It isn’t all murder and misery, though. I spend an hour or two most afternoons sipping cappuccino and emailing back home from one of Harare’s comfortable downtown coffee shops. One evening I attend a moving dance recital featuring students of every age and skin color. And at night I sit down to dinner with my friend, her husband, and their three children and we exchange silly stories (mine much edited) about our day’s activities over aromatic curries and stir-fries prepared by their live-in cook. (Snicker if you will; this family and others like it—black, brown, yellow, white—are trying to go about their lives here and are helping feed, clothe, and care for Zimbabweans in the process.)
Still, by the time I get to Matetsi, I am a wreck. Two days earlier, I’ve learned that an organization I’ve been in contact with for my story suspects its email is being monitored. So it’s likely the government knows I’m here. Also, while I’ve planned to email my notes back home and then erase everything from my laptop, I haven’t factored in the repeated (many would say deliberate) phone outages. If I get caught and my computer confiscated, it won’t be just my own well-being that’s in danger, but that of anyone identifiable from my notes. (One local human rights worker has already gone off on me about the journalists who run around Zimbabwe collecting stories only to be nailed at the airport, where they proceed to squeal on all their sources.) I copy everything onto a flash drive, then spend hours burying names and phone numbers amid Christmas lists and other personal files. And then I lie awake trying to figure out whether to put the drive and my micro-cassettes in my boots or at the bottom of my carry-on, whether to pack them in my suitcase and then risk checking it in.
So when, the day after arriving at Matetsi, the activities coordinator of the lodge asks if I wouldn’t mind meeting her for tea in the lounge, my fear revs into overdrive. I don’t doubt the coordinator’s honor—she, like everyone here, is all genuine smiles—but it seems everyone in this country has got a gun to her head. If someone tells you he’s going to kill your kid, you turn over the American journalist.
After 45 minutes of pretending to read my book, and then making small talk, in the lounge (where nobody jumps out to kill me), I decide to brave the return to my bungalow. My hands tremble as I turn the key and force open the heavy door, and I gasp out loud at what I find. The slate floor has been sprinkled with hundreds of pastel-colored flower petals, and tiny flickering candles trace a path from the hallway to the bathroom. Incorporated into the floral tableau are various groupings of words—“JOCELYN,” rendered in bougainvillea blossoms and framed by a pink-gardenia heart, and “ENJOY YOUR SURPRISE TONIGHT.” Over by the bathtub, exploding now with suds that rise halfway to the ceiling, the message “GUEST FOR LIFE” glows between a pair of dancing flames.
I realize that my little happy ending won’t have you running out to book a trip to Zimbabwe—and you may even take issue with my having gone in the first place—but here’s a plea to keep the place in mind. Yes, most of the foreign currency currently lands in the hands of Mugabe and friends. But not all of it does. And with the new power-sharing agreement (meant to go into effect this week), the country could see some real change for the better. (In any event, average citizens and visitors can move about freely; it was only because I was there in the capacity of a journalist writing about the government that things got so sticky.)
Steve and Nicky Fitzgerald, the couple behind andBEYOND, have worked incredibly hard, as have their 120 employees, to keep Matetsi open (as you can imagine, they go through all sorts of contortions to get ingredients, procure fuel, and move dollars around), and I’d argue that spending your money there does more good than harm. And your visit will benefit not just lodge employees and their extended families but the animals themselves: Matetsi, like all andBEYOND properties, is a reserve, founded to protect the land and the animals who live on it, and the alternative to tourism activity would likely be rampant poaching.
Whether he’ll truly loosen his iron grip is anybody’s guess, but either way, Robert Mugabe can’t last much longer (the man is 84 years old).
Here’s hoping something much better follows.
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