Now the American dollar is the main currency, but there is a shortage. The money we got in change was old, threadbare and dirty. One day, I got two two-dollar bills in change.
The next morning, we took a long bus ride south from Harare to the Great Zimbabwe, outside of Masvingo.
The Great Zimbabwe is the largest of several stone ruins in the region, and we stayed nearby at the Great Zimbabwe Hotel.
We took a tour of the ruins guided by a young man who was very knowledgeable and entertaining. He told us no mortar was used to hold the walls together; the stones were cut to fit by heating rocks with fire and then pouring cold water over them. There were no roofs, just walls, and the structures had little functionality other than to impress. There was a tower that one might think could be something useful, like a granary, but it encloses no cavity; it is solid stone. And in one part of the complex, there were 3 walls only a few feet apart. Our guide explained that the redundant walls were built when the chief took a new wife, who demanded a higher wall than the old wife. Some of the structures were high on a hill, affording a view of the countryside.
The next day we headed for Mutare and Africa University. On the way out of the Great Zimbabwe, we stopped to shop at a roadside market where vendors offered fabrics, jewelry and crafts. Along the way were several examples of the typical homestead: a round hut with conical thatched roof and walls of brick or upright sticks, a small patch of maize and a pen for animals. There were also outcroppings of huge, rounded boulders - possibly the source of stone for the Great Zimbabwe.
Earlier - about 2 days into the trip - we received word that the retreat center at Africa University, the dedication of which was the purpose of the trip, was not finished. In fact, it had so far to go that it was impossible for us to stay there. Instead, we would stay at the edge of Mutare at the Golden Peacock Hotel, which was built by the Chinese only a couple years ago. The complex was very large and quite nice looking, but there were little things that indicated that it was - different. The rooms had keys, not key cards, and the doors were kind of rickety wood. There were no pictures on the walls in the rooms. There was a flat screen TV with a remote in Chinese. The beds had comforters like all modern hotel beds, but unlike those in other hotels, the covering sheet could not be separated from the comforter. You could sleep under that hot comforter or nothing. There was a pool, but all the same depth, about 4 feet, and no place to get up except a ladder with round, pipe-like steps - hard on the bare feet.
Africa University looked like a typical small university, well-kept grounds and brick buildings, well-dressed students who looked no different from the students at any all-black school in the U.S. The students were from all over Africa, and many were from upper class families. Over the next few days, we attended several ceremonies in which the West Michigan United Methodists were honored for their contribution to the University, and we got a tour of the far-from-finished retreat center. A 4/14/2015 update from trip leader Laurie Haller:
It finally did get finished and opened in February 2016.
We also visited the nearby Old Mutare Mission, a Methodist mission that cares for about 80 orphans and provides a high school for 500 local children who are boarded in hostels on the property. There is also a primary school, a small medical center and a program for women with AIDS. It is called the Old Mutare Mission because it once was the location of the city of Mutare. When the city was moved to a more convenient location in a nearby valley, Cecil Rhodes gave the old location to the Methodists.
Our mission completed, we got on our buses again and traveled back to Harare, where we caught a plane to Johannesburg and then another long, painful (for me) flight home.
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