Zimbabwe - My Birthplace - Part 1

(Click on pictures to view larger)

I am finding that while sifting through some of the CDs I brought from England with me I am finding photos that are bringing back memories so I guess I will post as I find things and in the end it should all come together to form my life story LOL.

These older photographs are scans of negatives and slides and were done about 7 - 10 years ago when the equipment we had wasnt as good as it is today.

I was born in a country called Southern Rhodesia, which became Rhodesia after their independence from the British Empire in 1965 (it had been a British colony until then), and then Zimbabwe which is the name it is known by now.

The photographs today are of one of the more common modes of transport by the black african people out in the rural areas. They used donkeys and were pretty ingenious when it came to making harnesses and wagons for them out of whatever they could find. Here is a very happy bunch trotting down the roadside.

I took this photo on one of my many road trips from Bulawayo which is the city of my birth to Johannesburg in South Africa.

If you look at the map that comes up when you click here or on Zimbabwe you will see a map of Africa and Zimbabwe, and Bulawayo is in the southwestern part of the country. The second picture is of some of the amazing rock formations in the Matobo National Park which is just outside Bulawayo. We used to spend a lot of time in this area while I was growing up. There were game parks/reserves where you could view all sorts of wildlife while you drove around the reserves which were protected areas.

It has many picnic sites where people used to go and have the equivalent of a BBQ except we used wood and a steel grate perched on rocks over the coals to cook our steaks, sausages (boerewors), corn on the cob and baked potatoes to name a few of the items. We called it a Braaivleis (this is the afrikaans word for roasted meat - afrikaans is one of the languages spoken in South Africa). Some people had portable Braais so they didnt have to rough it with the rack and rocks LOL.

There were many small dams where you could fish for Bream and large mouth and black Bass and a fish that we called Barbel which is similar to the catfish here in the USA. The unique feature of this whole area was the granite outcrops, huge granite domes and rocks which do balancing acts as the soil has eroded away over the centuries. We used to spend hours climbing up these natural formations.

Cecil John Rhodes, the man that Rhodesia was named after is buried on top of one of these huge domes which is called "World's View" or "View of the World" because you can see forever from the top of it and it was one of his favorite places to be. It has to be one of the most peaceful places on earth, I always used to make a trip there when I went to visit my daughter.

To be continued .....

I have so many memories flooding in that I am having a struggle to decide what to write LOL, so I hope that you all find this journey interesting.

Mike thanks for the help with the HTML, I will crack this thing if it is the last thing I do LOL. Abraham I asked Larry about the pitch forks, the three prong is used for hay, and the five prong is known as a manure fork because the prongs are closer (But I use a basket type of plastic fork to pick the stables which sifts the sawdust through and leaves the poop in the basket to be discarded), not too sure what the significance of the four prong is other than maybe for a general garden fork or digging work?

CG and Photogchic, my daughter's grandfather on her father's side was actually born in Alnwick, which is a small town near the Scottish border if I remember correctly on the east coast of England.

Well now that I have taken that trip down memory lane I hope the links all work. I will be back tomorrow ((((Hugs))))

Lori
xx