Challenging but productive times in Zimbabwe

Maz sharing about 'leadership mindset' #1
Lift up your head, become like an Eagle!

As I type away at my laptop my immediate view is overwhelmed by the high rise buildings that dominate the Cape Town skyline, it is quite a thought to behold that the whole of the African continent lays spread out north of where I sit, stretching over 5,000 miles beyond those buildings. It is also somewhat overwhelming that it was less than 24 hours since we were walking the broken streets of Bulawayo which had become home for the second part of our trip into Zimbabwe and those self same streets are still home to the dear friends that we spent time with since our last update.

Meeting up with old friends in Mutare

During our last blog post we left you with the news of a successful time spent in Zambia and the continuing feedback coming from those who we trained up is encouraging, however since then we have had further interesting times in Zimbabwe, a nation at such a turning point in its history and one that has been dealt a blow in the eastern highland region of Chimanimani with the horrifying effects of cyclone Idai leaving a trail of devastation that will take months if not years to repair.

Preparing our daily meals

We flew into Robert Mugabe airport in Harare, on the short hop flight from Lusaka with the ill fated Ethiopian Airways (who were to suffer an awful air crash only a few days later, such sad news to hear of the lives lost in that tragic accident) and were picked up by our friend Bob who was to drive us across to the eastern city of Mutare where we had spent a couple of weeks last August.

Mutare sits in the mountains and is blessed with a wonderful climate, however what we noticed since our last visit was a downward trend with mountains of daily issues that people have to face each day as the economic climate takes its toll on these mostly peace loving and so very very tolerant people.

Making sure that our trained facilitators are
able to share the amazing Leadership
for Life material is a key part of our Training weeks!

Life seems to be getting tougher for the common man and we know that could be said of any man in any nation in this crazy world, but just trying to work out how much things are and then how to pay for them is taxing enough. We either had to do this via US$ (which were much sought after when we were there last year but have now become less de rigueur) or RTGS (the new local currency which isn't recognised outside of Zimbabwe and has replaced the old 'Bond notes', although those Bond notes still exist within the system!) or via money held virtually on your mobile phone (of which we had to convert US$ to RTGS then convert RTGS to the 'virtual' mobile money). All of this is somewhat of a challenge in itself and given that different shops or vendors provide you with either hugely different prices for the same item or offer you hughley different rates for your $ or RTGS (we had a low of 1$=2.5 RTGS to a high of 1$ = 4 RTGS). It's all quite mind blowing.

Stuart with Maz and George

We were able to meet up with some of the local friends who we'd been introduce to last year by Martin and Jackie, one of these incredible people is called Stuart Dore, an amazing and humble man who runs a daily feeding programme for over 100 orphaned children. Since we last met Stuart he has lost his wife in her battle with cancer, so it was a bitter sweet reunion for us. However it was great to have Stuart, and his son, join us at the Leadership for Life training, and he will now be sharing that programme at his homework clubs with some of the older young people he supports.

A morning walk up Christmas Pass with
Maz, Alick and Rosemary

It was also wonderful to stay with Alick and his wife Rosemary, who we also met last year and who had recently converted their garage into a self contained flat, complete with kitchen, lounge area, two bedrooms and a shower (cold and intermittent given the state of the water supply situation that again seems erratic, but that also builds character!), it was a great base and the safe neighbourhood allowed us to get out a run/walk each morning.

Running and or walking each day has been a source of refreshing to us and has helped enormously with our physical and mental well being. The challenge of running up Christmas Pass, a pass that links Mutare to Harare in the west, was too much for me (Tim) to ignore, the 3.5km uphill run (of which there is an obvious downhill section on the return) was made all the more risky with the thundering or lumbering trucks flowing to and from, the now famous, port of Beira in Mozambique and or taxi buses which seem to career around its sweeping bends.

Our 9 (+1) trained facilitators in Bulawayo

The main focus of our trip in both Mutare and Bulawayo was to train up some local people, whom we had shared the Leadership for Life programme with last year. These people would then become facilitators of the programme themselves, thus being able to share the programme within their local communities, networks and groups. We ran a training group in each city, with 25 people attending the full week long training in Mutare and 9 people in Bulawayo.

Our 25 trained Facilitators in Mutare

The makeup of each group was quite diverse, with our youngest trained facilitators being two young guys aged 24 who we truly believe will open up amazing opportunities within their peer groups, as well as two other young men in their late twenties who are heavily involved in the Scouting movement (where we see some incredible opportunities opening up as we seek to raise up a generation of role models who will have good leadership at the heart of their lives), our eldest a lady in her late sixties and she runs a women's support group for widows living with HIV, others who we trained were in the age groups and had various outreaches in between!

That's me and Maz enjoying our daily food

There were a few challenges for the people who we trained, such as transport to get to the venue, what with the shortages in fuel and also getting time off of work and or time away from their market stalls which they run each and everyday. However it didn't stop them attending and we were extremely pleased with the progress of each one of the people who came and are very excited about the forthcoming stories that will come out of them sharing of the Leadership for Life programme and the impact that it will have on their communities.

Leaders lift people up, not push them down.....

March is normally a wet month, sitting at the end of the rainy season, so we had expected both Zimbabwe and Zambia to be greener than when we visited last July but unfortunately it had been quite dry with little rain, with the signs of drought meaning that the maize meal (sweetcorn) was left dry and dying maize meal (sweetcorn) plants (a staple in that part of the world) which weren't bearing the much needed fruits for harvest. 

People were already worried about further challenges that would bring hunger and even starvation, however as we neared the end of our first week of training we became very worried as we heard of a cyclone that was building off of the coast of Mozambique and which was heading towards us, via Beira, in Mutare.

Little did we know at lunchtime on Thursday what
destruction would lay in the wake of the storm on
Saturday morning.

By Thursday afternoon the rain had started to fall in Mutare and on Friday evening the wind had also picked up and joined the rain. Little did we know the huge and destructive effects that this cyclone would have in the region at the time, so other than impacting our travel plans to Bulawayo as we headed off on Saturday morning which meant taking a route across country rather than via the original route we got off lightly. In Fact Mutare just missing the eye of the cyclone by about 100km as it swept in and had a huge impact in Chimanimani.

Our road blocked by a rescue truck

Unfortunately our driver, Bob, had some very sad news as we travelled on that Saturday morning, hearing that a good friend of his had been killed in his rural home village due to a landslide that had destroyed the home she was sleeping in on Friday night and these stories grew as our understanding of the destruction that had taken place became clearer. Many many other people known to our newly trained friends started to share their stories of how their lives had been affected by what would become world headlines, at least for a few days.

Many of you will have seen the heartbreaking pictures from both Mozambique and Zimbabwe but just how much impact the cyclone will have over the longer to medium term is worrying with the poor existing infrastructure taking such a huge hit, with roads washed away, peoples homes lost and an already poor harvest destroyed. We are extremely worried for the future and wonder how to best support the ongoing rescue and then clean up operation as we are already hearing of misuse of funds that have been given towards those most impacted!


Upon arriving in Bulawayo, a journey of over 7 hours where we had a few challenges, including coming across a flat bed lorry that had lost the shipping container which it was carrying, apparently blown off in the wind!, blocking our road, we were greeted with the sad news that our local contact there had just received new that his son, in his early thirties with a wife and family, had passed away in South Africa. The day to day issues that people have to contend with is so sad and certainly puts some of our first world challenges into prospective.

Not just a punctured tyre but one ripped apart and
the space was also flat.....doh.

All this said we had a wonderful time investing in our local friends and other than being extremely drained by our 12 hour days we did manage to get a day off on Sunday before flying into Cape Town for a few days to tie up some Emerging Leaders oppertunities here before flying out to Madagascar on Saturday morning.


To end this epic post we wanted to share one further story about our last day which once again was very eventful, as you can only imagine as is the case in our crazy lives!. We had got to know the owner of a local bar, popping in to hear a local band play one evening, and he had offered to take us to the local national park where Cecil Rhodes amongst his other friends, is buried and which contains some incredible natural stone structures.

At least we had some beers!

Anyways to cut some very long stories short we had a tyre blow out and rip to shreds on the way to the national park, upon stopping in the middle of nowhere we found that the spare was also in a state of disrepair meaning that our friend had to catch a taxi bus, which fortunately for us was passing by at just the right time, back to Bulawayo to have the tyre replaced, all on a late Sunday afternoon. Myself and Maz were left minding the car and took time to loosen the wheel nuts but in the meantime finding out that the jack was not suitable to lift the 4x4 we were in off the ground enough to get the tyre back on once it arrived! We ended up driving the vehicle onto a rock we found and dug out a hole deep enough for the tyre to fit into then jacked it from there.......

Cecil Rhodes grave

....the park was awesome, it's called Matopos and has amazing rock formations with huge rocks balancing on top of each other like a couple of gods had once played a giant game of marbles and had left them where the landed for us all to enjoy, it also is home to a large herd of Rhino and the largest population of Leopards in Africa, we have included some photos for you to enjoy.

FYI there is quite a lot of background stuff and detail missing from this post as we are mindful of respecting people and the current situation in Zim, we are sure you'll understand.

Huge stones in Matopos

Sending much love to you all and we'll be back in touch once we have settled into life back in Antananarivo!