Day 63 - Alex's Last Blog

Day 63 started at precisely at 6:53 with Lisa franticly knocking at our door with a pair of dirty socks.  Being significantly more asleep than awake, all that I got from our brief conversation was, "hide these socks or Busi will kill me twice".  How one can kill another twice is beyond me, let alone killing someone over a pair of dirty socks.  So as killing someone twice would, logically, be twice as bad as killing someone once, I hid the socks.

The rest of the morning was far less dramatic.  Our van had broken again, this time leaving us unable to secure the vehicle as the driver's window developed a tendency to fall down on it's own accord.  We had arranged to get it fix but repairs didn't happen until afternoon.  This lest us with no other choice than to watch Fringe and do some things around the house that we'd promised to do.

When the van had finally been fixed, we dashed into the shops to buy toffee syrup and a few 1L glass bottles of Coke.  Andrew and Jonno purchased every bottle of toffee syrup that the TM supermarket had in stock (7 bottles in total).

Following our short shopping adventure, we picked up the girls from school and dropped everyone home while Lisa and I went to the other side of town.  We had arranged to see a couple of girls that had stayed at the SJC center and were sponsored by my parents.  One of the girls had recently given birth to a boy and had requested that I come and take some photos to send home to Mum and Dad.  Unfortunately because of time, we were only able to stay for a short while.

Lisa and I headed back home to pick up Andrew and Jonno for our last ever game of ultimate frisbee.  We arrived part way through the first game and immediately jumped into teams.  We played three games in total with Jonno and I winning two of those.

You know it's come close to the end of your trip when you start noticing everyone talking about weekly events that you'll miss because you are leaving.  It's difficult thinking about having to leave as I walked into this trip thinking that two months would be enough.  Looking back at the last nine weeks, I can honestly say that nine weeks was not enough but was still one of the best trips that I've made here.  We have accomplished far more than I would have thought, made significantly more friends than I would have though and yet, it feels like we've only just started scratching the surface.

The thing about Zimbabwe, and Africa, is that it will be different to your pre-conceived ideas that you would have developed listening to the media.  While the media only focus of the negative, the negative is such a small part of Zimbabwe that, when you arrive, it seems crazy that you even worried about it in the first place.

For those of you have considered coming - just do it.  A trip to Zimbabwe is one that you will never forget.


Alex