I had a great first “month” of the World Race in Zimbabwe. I say “month” because we actually only spent a few weeks in Mutare, Zimbabwe after launch and several travel days. And we actually had to head back to South Africa a little early because our hosts had a conference to attend.
During the month I saw a lot, did a lot and learned a lot, but I really failed at consistently blogging about it because I was so overwhelmed with my experiences and we only had a limited amount of Internet to share among 16 people.
So I figured the best way to update everyone at home was to summarize my whole month through a series that I’m going to call Zim Recaps. The first one is about our living situation and what daily life looked like in Zimbabwe. Stay posted for the ones about community, ministry and one with three of my standout moments from the month.
1. Two teams, my team and team Ignite, stayed at the home of a former racer, Jenni, and her husband, a native Zimbabwean, Felix, in one of Zimbabwe’s bigger cities, Mutare. They also have a three-month old baby girl, Njiva, who is the most precious baby ever and always made life cuter.
2. My team got to stay in the house, and the other team tented in their giant yard.
3. Power, which they call “SEZA,” water, and WiFi were never guaranteed. They could go out at any time, and they certainly did go out at some very inconvenient times, but we just felt thankful to have those things at all. Some people don’t, you know…
4. Because of the previous point, we took bucket showers and only flushed the toilet when absolutely necessary to conserve water. I liked how environmentally conscious it felt, and it didn’t bother me at all. Again, we were just thankful to have a real shower and toilet. Some people don’t, you know…
5. The weather was beautiful for the most part. The first few days were cool, and towards the end it got hot. It basically felt like Florida only nicer with less rain.
6. We cooked our own food, and got to be very creative on a tight budget. We shared responsibilities, and our teams alternated the cooking. We ate things like oatmeal, chilli, mashed potatoes, rice and veggies, and lots of PB&J sandwiches. Some nights we got extremely blessed – we had pizza one night, one night the church we worked with blessed us with a bunch of meat and cokes, and a friend of our host’s gave us cheese (which is extremely expensive in Zim) and ice cream, which we enjoyed on the last night.
7. One of our ministry sites did feed us lunch, and we got to eat a lot of Zimbabwe’s staple food, sudza, which is made out of a corn meal type paste. It’s very filling, and if you ever get the chance to try it, my advice is not to take too much.
8. I had no problem finding coffee and tea. The people here drink coffee and tea literally all the time. Before church. After church. In the morning. In the afternoon. At night. If they have you over for company. Always.
9. In Zimbabwe, they speak Shona and English. Many of the children, however, only speak Shona, and when you try to speak Shona they are so entertained. So I did my best to learn as many Shona words as possible and use them as often as I could. I think I communicated pretty well. YAY SHONA!
10. They use U.S. dollars here in Zimbabwe, so we didn’t have to worry about any exchange rates Zimbabwe used to use ZIm dollars but the inflation was so high and the economy eventually crashed in 2008. Hopefully using our currency is just temporary for Zim, but for now it was pretty convenient for us.
