Bulawayo

     OK, I know this is called the Hwange blog but we were in Bulawayo last week so I thought some scenes from the big city would make a change.

     Bulawayo is Zimbabwe’s second city and the main city in Matabeleland.  Sue and I are never quite sure where we would call ‘home’ – Sinamatella where we spend most of our time, Mlibizi on lake Kariba which is a sort of spiritual home, Hwange, Victoria Falls or Bulawayo where our family house is? I suppose Bulawayo has the best claim to being home and, much as I enjoy the bush, it’s always a pleasure to be there.

     Our house is in a small-scale farming area right on the edge of Bulawayo. We approach the city from the north and our first view of it is………

 

   As you can see, there is not much modern architecture in Bulawayo. In many ways it is a city where time seems to have stood still. The cars for sale are not exactly up to date……

 

    A lot of the other transport is pretty old-fashioned……

   And the “Luna Park” travelling funfair which is just setting up on the edge of town has a distinctly 1960s look.

  Bulawayo’s streets are famously very wide. This is Main Street, looking towards the city centre

    Not much traffic in that picture and the same applies even in the central business district where there is still room for hand-carts (known throughout Zimbabwe as ‘Scanias’) amongst the cars.

 

   There is a clothes market near the City Hall every Saturday. The clothes range from heaps of second-hand to smart new and Sue and our daughter Alison seem to enjoy searching for bargains….

    I spent two hours sitting in the car waiting for them. Close to where I was waiting is this statue. That's exactly how I felt as well........

   Bulawayo has an Art Gallery in a beautifully restored old building. Some years ago an exhibition was mounted in which paintings representing the “Gukurahundi” killings of Ndebele people back in the early days of independence were put directly onto the walls. The killings are a sensitive subject and the Gallery was quickly forced to cover its windows with newspaper so that the exhibition was not visible. They remain covered to this day.

   Back at Sinamatella after three relaxing days at home I found a big anti-poaching operation about to get under way. A large number of police support unit, rangers from Main Camp and Umtshibi and rangers from Sinamatella are being deployed for a while to do an anti-poaching sweep and it is intended that the operation will be repeated as often as possible. Recently the poachers have been targeting elephants as well as rhino. Hwange has plenty of elephants but that’s no reason to let them be killed of course so anti-poaching operations will continue as long as there are people elsewhere in the world who put a high value on tusks, bones and horns.