CAPE TO CAIRO - 6
"Under German management" reads a sign in German at the front of the Amadeus Garden Lodge in Victoria Falls, the village that takes its name from the famous waterfall. Proprietor Hartmut Giering (left) hopes that this promise of teutonic efficiency will give his guest house the competitive edge over the numerous other establishments in the neighbourhood. Times are hard. Giering and others working in tourism at the Victoria Falls have seen business drop by seventy percent since the year 2000. Giering, who has lived in Africa for many years, blames Mugabe's "land reform" for the slump. His living room is full of guitars and amplifiers, in his spare time he jams with local musicians and they will soon be making their first recording.
"...nothing doing here"
I arrived here in the afternoon from Bulawayo, taking an Air Zambia flight. The buses are no longer running, Zimbabwe suffers from a chronic shortage of petrol. Earlier in the morning there was a rumour circulating that the police at the airport were confiscating all foreign curerncy. I hid my dollars in my underpants, a somewhat uncomfortable hiding place, but the Zimbabwean police have already tumbled to the trick with one's socks. My taxi driver is talkative, but full of dispair. "There is nothing doing here", he says, If I'm lucky I get five fares a day. That's barely enough to keep me and my family. And Vic Falls does indeed resemble a ghost town. In the famous Victoira Falls Hotel (left), a solitary member of the hotel staff is hoovering the "welcome" mat. Only a few guests are staying in the hotel, where rooms cost US $300. On arrival at the famous waterfall itself, I found that I had the viewing platform more or less to myself. At the entrance, though, water-sellers and vendors of wooden giraffe carvings vyed with each other for the few prospective customers.
PR campaign with police escort
Tourism could bring Zimbabwe much-needed foreign currency and the government has started a PR campaign to boost the appeal of the Victoria Falls. Tribal dancers wearing feathers welcome tourists at the aiport. Special tourism police are on hand to make sure that the visitors with their valuable foreign currency come to no harm -- unlike the regime's opponents in the capital who equate the police more with repression than protection.
Augustin (right) is a tourist policeman. He is called Augustin because he was born in the month of August. He was sent here from Bulawayo a year ago and is trying to get used to the place . "The women in Bulawayo are more attractive" he says in a somehwhat despondent tone. But he says he enjoys working at the Falls as "you meet interesting people from all over the world". On asking him which countries they come from, he thinks for a moment and then says he doesn't know because "all white people look the same".
Local delicacy
It is now evening. In the Boma restaurant I am presented with a certificate for having courageously eaten a handfull of mopane worms. The dried larvae (left), which take their name from the mopane tree, are rich in protein and taste delicious when served with peanut sauce. Why then are the people at the next table looking at me so strangely?
Victoria Falls, 22nd November 2003.