Matetsi Water Lodge is one of those places you can’t quite believe is real. Or at least you can’t believe, sitting on the teak deck of your thatch-roofed bungalow, watching a family of warthogs sniff around your plunge pool as the Zambezi River meanders lazily by (they must have named it “mighty” at some other time of year), that you’ve managed to land yourself there. Mornings begin with coffee and warm biscuits delivered to your door—wake-up calls here come in the form of a gentle knock—on a tray with thick napkins and heavy silver, and days combine close encounters with lions and elephants (yours being the only vehicle for miles) with sundowner cruises starring crocodiles, hippos, and walking-on-water “Jesus birds.” The bungalows are quietly luxurious, appointed in dark leather, lush bedding, and minimalist African art, and the vibrant, creative food is served with South African wines in varietal-appropriate stemware.
That this place is in Zimbabwe makes it all the more hard to fathom.
I wish I could say that I’d enjoyed Matetsi the way I should have (when I go back, I will), but the truth is that by the time I arrived at the lodge, the terror of Zimbabwe circa 2009 had taken root inside me.
What was I doing there in the first place? I’d planned the trip last summer (after, but then before, the country was making the headlines every day), as a way to visit an old friend in Harare and stay at Matetsi, which is run by andBEYOND (formerly CCA, or Conservation Corps Africa), a company I’ve long admired and whose lodges I’m always looking for an excuse to check into. The idea to also write an article that would be deeply incriminating of crazy-man-president Robert Mugabe came much later.
Journalists aren’t so welcome in Zimbabwe these days, so on the way over, I re-read articles about Mugabe and his 28-year grip on power, then dump them in the trash at the Johannesburg Airport. In the half-dark of the Harare arrivals terminal, I scribble “teacher” on the immigration form and, at the request of my friend, pencil in the name of a hotel where it asks for “local residence.”
“No luggage?” she laughs, as I go to hug her outside. Apparently it’s an event here when the bags arrive with their owners.
I will tell you that my friend’s neighborhood is leafy and lovely, that her backyard has the requisite pool, tennis court, and in-ground trampoline. I’ll tell you that her children attend a perfectly manicured, open-plan school, where little girls with blonde hair skip from the tidy computer lab to the well-stocked art room and are picked up at dismissal by chauffeurs in four-wheel-drives.
But that’s about all I can tell you, because according to the people who live in Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF cronies scour the Internet and then take whatever measures they deem necessary to silence dissenters and their relations. (At least that was presumed to be the case two months ago, before cholera had engulfed the place and the cash shortage had gotten so bad that civil servants and others no longer even bothered to report to work.) You’ve read about the starvation, the inflation, and the disease, about the “disappearances” of journalists and human rights activists. What you can’t imagine—or at least I couldn’t have—is the fear and paranoia that pervade Zimbabwe.
Some snapshots:
· My friend asks whether I’d mind, after typing them into my laptop, tearing up my notes into tiny pieces and burying them amid her compost.
· As we’re talking in her living room late one night, she stands up, walks over to the window, and quietly clasps it shut: Who knows if the night guard is ZANU-PF?
· The twenty-something local who’s serving as my driver/fixer introduces me to a friend of his, an “opposition” activist (the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, actually won more votes than did Mugabe’s party in the election last March), whose nose bears the graphic memory of a run-in with a ruling-party machete.
· A young woman who’s acted as an important source, and with whom I’ve spent the past two days, introduces me to her own husband with the same lie (“Catholic charity worker”) that I’ve originally used on her.
· A burly white farmer asks me whether I have the number of a lawyer, just in case. “You can’t be too paranoid,” he says.
· A grandmother affiliated with the MDC describes how she hid in her ceiling for three days to avoid being discovered by Mugabe’s thugs. She adds through tears that she expects them back to kill her any day.
· A distinguished-looking guard at the elegant (and dead-empty) colonial-era Victoria Falls Hotel asks how I am, and when I respond in kind tells me, “I am not fine. I am hungry.”
· After three hours waiting in the dingy domestic departures terminal of the Harare Airport, I look on with my fellow passengers as a wailing, flashing entourage skids to a halt before the picture window; dozens of bereted soldiers jump out, automatic weapons aflourish; and Mugabe and co. climb the now-red-carpeted stairway to what we’d previously understood to be our plane. Two more hours pass as we wait for the airport to hunt down some fuel for the single remaining Air Zimbabwe craft.
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.