not prepared for so many people and we actually ran out of questionnaires before we were through. We didn’t want to turn anyone away so while Salome interviewed one woman, I drove her car to the office to get some more questionnaires.

In case I haven’t mentioned, you drive on the opposite side of the road here compare to the US. And most cars are manuals. It wasn’t a big deal since I drove all the time in South Africa but it’s been a while since I’ve driven a manual transmission vehicle and I was a bit nervous about the directions. Luckily it was mid-day and there wasn’t much traffic and Salome was borrowing her cousin’s car which is a small Nissan with power steering (unlike her own truck which is huge and does not have power steering). I had no troubles getting to the office and back and didn’t get lost at all. I only realized half way back that I didn’t actually have my driver’s license on me though. But all was well and I made it safely.

By the time we dropped off the samples at the lab and got back to the office, it was after 3 pm. I checked my e-mail and worked on the database development until 5 pm when we had a Skype call with John. We talked to John for a while and caught him up on our progress (which he’s very happy with so far) then Salome gave me a ride home so I wouldn’t have to walk to the combis in the growing dark.

I went for a run this morning and kept better track of where I was so I didn’t get lost this time. I even found a few people out for exercise as well! Not many people here exercise in general. I think walking far distances is only done by people who can’t afford transport and not many people would ever think about running. But I saw a few people walking their dogs and one lady out for exercise. There are a few hills in the neighborhood which makes it much more interesting to run around. I even found one street where the road ends at the base of a large hill. I was going to turn around when I saw some people walking up it so I decided to check it out. The hill is quite steep (I would compare it to the blocks of Marin above The Circle) and there’s just a dirt path between the tree roots so you really have to watch your step! When I got to the top I saw two guys stretching their legs, having just come up the other side. They gave me very impressed looks as I zoomed away downhill.

Have I mentioned that the roads here are not very good? There are a lot of potholes and you really have to watch out while driving. I roads are far worse than in Michigan! Sometimes when the potholes get too deep, someone fills them with old bricks to level out the road a bit. I’ve never seen that before and wonder how long the bricks last with so many cars running over them.

Nothing really notable happened at work. Since I finished the chili for lunch I made paella for dinner. I’m quite bad at making a reasonable amount of food for one person so I end up with a ton of leftovers whenever I cook. It’s great for lunches but I get a bit tired of the same meal all week.

On Monday morning Salome and I went back to Mbare polyclinic and spoke with the TB nurses there about our study. They were really nice and said they would give us a call when they found anyone fitting our criteria. Then we went back to the office and worked on paperwork stuff for the rest of the morning.

Shortly after lunch, I took a combi to Harare Central Hospital where the core lab is. Beauty and I wanted to finish setting up the assay that we didn’t complete on Friday. It’s sort of strange going back in the lab after not working in one for so long. Even when I managed the BSL3 lab at Berkeley I only did one experiment that whole year and that was a favor for a friend. But this is completely different work since these are patient samples for diagnostics and not lab strains for basic science experiments. The assay comes in a kit so it’s easy enough to set up: you just dissolve some tablets in 5 mL of media (already measured out), then aliquot your sample and the media into the wells of a plate. Then you seal it up and incubate for 5 days. We had a lot of samples so we set up three plates and even with both of us working, it still took nearly two hours to finish.

Beauty and Lucy were both very impressed that I took the combi. They thought that Salome had dropped me off. Since they both have cars, they just drive everywhere and they don’t know the combi routes as well as I do!

Then I told them that I went to the football (soccer) game on Sunday and they were really impressed! They think I am having “great adventures” in Zimbabwe. I guess I was the only white girl at the game, but I wouldn’t have called it an adventure.

Beauty gave me a ride back to the office which was great because I got back just after 4:15 so the doors were still unlocked and I was able to get in and pack up my laptop before heading home. Everyone leaves very promptly at 4:30 and if you are not careful (or if you’re staying late) you can easily get locked out. Also, the secretary locks the bathrooms when she leaves so you have to plan ahead and keep your eye on the clock!

In the evening I was talking to Jacob on Skype when Jake called (what are the chances of having two guys named Jacob call you at once?). On Sunday after the game I had invited Jake over for dinner but he said he was tired so I said he was welcome on Monday since I’d still have some vegetarian chili leftover. I didn’t think he’d take me up on it, but he had a long, hard day at work and was only getting off at 8 pm and remembered my offer. It was nice to have a dinner guest (my first one in my current place!) even if we just had leftovers (although chili is better the next day anyway). We chatted for an hour and half while we ate then he left and I spent the rest of the evening reading.

Here are a few pictures that I took on Saturday while walking around downtown.

Harare photos

This afternoon I went to the football (soccer for the Americans) game with Jake and his friend. This was the league championship game and everyone turned out for it. The local team, the Mbare Dynamos, was playing Kiglon. The Dynamos were the heavy favorite because Kiglon hasn’t been doing well this year. But the game was a big deal because the Dynamos were tied with FC Platinum for first place in the league. The Dynamos, who are also called the Glamour Boys (no joke!), are a local township team with little money but a lot of talent and heart. The Platinums are owned by a local mining company who spends a lot of money to buy the best players. There’s fierce competition between them because the Dynamos want to show that money can’t buy championships. Also, the Dynamos, or DeMbare (for Dynamos from Mbare) have 18 league championships and if they win one more they will break the record for league cups in all of Southern Africa. So it was a big game. Jake and I bought some flags on the way in to show our support.

When we got to the entrance line everyone started cheering like crazy! I thought some players were going by or some minister was sighted, but the crowd was cheering for us! They don’t get many white football fans there and everyone was so excited to see us. So many people came up to give us high fives. I felt like a celebrity.

We got there two hours before the game started and already the stadium was over half full. We opted for the “premium” seats which cost $5. That gets you a roof over your head so you are not exposed to the sun the whole time. The other seats cost $3. It’s definitely worth the extra money.

This video was taken 30 min before the game started. Note how crowded it already is!

There aren’t that many women football (soccer) fans: I would guess that more than 97% of the crowd was male.

The game started at 3 pm and was a bit slow to start. Jake’s friend who is from Zimbabwe and played professional football (soccer) in Swaziland for 6 years said the first 30 minutes were boring. I haven’t watched enough football to totally agree but it wasn’t a World Cup game for sure. Both teams missed a few good opportunities early on.

The stadium itself is pretty decent. We sat on concrete bleachers which were very hard, but we had great seats. The stadium fits 20,000-27,000 people, depending on how many they cram in and they certainly crammed them in! I shudder to think of the fire codes that were broken (I wonder if they even have fire codes in Zimbabwe). There’s no jumbo-tron or TV anywhere. There’s not even a score board or time clock that I could see. But there are a lot of fans and a lot of energy.

The Dynamos put on the heat near the end of the first half and scored just before the break! The crowd went nuts! Go DeMbare!

During the break some cheerleaders came out and did a dance but it wasn’t very exciting or entertaining, except for the women shaking their booties if you’re into that sort of thing.

The second half was more exciting and the Dynamos scored again with 20 minutes remaining, securing the win and the league cup. The crowds went wild at the goal and wilder still at the end of the game.

Then we see this helicopter flying in. I thought it was going to pass over the stadium, filming or something, but no! It landed on the field!

I thought it was the president arriving or something, there was so much fanfare. Out of the door two women appeared carrying a large silver cup: the league cup! Unbelievable! It was such a cool thing to see.

The workers took a long time to put together the stage for the award ceremony so we didn’t stick around for it. On our way back to the car I kept getting stopped by people wanting to shake hands with me. They were all talking a mile a minute in Shona and I had no idea what they were saying, but I think they were excited about the win. I became friends with half of Harare that afternoon. Everyone becomes related when their football team wins. It was a really cool experience that I’ll remember for a long time.

I was pretty exhausted after Friday so I decided to have a nice relaxing Saturday of bumming around. I started by grocery shopping so I could actually cook a meal in my new place. Shopping itself is much more convenient now since the shops are so close but the fact that no stores have change is driving me crazy! All I want is my 47 cents. I don’t want a credit slip that I will probably lose before I use it. I don’t want a stupid pen, candy, or soda. I will take airtime if you’ll let me. But mostly, I’d just like my 47 cents so I don’t feel like I’m being robbed every day.

After that hassle, I decided to go into town and check out the National Gallery. There’s only one art museum in all of Zimbabwe and it’s about 3 blocks from where I work. I don’t have time to go during the week though so this was my first opportunity. Admission is $1 so I knew I couldn’t be disappointed. And the museum is quite nice. It’s two floors with an outdoor space in the back. The special exhibit right now is about the building of Kariba dam in northern Zimbabwe during the 1960s. The dam provides electricity to most of Harare. It took six years to complete and was a big controversy at the time because it created a lake that buried some people’s home and some of the people who were relocated during that time still don’t have electricity in their households! Another exhibit featured art that was done shortly after Zimbabwe gained independence which was pretty cool and outside there are a bunch of stone carvings. The artists here are especially known for their stone carvings and they are very nice. They are mostly of people, birds or animals but there’s some abstract things as well. Even taking my time I was done with everything in about an hour and a half. It’s not a huge museum, but nicer that I thought.

I wanted to go to a travel agent and speak to them about Victoria Falls but every place I saw was closed on Saturday and Sunday. I guess I’ll have to go during a lunch hour sometime.

I wandered around town, wearing one of my new dresses since it was so hot. I attract a bit of attention in general here, just being white but I got more than usual today. Maybe it was the dress, but maybe it was just that there are more people out and about on the weekend. Mostly the guys just want to say hello and “how are you?” but one guy was quite persistent and I had to tell him to leave me alone. Luckily he went away after that.

One really has to pay attention when walking around the Harare streets: the sidewalks are busted up and there’s a lot of construction being done on the sewers and power lines under the streets. If you’re not careful you can easily trip and it’s much better to not have to visit the hospital.

A really interesting thing that I noted was that there are no strollers/baby carriages here. To carry a small child around, a woman (men don’t do this) bends over, balances her child on her back (baby’s front to her back) then wraps a normal bath towel around the child and ties it at her front. Then she has her hands free and the baby is secure. It doesn’t look comfortable at all for either mom or baby, but it’s cheap. I’m really impressed with the women carrying a baby on her back, one child by the hand and balancing some crazy big load on her head walking down the street. That’s talent!

I thought I would check out the fanciest hotel in town just to see what everyone raves about so I went to Mickels and wandered around a bit. They have air conditioning in their lounge so I enjoyed a glass of mango juice and some samosas and read “The Fellowship of the Ring” for an hour or so. It was so nice to cool off a bit. I’m more used to the heat now than when I first arrived, but 90 degrees is still hot!

I walked home in the afternoon for a bit of exercise and got a bit of a sun tan since I wasn’t wearing enough sunscreen.

And in the evening I made vegetarian chili for dinner which turned out quite well. It’s the first meal I’ve cooked here and I was very happy with the cooking implements in my new place. I treated myself to a movie (watched on my computer since there’s no TV or radio here) but I was so tired I fell asleep on the couch during the climax! I was watching “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” which I’ve seen dozens of times so it didn’t really matter.

Here’s a video that I made of my new place. It’s super awesome. I hope the link works.