Jump to

Donate

DustySpirit home

It was a two hour drive from Harare to the City of Platinum (Chegutu) where “lunch” was waiting for us in the mid afternoon. Where we stopped was the home of Justin’s daughter and son-in-law. His daughter is actually in New Zealand working as a nurse but her husband and children are waiting for visas to join her. Justin and his wife, Judy, also stay at the house. He says that his daughter sends money back even to them (her parents)..that without her, they would starve. Besides keeping the family fed, Justin worries about his dog, which he really wants to keep alive because it is a good watchdog (“it bites”), and so I got to thinking what kind of sacrifice that must be.

So we didn’t eat until 3:30 or later which was fine, but that continued to push our schedule back and I thought we were going to meet the church in Gweru at 6:30pm in the evening. But we had wonderful food with others from the neighborhood, including diced apples in a pink cream sauce, and of course, chicken.

Fanny had to add more diesel to the Bighorn before we could take off on the second leg to Gweru.

What I remember of the drive to Chegutu and Gweru was lots of trees of all shapes and sizes – beautiful trees – including Jacaranda. Also, an immense pile of rock/slag from a gold mine (we drove through the “City of Gold” as well), a beautiful African sunset – the colors that played across both horizons were spectacular when I could glimpse it between the trees. These were just snatches of consciousness really as both Rick and I were nodding off and jerking up for the majority of the trip. I remember Martha working the cell phone at times – had an idea she was trying to tweak the church schedule for that evening, but didn’t realize to what extent until later.

At one point we stopped to buy some oranges hanging periodically by the road – I should say a lot of stations but just a few bags at each station. It cost us $500 million Zim dollars for a bag. Martha wanted to get a bag of potatoes as well, but they were $1.2 billion a bag. She said they were cheaper in Gweru, so we waited even though I overheard Zimbabweans in Harare saying that if you have the cash, spend it as soon as you can. Sure enough, when Fanny went to get some potatoes in the morning, they were $3 billion a bag, so no potatoes for us! :-)