Day One
We have now been in Zimbabwe for a week. The flights here were long but acceptable. We didn’t have any delays, and the food was tolerable.
Getting out of Seattle was easy and thankfully our bags were checked through to Harare (Zimbabwe). The longest sit was overnight in Nairobi, Kenya. We had roughly ten hours to kill. The airport had many more people waiting for flights than I imagined. The night was long, and sleep escaped us. One good thing was the food court was open until like 2 a.m. so that was nice.
Day Two
We arrived in Harare and things went more smoothly than we expected. We had gifts for friends here and things for the clinic in Dine, laptops (4), a mixing board for a church, and lots of other stuff. I was worried a bit about the mixer. It was over $700 and the duty on such an item could double that. Either they didn’t notice it, or the computers caught their attention because the computers were all they asked us about. After some discussion and not telling the whole story, no lies, just not over-explaining things we got out without paying anything extra.
Day Three
We exited the airport and were met by our friends the McDonalds. They are from West Virginia, and we met them last year at the college. They took us to their apartment, and we got showers, food, and a bit of rest. Then we went to the college to drop off things and meet old friends there. The Preacher’s Convention was going on and we sat through one of the sessions. Many of our friends.
Day Four
The next morning, the fun really began. We returned to the college to retrieve our pickup that we are using this time arou
nd. We loaded up all our stuff, four duffle bags weighing 50-52 pounds each, two carry-on suitcases, and two backpacks, and set our GPS for Chinhoyi and our friends the Fortescues. About 32 kilometers from their town, our pickup suddenly lost power. It would start and idle fine, but when I pressed the accelerator, nothing it would not go above 1000 rpm. So we sat in the sun and what shade we could find for several hours while help was mustered, and solution postulated.
Finally, Dave, Cynthia and the kids arrived and towed us to a nearby town (Banket) where we left the car with a friend of theirs (There is a story there, but it’s too long already). The mechanic came from Harare and planned to tow it back there, but before he left town, he did some investigating and discovered a wire had come loose near the fuse box. The wire controlled a solenoid which shut fuel down for some reason, and it was not opening, thus no fuel, no power. He fixed it and returned the pickup to the friend and headed to back to Harare. Problem solved, or so we thought.
Dat Five (Maybe, they start to blur together)
The next day we attended an area wide cross-country meet, Three Woods (?). Dozens of private schools from all over Northern Zimbabwe were there. It was fun and later I met the grandmother of girls who came in first and second in their age group and might have set record times. On the way back from the meet, we stopped and retrieved our pickup and went back to the farm.