Two parties were the bookends for our time in Harare, Zimbabwe. The first was at Roseanne and Sinks’ place and was our welcome to Zimbabwe. The second was at Peter and Judy’s, two new friends we met at the Hash run.

Cathy and I had arrived in South Africa a couple of days before. The flight to Johannesburg is 17 hour long, so we wanted a recovery day before heading to Zim. After sleeping in that first morning, we spent a half day touring Soweto, the slum area where the school riots had ignited in the ‘60s, helping to set South Africa on the road to independence. It was interesting to see the area where Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela had lived at different times. Both went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, although they didn’t know each other in Soweto.

The next day, we caught our flight to Harare, and linked up with the rest of our crew. Marty, Jim and Bill had arrived the day before, while Magoo got there in the middle of the night. Roseanne and Sinks, friends of Marty’s who had helped plan parts of the trip, were hosting a welcome party at their home. They would also travel with us for the houseboat trip on Lake Kariba.

We arrived at the party and Roseanne and Sinks greeted us like old friends. We hadn’t met in person yet, but had corresponded via email for several months and felt like we knew each other well. Also, all of us had run with various Hash House Harrier (H3) groups around the world and had that in common. The party was great fun and we met several local Hashers who were also invited. We spent the rest of the day eating, drinking, and making new friends.

On Sunday, we went to a festival at a local school. Think something like a county fair on steroids. The fair had everything from tractors to table linens for sale. We bought a few things, and then stumbled upon the gin tent. G&Ts with grapefruit slices proved quite refreshing.

Monday was spent touring Harare and a couple of its markets during the day, and then that night, we hashed with the Harare H3. A couple of the Hashers picked us up at our lodge and drove us to the start. Several of the people that night were folk we had met at Roseanne and Sinks’ two days before, so it was a bit of a homecoming, although it was our first time hashing with them. Later, after finishing the run, we had food and beers with the Hash. It was much like a hash back home, except shared mugs used during one part of the evening were washed with a bleach solution between drinks, due to the Cholera concerns in Harare. Later that evening Peter and Judy, two of the hashers, invited the six of us to their home for lunch.

The next day, we arrived at Peter and Judy’s a bit after noon. We were greeted with hugs and drinks. A few of the folk we had hashed with the night before were also there, and by now, we were all friends. Lunch went on for most of the afternoon, and there were lots of stories told of older times in Africa and Zimbabwe. In the late afternoon, we finally said farewell and walked back to our lodge. We needed to finish packing and get ready for our trip to Lake Kariba the next day. Our van was leaving at 6AM, and then we had a seven hour ride to Kariba. It would be a long day.

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This is the first in a series of short blogs I will publish over the next several weeks, about our trip to Africa in September and October of 2018. I’m not trying to be exact in detail, rather, I’m trying to give a bit of the spirit or feeling of the various parts of the trip. Read at your leisure. Or not.