To anyone who fancies taking a bus trip from Harare to Johannesburg on Greyhound or Citiliner... know what you are getting into!
Our bus was scheduled to leave at 11 am on Saturday, December 20th, from Harare central bus station. As we sat in the shade of a bus trailer (one is not allowed on the beautiful green lawn - understandably) it slowly dawned on us that the stories you hear of delays and break-downs were very rapidly becoming our reality. By 12:30, once we enquired about the update of our departure information, all we got was a non-committed admittance to the fact that our bus was nowhere nearby and yes, we would be here for quite some time still. Just how much time, however, was not possible to say.
At this particular bus station, there is only a Chicken Inn. This is a budget version of KFC. Due to the cholera epidemic and the dodgy water situation, it was not wise to eat any uncooked fruit or vegetable that you hadn't washed yourself in some sort of disinfectant or that you could peel. That ruled out burgers and left only the option of 2 swimmingly greasy chicken drumsticks and chips. A delightful meal when hungry that went down really smoothly (due to the heavy-handed use of oil that could very well have been used for the first time in 2007), but that left an uncomfortable hint of indigestion... something small enough to be dealt with easily but loud enough to allow a nagging subconscious worry of possible food poisoning. We were all fine for our entire trip home.
At last at 4pm our bus arrived with its cargo. After unloading and loading up again, we were finally on the road. I figured that the most appropriate way to bide my time on the long trip home would be to sleep as much as possible. I was just dozing off when i felt a tickling sensation run up my arm. I lazily half-opened an eyelid to behold, a cockroach on my arm... shriek! No longer the 'lazy-eye', i looked up in disgust only to find that this was neither the only nor the biggest cockroach in my vicinity. Upon not-much-closer inspection, I realized that the bus wall was teeming with them. All shapes and sizes were walking, talking and dining on the wall of the bus... I had a window seat. I had to take mental control quick, my sanity was slowly draining out of me. I wanted to scream, cry or get the hell out of the bus, but to where? There was nowhere to go and so I sat, I sat and I confronted and I dealt! And I coped, just.
After that though, the waiting and the freaking I mean, not much could harm me more mentally. The border crossing was long and tiresome, considering the difficulty of sleeping on ± 30 cm wide seats, without air-con, and an intrusion of roaches. But at that point my mind had shut off. After a 2 hour queue at 3 in the morning, a cocky border officer tested the very last of my control (or had I given up altogether?) when she started wagging her head from side to side asking really silly, unimportant questions while refusing to stamp my passport. But I got through that too, and I was surprised to look forward to getting back onto the bus.
Finally, we were in South Africa and on our way home! But first, a diesel stop. This is the last stop before Zimbabwe when traveling to Harare, which means it is also the last time you are guaranteed fuel and stocked shelves in the shop before the long stretch of your journey on the Zimbabwean side. Needless to say, this place is always packed with people buying last-chance supplies. So we waited and waited for the people to get back to the bus, and eventually we were on our way... but wait, there were people missing from the bus. No ways! The bus driver had to turn around to go back for them. But it wasn't simply an issue of turning a large, overpacked vehicle 180 degrees... the traffic jam getting into the border from South Africa was backed up to where we were about to witness this feat. I can't recall exactly how long we were stuck there before we arrived at the garage, picked up our lost passengers and were then actually, really on our way home. Time as we know it didn't seem an appropriate measure during that experience, it was too foggy and unreal in our insane fatigue.
But, in honour of an appropriate cliche, there was indeed a light at the end of the tunnel. I have never seen as clearly as I did then, why people call South Africa the first world of Africa. The places we stopped had fresh, hot food- in variety- and the roads were smooth and well-tarred, and actually had all the correct lines and arrows painted onto it. And as we came to the horizon view of Johannesburg on the highway from Pretoria, it was breathtaking. Breathtaking because of its expanse, its infrastructure and the roads. The roads bustling with cars and people and taxis in amounts nobody from Harare could ever have imagined or believed had they not been exposed to such a sight before. I have never really loved and appreciated Johannesburg for what it is until that day. I had always taken my home for granted; the convenience, affordability and the bustle. I can absolutely understand why so many people from so many African countries would want to come here.
That stated, I will definitely go back to Zimbabwe, without a second thought... although next time I might just work a little bit harder and pay the extra money for a flight!
