Harare, Zimbabwe, is were I, and one other person, announced that we'd be leaving the group. It was an unsettling time for me, to say the least. On the one hand, there was no way I was getting back on that truck, especially with the new leader who was taking over. He was in fact a drunk and in my opinion a prick, a leader of the "booze cruise" ilk. He and I would have lasted about two days together. And the passenger count was doubling in number as people joined the trip. I wanted no part of any of it.

     On the other hand, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do. My first move was to switch from the "fancy" hotel that Dragoman had been putting us up in to a more modest backpacker's place down the street. I considered getting an apartment and just living the ex-pat life in Harare for a while. I also attempted to contact several volunteer organizations for foreign dilettantes who want to have a rough and real experience in the form of helping people build houses, sewers, safe water supplies, that sort of thing. But the phones don't work, and the addresses listed for the agency's offices were all wrong, and I was exhausted from walking all day and changing money on the black market and being generally and constantly scared and thinking "Holy shit, what am I doing here?" A friend put me in contact with a good man who was willing to try to set me up with a teaching job at the university in Mutare (one of Zimbabwe's nicest towns, I'm told) - but the gig was teaching computer programming to college students, and I was not ready for that. I may make my living in the field, but I'm not so experienced that I could just wing that sort of thing. After about a week my sense of exhilaration and possibility began to be replaced by one of looming disaster.

     I think I was in Harare for about ten days. During that time I had become a regular at The Roots of Africa restaurant, mainly because it was close to where I was staying and I wanted to start feeling recognized somewhere besides the Internet cafe and my hotel. There at the restaurant I became acquainted with some Kenyan ex-pats, and one of them, a woman named Tabu, told me a very compelling, well, "story" would be a diplomatic way of putting it. (You can refer to my journal entry from November 3rd for said story if you're interested.) The result of which being that I suddenly found myself buying a suit and accompanying Tabu to a funeral in Kenya.

     Below is the one picture I have from Harare, and I didn't even take it. (Harare is not the sort of place for lone tourists to be flashing expensive cameras, and I wasn't in much of a mood to be taking pictures, anyway.) It's the only picture I have from Zimbabwe, in fact; I was so turned off by the tourist hell that our last stop, Victoria Falls, has become, and so fed up with the overlanding scene, and just so not in to being there, that my camera never left my pack.

     At any rate, this is a picture of Mr. Dango Dhlodhlo and his friend, sent to me by him. Dango's the one with no legs. Dango made friends with me, initiated our conversation, and, unlike many, asked me for nothing. He sent me letters in the states, real letters, which continued to ask for nothing more than communication. I replied, and we've continued to correspond - but my last letter has gone unanswered. I don't know what's going on with Dango right now. But anyone who pays any attention at all to African affairs knows that Zimbabwe is in the midst of a world of problems. (If you're interested, take a look at The Zimbabwe Independent or The Standard). Maybe Dango had to move. Maybe the Zimbabwean postal service has completely broken down. As much as I would like to, I really have no way of getting in touch with him.