African dreams

Sitting beside the Zambezi, I listened to the sound of a hippo (or was it a crocodile) having an early morning wash. It was difficult to believe that here, eighteen months before, a war had been going on. This stretch of water had been used to infiltrate a guerrilla army into Zimbabwe. Now everything seemed incredibly peaceful. Just the sounds of the African bush waking up.

As the sky lightened and the patch of long grass between the lodge and the river became less mysterious, I made my way to the bank just in time to see the last of the hippo as it slid downstream to an early-morning rendezvous.

Across the river was Zambia, from there only a few years before the fighters in Zimbabwe’s long battle for independence had come.

We were in Zimbabwe with our friends Alison and Tony. They took us around the country in a Renault 4 – four adults and four children with the luggage on top. And within a couple of days of landing in the country we were beside the Zambezi in one of the National Park lodges. Tony produced his characteristic chillie dishes, which burnt on for days afterwards. And the Falls produced more spray than we were ever to see again.

Our tour of the country took in much of Zimbabwe – Victoria Falls – just down from that lodge; the Matopos, where Ceil Rhodes is buried; Great Zimbabwe, whose walls balance inexplicably on the rocks; the Eastern Highlands and then back to Harare (still Salisbury to most people at that time). Our stay in Hwange National Park had produced only one lone elephant, and the big cats stayed away, but we saw enough of everything else to produce a lasting impression. Though when we returned to England and asked what (our) Alison had enjoyed most, she replied “playing with Miriam”.

As well as looking at the sights, Tony had arranged for me to see something of the churches, meet some clergy and get a feel of the place, in case I did decide to go and work there. So we went out to Mbare, a township outside Harare and there saw how the squatters lived, camped out under the market stalls.

We were on the veranda of Belvedere Rectory as the explosions happened. Seven miles away Zimbabwe’s arms supply was blowing up. A former Rhodesia Front MP was reminiscing about past glory. The sound of the detonations, like distant thunder in a cloudless sky, rattled the windows. The final explosion shook the ground. But the flow of gossip went on.

Zimbabwe had grown used to bombs, and it had grown tired of them. Sixteen years of guerrilla war had led to a longing for a lasting peace. Eighteen months after the conflict ended the warring factions could stand side by side with the men they had been fighting to honour Herbert Chitepo, the ZANU lawyer murdered in Zambia in 1975. Tony had wrangled an invite for us through a choir who were singing at the occasion in Heroes Acre. We stood within a few feet of Robert Mugabe.

At the time the economy was recovering quickly from years of conflict. Zimbabwe became only the second African country to be self-sufficient in grain and began to help out its poorer neighbours.

There was a sense of relief that peace had come. It was at last safe to drive around the country. It was the beginning of a time of peace that lasted almost twenty years.  

“They don’t look hungry,” I was told later that year when I showed my parish slides of refugees – homeless, jobless, hopeless, but not hungry. The unreality and literal parochialism of much of the life of the churches in Britain struck home even more forcibly once I had tasted Africa.

I had met the Bishop and the chaplaincy job was still there, but just to secure the future I needed sponsorship – to get us back if anything went wrong and to keep my UK pension. So I applied to USPG. It took over a year to get work permits sorted out and we went to the College of the Ascension in Selly Oak for a term to train for life as mission partners.

The term gave me a chance to get the stresses of church life out of the way and also a chance to enjoy the multi-cultural worship of the college. We also enjoyed a leisurely life in Birmingham, just beginning to redevelop. Alison went to her third school and David his second.

We were given some early readers for David in case the Zimbabwean schools lacked resources, and David read through the whole scheme before we left.