Zimbabwe Christmas Trip - part 2

December 2010

Following on from part 1...

From Great Zim we went on to Harare, arriving at dusk and having to navigate by instinctual memory given the absence of streetlights and minimal road signs. Fortunately the embedded memory of the roads we took to work every day in the 80s still worked!

We found John and Bev in great shape, living in their lovely home built by John and Lotte on the back acre of our old home at 108 St Patricks Road. See how beautiful are the trees, which are full of birds and other wildlife!

Above - approach to John and Bev's house.

Above - path to John's studio.

Above - the Green House where we lived, now no longer green but still very much the same, picture shows Shingi with the current tenants.

We took our sons on a tour of all our favourite places, finding most of them remarkably the same, with the exception of the famous Mareravana which is almost unrecognisable.

Above - Ashburton Ave is where I lived before we moved to the Green House, looking almost unchanged since we left in 1983.

Above - Mish's Khaya at Ashburton Ave.

Above - Avenues Clinic is where Shingi was born 23 years ago.

Above - in central Harare, looking down Julius Nyerere Avenue from Samora Machel Avenue.

Above - Unity Square also centre of town.

Above - Mushandira Pamwe is the huge night club in Highfield township, across the road from the school where Colleen and I worked, where I used to party a lot in the early 80s.

The photo above was taken in the northern suburbs of Harare, just before we got to Domboshava, the wonderful rock/hill in the communal areas north of Harare.

At Highfield High School (below), the township school where Colleen and Mish taught in the 80s, we found the school very little changed in 20 years. Not much new development and also not much decay which is remarkable given all that has happened.

But spot the difference in next two pics below... the first one taken 9 May 1981 (by Hans Middelmann) and the second taken 27 December 2010.

Below - Christmas Day in Harare...

Christmas Day (above) with our old friends and neighbours, the Gumbo family, and (below) with our old housemate John and his wife Bev and family and friends, including the man who bought the Green House from us in the 1990s.