Travels with my son

Thomas and I are incred­u­lous. And it’s not because we are soaked through our clothes, from the spray of Vic­to­ria Falls. No, we are gob­s­macked because we have just seen our first fifty tril­lion dol­lar note.
We are stand­ing out­side the Zam­bezi Blues River Cafe, a shady haven of a restau­rant in the small town of Vic­to­ria Falls, hav­ing just strolled up into town from the falls. A very charm­ing man is ask­ing for R100 in exchange for a large wad of Zim­bab­wean dol­lar notes.
In his sub­stan­tial pile are a cou­ple of fifty tril­lion dol­lar notes, a few for five hun­dred mil­lion dol­lars and some for two hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars. My favourite is the pretty pur­ple note for fifty mil­lion dol­lars.
”Will this money buy us a coke and a ham­burger at the Wimpy?” I ask the man, think­ing it’s worth a hun­dred bucks just to be able to touch such large denom­i­na­tions.
”Of course,” says Mr Charm­ing and the deal is done.
”Here Tom, have fifty tril­lion dol­lars,” I say non­cha­lantly, toss­ing him a note as we make our way in the lunchtime heat to the local Wimpy.
I have come to Zim­babwe with Thomas, who is seven, because I wanted to be the one to show him Vic­to­ria Falls, to instill in him a spirit of adven­ture, a pas­sion for the African bush and an enquir­ing mind. ”Will there be DSTV in the room?” is the main con­cern of this soc­cer mad boy.
Our plan is to spend three days see­ing the falls and tak­ing in the majes­tic 2700 km long Zam­bezi River, to see some wildlife and to bond.
On the way back, we are booked on to Rovos Rails’ train for a three-day jour­ney  from Vic Falls to Pre­to­ria. The train, famous for its food and known as the most  lux­u­ri­ous train in the world, will take us through the Hwange National Park in Botswana, through towns like Fran­cis­town and Gaborone and on to Pre­to­ria.
My only real issue is whether we will be able to main­tain the nec­es­sary table man­ners for such lux­ury, but we have been prac­tis­ing.
Apart from a rather vocif­er­ous spat over the use of my cam­era next to the impos­ing statue of David Liv­ing­stone and one vio­lent alter­ca­tion over man­ners dur­ing din­ner at our hotel, we have, so far, sur­vived quite well together on our African adventure.

I have fielded his ques­tions about our trip to see one of the Seven Won­ders of the World: ”Why is it called Vic­to­ria Falls?” ”They are named after a queen of Eng­land.” ”Oh, was her name Vic­to­ria Falls?”
And:  ”Will Robert Mugabe be there?” ”I don’t think so.” ”How do you know?”
We are based at the gra­cious Stan­ley Liv­ing­stone Hotel, where we spent our first day unwind­ing on our veran­dah and keep­ing a run­ning list of all the game that come to drink at the water holes, just out­side our room. So far we have seen baboons, warthogs, zebras, kudi and impala and an end­less array of birds, from storks to horn­bills to night­jars.
We take our tril­lions and walk to the Vic Falls Wimpy, which has a smashed win­dow but is still oper­at­ing from a side kiosk. When I slap my fifty tril­lion dol­lar note on the counter, the woman serv­ing us refuses to take it.
”We don’t use that money any more,” she says. ”Only US dol­lars and South African rands.”
The news­pa­per ven­dor won’t give me a copy of The Her­ald. No, not even for fifty tril­lion dol­lars. The men sell­ing nya­manya­mas and tigers’ teeth don’t want it either. They are far more inter­ested in our rands — or Thomas’s Arse­nal cap. Or any spare clothes we might hap­pen to have.
I realise we have been duped by Mr Charm­ing and that, quite sim­ply, Zim­bab­wean money doesn’t work any more. I later learn that, not long after a 100 tril­lion note was intro­duced in Jan­u­ary, and the cur­rency became a laugh­ing stock, the gov­ern­ment decided that all busi­ness in Zim­babwe will be con­ducted in other cur­ren­cies.
Our trip, since fly­ing in from Johan­nes­burg a few days ago, has been action-packed: We have spent a morn­ing watch­ing wild game from the back of ele­phants, and an evening watch­ing the sun set from a boat on the Zam­bezi River. Thomas has already seen a num­ber of croc­o­diles and the gape of an angry hippo in the wild, beau­ti­ful Zam­bezi.
Friends and col­leagues who vis­ited Vic Falls a year or two ago painted a grim pic­ture of dire poverty and need out­side the fenced-off resorts. But the over-riding sense is that the worst is now over for Zim­babwe.
Take, for instance, the lobby at the Shear­wa­ter adven­ture com­pany, where we bump into peo­ple from Jo’burg, Ger­many and Japan, sign­ing up for the bungi jump­ing, river-rafting and game dri­ves which the com­pany offers. It’s hard to keep peo­ple away from the roar of the Zam­bezi.
We have expe­ri­enced noth­ing but friend­li­ness, humour — and indeed, opti­mism from the local peo­ple we have met so far — the hotel staff, the guides from Shear­wa­ter, the traders at the mar­kets and the other locals. We have dis­cov­ered, to Tom’s delight, that Zim­bab­wean men are as crazy about soc­cer as he is.
Like Tendai, the waiter at the Stanley-Livingstone. He might not be an Arse­nal man like Thomas, but, in between plac­ing white bread­rolls on our plates with sil­ver tongs, he has Thomas riv­et­ted with his view on Eng­lish soc­cer teams and a promise to kick a soc­cer ball in the hotel gar­dens. We later learn that Tendai is anx­iously wait­ing for news of his baby daugh­ter, who was one of a large group of infants who have become seri­ously ill because of a botched gov­ern­ment innoc­u­la­tion drive. ”They gave the babies the wrong vac­ci­na­tion. Lots and lots of kids are sick,” he says.
He promises to keep us posted on her progress. ”That’s Zim­babwe,” he shrugs, walk­ing off to fetch our next course.

We put away our wad of Zim dol­lars and I fork out some rands for a few news­pa­pers, all of which have, as their main story, the news that one of Zimbabwe’s Zanu-PF vice-presidents, Joseph Msika, has died at the age of 85. Later, we see flags fly­ing half-mast at police-stations and other gov­ern­ment build­ings.
We meet our guide, Ben at the Shear­wa­ter head­quar­ters for our next adven­ture — a night game drive in the 6000 hectare Vic­to­ria Falls Pri­vate Game Reserve.
We are part of an inter­est­ing group: A Japan­ese vet, a young cou­ple who work in bank­ing in Harare and a glam­ourous Zim­bab­wean woman who works as a diplo­mat in an east Asian coun­try.
Our dri­ver, Mike, is a laugh a minute and full of bush anec­dotes. Thomas joins Mike in the front seat of the vehi­cle and, before long,  is act­ing like the main man, gig­gling help­lessly at Mike’s ban­ter.
Zebras, Mike tells us, are just don­keys in paja­mas. When we see a warthog scuf­fling not far from a group of four buf­falo, he says, ”there you go, you’ve seen the big five”. He stops the vehi­cle in the dark and whis­pers: ”There’s a lion on the road.” It turns out to be a tele­phone line. Thomas loves that.
He tells us that ele­phants, who eat an enor­mous every day, can grow to a weight of 7000 kilo­grams. Our jolly group erupts with joy when we drive past a group of ele­phants which includes two babies.
Mike tells us that ele­phant dung, mixed with water or burnt and inhaled, is a great pain reliever, espe­cially for women in the throes of labour.
”I used it when I was in labour,” says the diplo­mat, from the back. ”It was won­der­ful. I hardly felt any pain.”
As it gets darker, Ben hands out some thick blan­ket jack­ets and we set­tle in to an evening in the bush. More warthogs, ele­phants, buf­falo, baboons, zebras. In the mid­dle of the reserve, we almost drive into two men with guns slung over their shoul­ders. ”Poach­ers,” we gasp. ”No, they are mem­bers of the anti-poaching unit,” says Mike. ”When it comes to poach­ers, we shoot first and ask ques­tions later,’ he adds — and Thomas, enthralled, gives a macho shud­der. The Stan­ley & Liv­ing­stone Reserve is par­tic­u­larly proud and pro­tec­tive of their black rhino, par­tic­u­larly as they recently pro­duced some babies. We are on high alert to spot the babies, but tonight we are out of luck.

We stop at a sim­ple camp, where a bush sup­per of kudu stew has been pre­pared for us. We sit under the African moon, over a few beers and we talk.
”‘I don’t know how we sur­vived 2008,” says Ben. ”There was a time when the governor-general was just print­ing money. The peo­ple in our lit­tle vil­lage were all so con­fused, we did not know what to do. Shop­keep­ers were baf­fled. Busi­nesses refused to take the money. We just gave up. For about four months, there was total con­fu­sion. Peo­ple did not know how they were going to live.”
Then Ben and the Harare bank­ing cou­ple com­pare notes on the past few years in their coun­try, its recent human­i­tar­ian cri­sis, the cholera out­break which killed more than 3000 peo­ple, the hyper­in­fla­tion  and the des­per­ate nation­wide short­age of food.
”I wasn’t paid for seven months,” adds the ambas­sador, who is back in Zim­babwe for her annual leave. ”How do you sur­vive like that? Luck­ily I have a child work­ing in Lon­don. With­out that help, I would not cope. I have a son at uni­ver­sity and a girl still at school.”
But the Harare bankers believe that, since dol­lar­i­fi­ca­tion and the slow but steady polit­i­cal changes, things are turn­ing around.
The death of Msiki — who suc­ceeded the late Joshua Nkomo in 1999 and who famously called oppo­si­tion sup­port­ers “imigodoyi” (use­less dogs) is per­ceived as another small step towards wrestling power away from Mugabe.
”There are still big prob­lems. Civil ser­vants only earn a hun­dred dol­lars a month. That doesn’t even cover their costs. But busi­ness and eco­nomic activ­i­ties are pick­ing up in Harare. Inter­na­tional com­pa­nies are trick­ling back.
What will it take to pull Zim­babwe back to its right­ful place in the world, I ask. ‘With our edu­ca­tion and our natures, we will do it,” says the young banker.
”There is def­i­nitely a feel­ing of hope in the air,” he says. ”What I really hope is that Mr Mugabe lives to see what we are going to achieve after he’s gone.”
 
For more infor­ma­tion on the Stan­ley and Liv­ing­stone Hotel, con­tact www.raniresorts.com.
Rovos Rail at www.rovos.com or call 012 315 8242. E-mail reservations@rovos.co.za