Like Johannesburg, Zimbabwe was a place we had no intention of visiting before this trip. In Zimbabwe’s case, it was on account of the political unrest there. However, shortly before we left for Phase 2 of the trip, Erika’s sister’s father-in-law (“I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate”) went to Harare for a few months of work, and was going to be there when we’d be in southern Africa. So, suddenly, we had something of a reason to visit and thought, why not?

Why Not?

Well, they don’t really have functioning currency, that’s one reason maybe why not. In the days before we were to fly to Harare, we started looking into logistics, and dug into this discovery. Their official currency right now is the US dollar, but they don’t have any dollars, so they’re extremely cash poor. Obviously they can’t just print their own, like a normal place could that has their own currency, so it’s been a tough problem for them to solve.

What this meant for us was that getting usable currency was going to be tough. We had some US dollars on us that we’d been carrying “just in case,” but not a lot. As I said, they don’t really have many dollars currently, which means the ATMs can’t really bail you out either. Well, this was going to be fun!

Getting In

Zimbabwe requires US citizens to pay for a tourist visa. Zambia does as well, and we were planning to go to Zambia next. When researching these things before going, we discovered a fairly new invention called the KAZA Univisa. This has only existed for a couple years now, and functions as a tourist visa to both Zimbabwe and Zambia. It also allows day-trips into Botswana through a particular border crossing from Zambia, that is close to Victoria Falls. All this for about half the price of getting each of the visas individually.

This was perfect for us, as our intended crossings were in the Victoria Falls area, so it gave us the option of taking a day in Botswana as well. Awesome! How do you get one?

Yeah.

So looking online at the history of this thing, you generally end up with the following sequence:

• KAZA Univisa is this new great thing! Hurray!
• Doh, KAZA Univisas are no longer available
• KAZA Univisas are available again at Harare and Victoria Falls airports!
• Reports are they are out of KAZA Univisa stickers at Harare
• KAZA Univisas seem to be gone again
• They’re back!
• They’re gone?
• We think they’re back!

Are you fucking kidding me? The most recent update we found seemed to indicate that they were indeed available again at Harare airport but hey, who knows! Guess we’ll find out when we get there.

We landed in Harare and were pleased to find short lines at immigration. We gradually became less and less pleased as those lines didn’t move, time crept on, and suddenly we’d been there for an hour. What is taking so long?!

Finally, it was our turn. We asked about the KAZA Univisas, and were met with confusion and uncertainty.

“Talk to her,” the immigration agent said, pointing to the person next to her.

We waited for her to finish with the person she was slowly in-processing and asked again about the KAZA Univisas.

“I don’t have any of the stickers. I don’t know if we have any. You’ll have to ask the manager.”

The who?

“The manager, she’s around here somewhere, she’s the one with the stars on her shoulders.”

Why am I tracking her down?

Somehow, this woman was found. Miraculously, she knew what the KAZA business was, she was interested in helping out, and she found the precious stickers somewhere. Plus, we were able to pay for them with credit card, so we didn’t have to eat into our very limited US dollar reserves!

This was all totally ridiculous, and not exactly conducive to tourism. At any rate, we lucked out, got what we needed, and were in Zimbabwe.

Settling In

Uber isn’t a thing in Zimbabwe. However, there is a startup operating in Zimbabwe called GTaxi, which is aiming to be the same thing. Awesome, we thought, so we got the app before flying to Zim, so we could use it to leave the airport.

However, we weren’t able to set up a credit card on the app, so that was going to complicate things. You could still use the app as basically a glorified means of hailing taxis, or even, as we did, scheduling future pick-up. We’d scheduled a ride for us for some comfortable amount of time after landing, 45 minutes or some such. But, then, immigration took over an hour, then we had to find our bags, so when we got through customs we were sure our ride would be gone. But no! There he was with our name on a placard!

The ride was expensive, but the driver was very nice and got us quickly to our place. The place was nice, and the owners were incredibly friendly. We were horribly behind on laundry at this point, so we asked them about local laundromats.

“There’s one up at the shopping center but, oh it’s very expensive.” They told us it was something like $2 USD per item. And we had a lot of items! That’s not going to work. However, the place also had a washboard and sink outdoors, along with plenty of clothesline space.

So we spent the afternoon hand-washing laundry.

Oh Captain, my Captain

The next day, we had plans in center city to take a walking tour that Erika had arranged. Our place was a decent ways outside the center, so we needed to take a cab to get there.

We asked the people running our place the night before about whether they could arrange a cab, and they just kept saying, “oh, Captain will take you.” Great, so I guess we’re set up with… Captain, is it? We said we’d like to go about 9:30am, and they said great, Captain will take you.

The next morning, about 8:00, we were lying in bed, having just woken up, getting ready to go out to breakfast, when Erika gets a WhatsApp message. It’s the hotel manager, saying that Captain was here and wanted to talk about our plans. Um… I thought this was clear? 9:30 right? I got dressed and went out to tell Captain as much.

We went to breakfast, and at breakfast we met Emma, a British woman about our age who was taking a little vacation time after being in Zimbabwe for work. We were talking about the currency situation, and she said that when she got to the country, she was just profligately spending cash, not aware that getting money from the ATM wasn’t a thing. Once she found out, she realized her dollar crunch was going to be an issue, and she was now running low.

She had to be in the city in the afternoon, and to save cash she was going to walk. We were like 10 kilometers out of center city! And we’re not talking about nice pedestrian friendly roads and sidewalks either. This is bonkers, so we told her to please ride with us, we have a Captain coming.

Captain took us into the city, gave us his number so we could call him to get home later, and proceeded to overcharge us. We didn’t know he’d overcharged us at the time, of course, it wasn’t until later in the day when we asked the workers at a coffee shop about a cab, and how much they said it should be was half of what Captain charged. Sure enough, we had them call us a cab, and the cab charged us half. Fucking Captain!

Walking Tour

But anyway, Captain took us downtown so we could meet up for our walking tour. We said goodbye to Emma, and waited around for the tour guide.

We found Lynette, our guide, a 20-something Zimbabwe native, and we were the only ones on the tour. Lynette had spent some time in Europe working as a guide for one of the free walking tour companies, and was inspired to come back and try to start something similar in Harare.

Like a lot of young Zimbabweans, Lynette was well educated, but had struggled to find work in Zimbabwe. Consequently, these people frequently move abroad–to Australia, Europe, the United States–taking their energy and educations with them. We met another similar couple staying at our hotel that week–native Zimbabweans, but had expatriated to Australia. They expressed their desire to move back to Zimbabwe–and were hopeful that, with the recent ousting of Mugabe and the upcoming elections, things may be improving.

Lynette talked also about the excitement that Mugabe’s removal brought to the city. She showed us the square where residents descended spontaneously to cheer and celebrate his removal. She talked of how the military–normally resistant to photography of them or in their vicinity–relaxed on that, and let people take pictures with them.

We were in Zimbabwe just three weeks before those highly anticipated elections, and we couldn’t help but share in that excitement of possibility for their nation. That the election came and essentially maintained the status quo is incredibly demoralizing.

Lynette walked us through the Harare gardens, and talked of how when she was a kid, it was a treat for her family to come into the city and visit the gardens. It was a beautiful place then. Now, it’s been neglected: plants are more overgrown than they should be, plenty of trash lies about, and mostly the destitute seem to be there.

It’s yet another sad emblem to what the country could be. We found Harare to be a lovely city, with friendly people. If you squint, you can see the beauty that the gardens must have been. Likewise, you can see what Zimbabwe could be.

We finished our tour with Lynette and thanked her profusely. Before leaving, we asked her to recommend somewhere we could eat, somewhere to experience local food. Let’s just say Zimbabwe is probably not going to be known for their food for a while. But, we did pay only like $2, so there’s that!

Family Is Family

That night–our last in Harare–we met Dennis, Erika’s sister’s father-in-law, for dinner. We went to a nice restaurant that was just a short walk from our place, and had a lovely time as the only diners there.

The three of us dove straight into conversation, and talked and laughed like we were all old friends. But Erika and I were talking about it later, and it was funny because… that was only the second time we’d ever met Dennis, the first being at Erika’s sister’s wedding. It was funny how easily we connected, and how easy conversation was.

Dennis was very thoughtful and, thinking we may be having cash issues on account of the Zimbabwe currency situation, brought a bunch of US dollars for us. He was also incredibly generous and picked up the bill.

Speaking of that currency situation… when the bill was brought, Dennis asked if there were any discount if he paid in cash with US dollars, instead of credit card. After a check with the manager, why yes there was a discount… of 25%! We’d been paying in cash everywhere, I wish we knew this was an option!

What’s Next?

Zimbabwe in general–and Harare most specifically–was never anywhere on our radar, but we’re glad we ended up inspired to visit. It’s an interesting city, and it felt very real.

Next, we were off to the town of Victoria Falls, to visit the natural wonder that is its namesake. To get there, we had a short flight out of Harare on *checks notes* FastJet airlines? Is that real?

There are really two airlines that fly this route. The State Department doesn’t let US government employees fly Zimbabwe’s national airline, the European Union has also banned them, so we figured we shouldn’t fly with them. Sooooo that leaves FastJet!

When our plane showed up it was… not marked. There was no paint on it, no logos, nothing indicating it was FastJet or anyone else. It was battleship grey, and yet was apparently our plane for the day. I’m sure this is fine! Let’s go to Victoria Falls!