This is an authorized translation in English of a post in French by @terresco: De Cape Town à Mombasa, 3 mois, 8 pays, 12 500 km – Le Zimbabwe 2

Remember that the person who speaks here is NOT me, Vincent Celier (@vcelier), but @terresco, a French guy.

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To cross Zimbabwe from west to east we chose to explore the shores of Lake Kariba. This is the wild side that attracted us, this part of the country has never been highlighted, far removed from the main communication axes. We were looking for the "deep" Zimbabwe, full of authenticity and tangible reality. We found it thanks to the easy contact with a simple and hospitable population.

The lake takes its name from the village where was built in the late 1950s, a hydroelectric dam that cuts the Zambezi River. The dam itself is one of the largest in the world. It resulted in the flooding of the Zambezi Gorge over almost 300km, with the floods causing the displacement of men and animals.

300 kms that turn into 500 by the tracks and that will take us a good ten days.

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Mbilizi

Our first stop will be Mbilizi, a tiny town at the far end of the lake, opposite the dam. We had heard about a boat making the trip to Kariba in two days from this place called Mbilizi. We parked the car (and therefore the tent) at the lake in a former fishing camp that had seen better days.

A couple of old white Zimbabweans completed the meager retirement of his South African exile by offering meals in their home. They had to leave their native Zimbabwe in the early 1990s but decided to return there to end their lives. Poor but dignified as can be old descendants of the English. Without possibility of health care or of any help, they were happy, just to be there, to speak again their language, to share the hope of a people waiting for the death of their old leader, hoping for better days. Born in the 1940s, their life was a history book, from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe to South Africa. With a visitor every three months they were ready to tell us their story, and we were ready to listen to it.

Binga

We did not take the boat, we chose to take the the trail, because we wanted to see people. The second step was not planned, a gentleman with a tired and dusty suit was hitch-hiking. He was the principal of a school in Binga, another small town on the banks of the lake. He invited us to his place, we accepted. It is incredible the number of beautiful encounters that can be made in Africa by taking people hitchhiking. I confess that sometimes I abuse a little, a soldier or a police officer in the car is very convenient to go through controls more easily.

Our new friend introduced us to Binga, facilitated everything we needed, introduced us to his friends. They told us the story of the dam that flooded the villages where their parents lived, forcing thousands of people to involuntarily move. New lands less suited to agriculture have ended up impoverishing a people that did not need that. He showed us how they are trying to cope with the lack of means in education. And everywhere we saw this mixture of resignation and invincible optimism.

The Trail

It was necessary to leave again, we must always leave again. In Zimbabwe the police are not always easy, the controls are often meant to give you a fine. After almost 20 years hanging out in Africa we are used to it, we manage. A good technique is to learn a few words of local languages to make the police laugh, they then do not know how to continue to play the bad guys. A beer out of the fridge at the right time works wonders to move from the status of a potential culprit to the one of a guest of honor.

No road, no police, so I was surprised to see my way hindered by an improbable barrier with a stop sign in faded colors. A man in uniform arrives, armed ... with a butterfly net. This is a tsetse fly control. With his net he looks in the car the presence of these beasts thirsty to make us sleep. Nothing to report. He advises us to drive with the windows closed, welcome to tsetse zone, "the fly that kills livestock" in the Twana language, the one that transmits the sleeping sickness. We will see many, fat, ugly and particularly difficult to murder.

A little further the track becomes particularly difficult. It disappears between the low trees, we roll on a carpet of rocks becoming bigger and bigger. Slowly, it will take us several hours to cover 20 km without ever exceeding 5 or 6 km/h, in low gear. My wife has a naive confidence in my driving skills that I never suspected and she had fun. For me it's a lot of stress: changing a wheel in these stone inclinations would already be a challenge, breaking a damper would be really complicated. Fortunately in Africa there is never a problem.

Our last hitchhiker, while the track had become more easy, was a national guard. He explained to us that when the dam was filled it was not only people who had to be displaced, but also a large number of animals. An operation nicely named Noah has saved "in extremis" several thousand large animals over 5 years. Some could not be evacuated and were lucky to take refuge on islands where they still are and where they flourish in beautiful closed ecosystems.

Effective signage, a dozen km after the sign

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The 1^st police barrage signaled the return to civilization and delayed for half an hour a well deserved shower that we hoped to be able to take in the next village. We had to tell our journey and the difficulties and wonders of the last days, with our very tired faces. How could these young policemen punish a poor couple of old dusty travelers?

They told us that the dam is in a dangerous state and that many engineers have warned that nothing will prevent it from collapsing if urgent repairs are not carried out. If this were to happen, 3 million people would be at risk of death in Zimbabwe and neighboring Mozambique. Let's hope they just wanted to scare us.

It is with this vision of terror that we continue our journey to one of the most spectacular places of our trip, the Mana Pools National Park.

-- @terresco

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Africa, the long crossing
From Cape Town to Mombasa: South Africa
From Cape Town to Mombasa: Namibia
From Cape Town to Mombasa: Botswana
From Cape Town to Mombasa: Zimbabwe

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All pictures are property of @terresco