Beitbridge and Monotonous Driving

After South Africa’s parting shot, I have to say I was quite ready to move on and see what Zimbabwe had to offer. Unfortunately, it took us about 1.5 weeks longer to get here than we had hoped, all due to the time required to replace our stolen items. However, we managed and got on the road heading north from Johannesburg a week ago this past Sunday. It wasn’t all miserable times trying to organize passports, bank cards and credit cards our last two weeks in South Africa, mostly because Christy and I managed to catch up with an old friend of mine from Peace Corps Ghana, Leslie Marbury. She and her husband Tommy were nice enough to open their house to us for a week and what a week it was. Lots of booze and a bit of karaoke. I have to say, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it could be!
But I digress. After a bit of last minute shopping, we hit the long road north to Harare. Not much to report in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, except for the nice mountain range you pass through just north of Louis Trichardt. After that though…desolate semi-desert dotted with beautiful boabob trees that somehow make the scenery more tolerable, mostly because these giants always impress with their beastly trunks. Oh, the addition of a stereo in the Beast over the last month also helped enormously (yes, we are now rocking out in an effort to cover up the loud growl of the Beast). Around 3:30/4pm, we finally hit Bietbridge, the bridge over the Limpopo River that marks the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. What we thought should be the easy part of the crossing actually ended up taking about 1.5 hours due to the illegal nature of the Beast. When Ant originally brought her across over 7 years ago, she was never officially registered in the system. For that reason, all of the Revenue Service staff got excited because they knew some money was about to change hands. So, we sorted that issue out (thank you replacement debit card!) and actually managed Christy’s ‘lack of a visa’ issue pretty quickly. Thank you friendly Sepedi people! We were on our way, with the sun setting over the Limpopo.
Then the mayhem that is the Zimbabwe border. Lines of trucks and vehicles laden with goods, all trying to cross the border at the same time. Christy was driving at this point because she was the only one with a valid license. So, I left her with the truck and headed up to the border post, where we stood in three different lines, paid three different tellers, shook off the help of one well wisher/helping hand, and somehow managed to get through customs without a single person checking the large amount of bags, boxes and other sundry items in our truck. This was surprising as every other vehicle was completely emptied so as to check their contents. What was immediately apparent on the Zimbabwean side, however, was how friendly and helpful everyone was. It was like heaven compared with the South African’s we were used to dealing with. At the border, where my experience tells me you have to be most careful, we were barely disturbed. In fact, despite the delays associated with a paper-based system and a missing cashier, it was quite a pleasant experience. Not quick though. By 6:30 we were through the gates and considering our continuing drive north. By this time I took over the drivers seat and Christy convinced me to go no further than the heavenly sign of a Holiday Inn Express just across the border, where we showered and slept in comfort before the remaining 6 hours of driving ahead…
Up early for a 7am departure so that we can avoid the complication of arriving in Harare after sunset. Well, it was a good thing we stopped when we did because the roads in Zimbabwe, while not terrible, are not great. Narrow. Bouncy. Lots of animals. Lots of big rigs passing towards the border. Did I mention the narrowness of the roads? This makes the drive more exciting as the big rigs pass. The scenery continued it’s monotony for another 1.5 hours or so – semi-desert, but without the grace of the boabobs. Only a few small towns were passed as it appears that the majority of the land in Southern Zim is ranch land. However, on the horizon we could see some mountains rising to the north. After passing the Runde River, we hit the koppies (rocky outcroppings that dot the landscape) and wished that we only had a bit of extra time to hike around in the mountain bliss. But as quickly as we hit them, we soon left them behind and to the East as we hit the high-grasslands that would soon lead us to Harare. So, after about 4 more hours of monotonous driving (thank you iPod for making that time pass), we hit the outskirts of Harare, never once having to flash a driver’s license. After filling the Beast’s tank (all 70 liters, with some left to spare) and unofficially changing some of our Rand into US dollars, we continued on our way to find Anthony and the ZimbabweAHEAD office. Oh, one note about US dollars at this juncture. You guys remember those $2 bills that we never see anymore in the States (I used to keep two of them in my wallet as a novelty item)? Well, they are all over the place here. Even more…the US Treasury apparently still prints them to date, as the most recent printing I’ve seen is from 2008! Crazy! And yes, it is a bit weird to see US Dollars exchanging hands all over the place and to have to switch back to thinking in dollars.
So…that was the trip to Harare. Very little stress after a very stressful month preparing to leave. We are now here and loving it. Harare is quite a beautiful city, mostly due to the enormous number of Jacaranda Trees that seem to line every single avenue and street here. These are the trees with the amazing purple blooms and we arrived just in time for them. Yes, the city and country as a whole is a bit run down. It actually looks like it was put on pause for 10 years. No war. No destruction. Just a bit run-down, like it needs a paintjob and some new fittings. It was a bit sad to see what used to be highly productive farms around Harare that are now defunct and overgrown. But this country is a far cry from where it was when I visited in November 2007. It’s amazing what a change in currency (and inflation – it was somewhere in the trillions of % earlier this year before the new government finally decided to axe the Zim Dollar) and a few competent people in strategic places can do. This country is well situated for an amazing recover as soon as the politics can sort themselves out. The people are highly educated, very friendly and relaxed and have a good work ethic. It’s really only a matter of time… but I will write more about that at another time. I’ve rambled enough for one night. Hope you enjoy!

Zimbabwe AHEAD

Despite our successes with the 9 Community Health Clubs we started training in Umzimkhulu  in January of this year, nobody has yet to come forward to support Africa AHEADs continued efforts in the Sisonke District of KZN. In addition, with our project in Durban only half-way completed, there is unfortunately a severe lack of work for me in South Africa at the moment. Therefore, the decision was made about one month ago that Christy and I should pack up our lives and head up north to assist our sister organization, Zimbabwe AHEAD, in their efforts to break into the mainstream of Zimbabwe’s health and development sector.

After last year’s horrible cholera outbreak, Zimbabwe AHEAD was recognized as one of the leaders in the water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) sector because of the significant lack of cholera in the areas where it operates. As the cholera outbreak devastated communities without appropriate health and hygiene education, those areas with Health Clubs (even those started over 10 years ago), were taking all of the necessary steps to avoid cholera’s transmission (hand washing, solid waste management, etc). In response, UNICEF and the other international organizations operating in Zim stated their interest in supporting such a successful, indigenous organization. For a variety of reasons, this support has not been forthcoming. One such reason posited by myself and Africa AHEAD’s director’s is Zimbabwe AHEADS lack of, how do I phrase this without upsetting anyone…, a white face. Ok, I just said it, but we believe it is true. Anyway, this is one reason I have been asked to travel north; to assist ZimAHEAD in becoming not just a preferred NGO in the WASH sector, but a leader and innovator who can work independently of the larger, more established international NGOs who, for better or worse, obtain the majority of donor funding in Zim.

To assist ZimAHEAD in reaching this goal, I will be traveling with 14 Nokia cellular phones. These phones will be our first line of offense in this battle. How, you might ask? Well, through an innovative research tool that allows surveys to be conducted via cellular phones and then uploaded directly to a central online database. The Mobile Researcher platform cuts the overall time needed for field-based research in half and when we prove its efficacy in a place as hard pressed as Zim, it is hoped that the Unicef’s, Oxfam’s and other big time players will wake up and take note. As if a successfully demonstrated methodology that stimulates sustainable hygiene behavior change is not enough to impress! As usual, I digress…

The second role I will play is to assist the Program Manager in Zim in obtaining regular and timely support for training new Health Clubs and supporting the health and development endeavors of those clubs previously established. As indicated above, many of the big players in this sector, despite their verbal offerings of support, appear hesitant to put significant support into ZimAHEADs programs. My job will be to keep the pressure on these players and assure them that the provided resources will be utilized appropriately. The hope is that we can break out of the current paradigm where ZimAHEAD is merely a secondary service provider beneath a larger, more established international organization. There is no reason that ZimAHEAD should and could not be a primary provider for Unicef or DFID (UK) or USAID (USA). My goal is to make this vision a reality through proper advocacy and demonstrated efficacy of appropriate monitoring and evaluation.

So, in short, I am heading into ‘Africa’, where the game is different. When I first began working in South Africa I realized immediately that I was working in the idealized state, where government funds and oversees development initiatives (with a little help from foreign donors in our case). At first I thought this would be refreshing…boy was I wrong. Now I’m heading up to Zim where I will no longer have to deal with the headaches of inefficient government. In fact, government might as well not exist at all.  Now it’s back to development as usual and I have to say, I’m interested to be able to make the comparisons. Check back here for my thoughts and muses on these two different systems of implementing health and development in Africa.