This pic (above) is taken looking back towards the area we had left a few days previously: the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe.
A kopjie, characteristic of the Buhera area.
Monthly Archives: August 2016
Early morning in Murambinda…
We stayed in a place called “River Sounds Lodge,” in Murambinda. It should be renamed “Shebeen Sounds Lodge…”
The music didn’t let up all night, and even in the very early morning, the birds were unable to compete with the blaring cacophony. It seems Murambinda nightclub owners don’t bother to turn their sound systems off when their customers depart.
Murambinda is a bustling dust-road town in the district of Buhera….OK I’ll stop with the geography lesson: Murambinda is a dump. There is no other word for it! The streets are dust, the buildings haphazard and wiggly waggly all over the show with no trees for shade. Ugly heaps of rubble are just piled up where the council pushed them out of the way when they built the roads! And the sad thing is, Murambinda is positioned in a pretty place, nestled among kopjies with a river running through the middle of the town.
We eventually gave up trying to sleep and not-bright, but very early, sat waiting for the survey gang, who, by the way, spent a restful night camping at the local SDA church yard. Watching people start their day in Murambinda, with the long sloping early morning light, I couldn’t resist a few pics…
Two ladies, walking slowly, chatting companionably. The wheelbarrow is loaded with wares, hawked from under a tree, or carried amongst the crowds milling about at the bus stops. She sells penny-cool (plastic, cold drink filled tubes,) sweets, cigarettes that are sold singly, pens!
It was cold, and so I sat in the car with the heater on, my camera balanced on the door and took these pics over the wing-mirror.
I thought this poor little guy, on his way to school, looked lonely!
More school kids – these guys, at least ten minutes after the girls passed this way!
And THIS guy….was late! He shot past us, way after all the others had gone! Africa time clearly isn’t applicable with HIS teacher!
Seems Paul Mpofu liked the town so much, he wrote a song about it!!!
Aloes in Manicaland…
The aloes were flowering when we worked in Manicaland recently. Below is a ‘natures garden’ at a rather unspectacular place called Kudziwa.
The church, where we surveyed for water, is on the top of a granite kopjie. The bright aloes will be faded when the Msasa come out (very soon!)
Below, taken at the Vumba Botanical gardens…
Out walking in the Vumba, I spied that bright red dot clinging precariously to the side of a granite kopjie:
Closer inspection! (Dontcha just LOVE the plant in the foreground – I’d describe it as ‘frazzled’ how I feel, on occasion!)
Taken overlooking Mozambique…
Imagine how pleased we were to stay at a (lovely place called Outside Inn) in the Vumba with aloes in prolific flower in the garden. This is the view from the front veranda.
The bird is a bonus.
This is the entrance to ‘Outside Inn’ – only a few kilometre from the Leopard Rock Hotel. It’s a cute little cottage (three bedrooms and two bathrooms, plenty firewood and all to ourselves for $50.00 per night!!!)
Nyamuziwa Falls, Nyanga…
This water was cold!!!
And the day was rather misty…
I’m a little scared of heights, and the cliffs are pretty steep.
The wild-flowers are lovely near the falls…
These (below) were like a dried arrangement.
Some pretty odd ones too!
