Untukmu Para Pengunjung

Greetings are very important in Zimbabwe. When you walk into a room, you usually greet everyone one by one. When you pass people on the street, you greet them. Clapping is always involved. We usually greet people in Shona, but sometimes we use English. For example, this morning when I was out for my walk, I greeted people with "Good morning!" Most people responded "I'm fine." This is one of my favourite Zimbabwe-isms. Whether or not you ask people how they are doing, they will tell you, "I'm fine." It's sort of ironic though, because actually the sense we get is that most people aren't really fine. We were away for 2 weeks, and both the real exchange rate (as opposed to the government's fixed rate) and inflation have soared. That means all prices are up. In the six months we have lived here, the pensioners' rent on our compound has gone up from $1,000/month to $25,000/month. That is quite a dramatic increase, and yet their pension is still at the $1,500/month rate.

We arrived back in Zimbabwe a bit later than we had planned. Sunday we flew to Nairobi, and still managed to miss our flight to Harare despite being 6 hours early at the airport. The rumour is that Air Zim never arrived in Nairobi, and just didn't bother to let anyone at the airport know. (By the way, they don't call it "Scare Zim" for nothing - when we got on the plane to fly to Kenya, my seatbelt was broken, as was John's seat, and let's just say it was quite a shaky flight!) Kenya Airways put us up at the Hilton Nairobi for the night (brie cheese and satellite t.v. - imagine!) and then they flew us in the morning. Unfortunately, they had to take everyone's luggage off the flight. They needed to bring extra fuel because there was none at the airport in Zimbabwe. No fuel at the airport. Sometimes it feels like a sad joke. It's good to be home though - to see friends, and to hear Shona again. We re-started classes last night. Our vacation was incredible, but it's also good to come back to some normalcy. That is, if you call this normal.... :)