Journey to Main Camp

Even though it is only around 100km away, we don’t often get to travel down to Main Camp these days. Last week we were invited to a meeting there to discuss responses to the current poor water supply for animals in the Park. The meeting was due to start early so we had to travel all the way around by the main Victoria Falls to Bulawayo road as the trip through the Park itself is too slow. Sue took the opportunity to get some photos of the communities along the road.

    No two homesteads are alike. Most are traditional round or square huts with earth walls and a grass roof…..

  

   Not all have a grass roof. This one is made of old oil drums beaten flat……

   Some have a mixture of styles……

   And some are tidy…..

    Whilst others are less so……

To the outsider they are all picturesque but life in these communities can be very hard. Most of the people seen by a passing motorist are women carrying babies, water, food and firewood.

  It is often thought that the men are at home doing nothing while the women do all the work but in many rural communities a lot of the men are away in towns such as Hwange and Bulawayo or are outside the country – in South Africa or Botswana - trying to earn a living.

   Schools are available and most children are willing to walk long distances to attend…..

Though trying to learn in the heat of unshaded classrooms such as these near cross- Dete must be hard.

In such hot, dry countryside, small-scale farming is a precarious way to make a living and some people try other things as well. Along one stretch of the road there are a number of Baobab trees and people here sell the fruits - three for a dollar….

In other seasons the same people sell dried umNyii – the fruits of the wild Bird Plum (Berchemia discolor) or melons that they have grown in their fields.

Nearby are some wood-carvers whose stall has been a feature of this section of the road for many years….

There are two or three small irrigated gardens growing food for sale and home consumption and either using small dams or, as here, a hand-pumped borehole….

And there are various shops, such as Dinde Store, close to the Inyantue River……

 But over long stretches there are still wide open, undeveloped spaces such as here, looking towards Kamativi from around cross-Dete…

Or here, on the road from Dete village……

It was a long hot journey, and it took us to a long hot meeting.  To be honest, I preferred the journey.