The last 2 weeks have been a bit scattered. I spent Easter and the following week in Harare for HIFA, which was great, however I ended up spending another week in Harare for the car. I went to pick up a friend from the airport and noticed a horrible noise the car was making. I was like something was going to fall out the bottom of the car and I could feel it in the pedals. So I called the mechanic who comes to pick up your car from wherever you are. He took it for a test drive around the block brought it back and said that it had to be towed, it wasn’t safe to drive, OOPS! So he had the car for about 10 days turns out the fan belt was destroyed as well as the tensoner, he took the suspension apart as well as I had told him I had some work done on the shocks, boots and cv joints and the shocks we sliding around and 2 of the 4 boots needed to be replaced. So I also asked for it to be serviced. Grant is who usually looks after my car, he’s good at explaining things and showing me in the car what’s wrong, he also gives me all the parts he took out and shows why they needed to be replaced. So after 2 weeks of the city I came home to Nyanga yesterday, I noticed a HUGE difference driving the car back. The last weekend I was in Harare my old roommate who now lives in Harare whom I was staying with suggested I go with her to Kariba for a break. The car’s in the shop and you need some r’n r was her rational. So I agreed. Kariba is damn that separates Zambia from Zimbabwe along the Zambezi if you go farther up the Zambezi you reach Victoria Falls. It’s not very populated and there isn’t much there but the bush. There are lodges and cabins that range from rustic to The Ritz, and by rustic I mean rustic. We were somewhere in the middle, a small cottage on the lake where the hippos came onto the front lawn to eat the grass, I could open my widows and watch them. The zebras would lay in the yards in herds and just sleep or sun bathe. When the hippos come out at night you are suppose to stay indoors as they can very vicious and can easily kill, but we just stood in the door way and they didn’t take any notice. Hippos eat 40kg of grass a day, which surprised me as I didn’t see 40kg’s worth of grass anywhere much less feed the dozen that were there. There were also crocodiles but they stayed in the lake, which is a good thing as well as loads and loads of birds. There are several little islands in the lake, one called Starvation island, which during the low season animals go out there for food but there isn’t any and they stay too long looking and when the water rises they get stuck out there and starve. In 1977 Operation Noah took place to rescue all the animals off the islands back to the main land so they could eat, some mother’s of animals killed their young to save them as they didn’t understand what was going on, everyone once in a while still today small rescues are done. Kariba is very hot, one of the hottest places in Zimbabwe but as we are heading into winter I found it as hot as the rest of Zimbabwe is during the summer plus there was a breeze.

The good news, no GREAT news is that excavations are finished AND site inspection was approved!!!!! I didn’t have any doubts about the quality of work or if it was right but I did have concerns on how long it would take to get the inspector to site and if he would want a bribe to pass us BUT it was all fine and we are now moving on to the pouring of footings, rebar and foundations.