Robyn

Zimbabwe. Thoroughly exciting.

This is the first time I’ve properly been to Zimbabwe, having only previously frittered around the edges at Victoria Falls (Zambia border) and in the Chimanimani Mountains (Mozambique border). Today is hugely exciting for that and because I am reuniting with Michelle and we’re going to a music festival together with her partner Luke. I have a work engagement here starting next week, so this was a perfect opportunity to combine with some leisure time.

Miombo Magic is held every year in a beautiful patch of hilly miombo woodland 25 kilometres north of Harare and organised by a local guy who I coincidentally met two years ago at a work meeting in Uganda. Michelle and Luke picked me up from the airport and en route to the festival we did some stocking up, mostly of gin and chocolate, for our campsite. At the supermarket checkout I got a crash course in Zimbabwean currencies, which are confusing but much more stable than the infamous period of hyperinflation and severe economic crisis. The US dollar is currently in use although officially the currency is the latest iteration of the Zimbabwean dollar, locally known as ZiG. Prices are listed in a mixture of the two currencies and no one has change for either. This means there is a convoluted negotiation process each time a purchase is made, whereby in lieu of change the customer has to accept whatever the cashier is offering: a pen, a stale doughnut, another assorted nick nack. I already possess an unwanted number of these.

We arrived at the festival and I was down on the ticket list as Robyn. We set up camp, and the festivities commenced in a beautiful spot where the main stage had a vista as pictured. The music played, the sun went down, the chill of the plateau descended and the night became increasingly hazy from there…