Hungry in Zimbabwe /
From Harare, the capital, Zimbabwe’s countryside spreads for hundreds of miles in every direction. Ten years ago, this was the breadbasket of southern Africa, a model economy that produced enough food to export its surplus to its neighbors. But Zimbabwe’s farms today are unkempt and overgrown, and most produce little, or nothing at all.
Everywhere I went on a recent trip around Zimbabwe – driving all the way east to the border
with Mozambique, south to South Africa, and north to the frontier with Zambia – I found a ruined landscape. I passed one former commercial farm after another, but their owners were long gone, their croplands had been destroyed, and their barns and greenhouses had been stripped of their roofs, doors, windows and anything else of utility.
At the entrance to one former country estate stood a windbreak of great fir trees. From their impressive height, they appeared to be at least 60 years old. At one end of the windbreak there was a series of fresh stumps. The trees were being chopped down for firewood.
Much of the land was also blackened by fire and, in some cases, was still burning; smoke wafted upwards from the burning bush. There seemed to be no good explanation for all the fires, but, clearly, people had set them, all over the place. I never saw anyone trying to put them out. Like so much else in Zimbabwe, the fires were random and meaningless. It was extremely sad.
In this damaged landscape, the few Zimbabweans I saw (where was everyone?) were like actors on a stage carrying out a role that had been theatrically stripped of purpose.
Here and there, men and boys stood at the roadside offering oranges and onions they had foraged from the devastated farms, or else wooden carvings of animals: giraffes, hippos, fish eagles, and crocodiles. But there were no customers. Others stood listlessly waiting for transportation. Very few cars were visible on the road, however, and most of the people had to wait for many hours, or even days, before getting a ride somewhere. They wore resigned looks, but when a vehicle appeared they made hand gestures to solicit lifts. One of these gestures was especially elaborate and involved a two-handed motion, like someone imitating the working of an old-fashioned bellows.
One morning, driving with a friend through the south, we came across a crashed passenger bus. It had the vintage chrome body and aerodynamic racing lines of a 1950s Greyhound. For some reason, it had veered off the straight road and had crashed directly into a tree, where its front end and windshield had scrunched, and it had sagged to a lopsided halt. The driver lay on his back on the road verge, looking depressed, and his passengers had gathered themselves and their belongings nearby. They were unhurt, but were heat-parched. They begged us for water. They were grateful when we gave them some oranges we had brought with us.
Later on that day, a troupe of big gray male baboons emerged from a baobab’s shadows as we approached. Then, as in a game of dare, they loped athletically across the road just in front of us and stared cockily as we drove on. Baboons with attitude. They were the only animals we saw that whole day, in which we drove 500 miles.
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