Welcome to our blog, where we will be sharing photos of our travels. Stay tuned for travel musings from the boys! We finally got an appointment with a travel nurse. She was very flustered by our complicated travel itinerary and put us on hold at one point to talk to her supervisor. We will all need the typhoid vaccine, antimalarials, and antibiotics just in case. At the moment, Kaiser doesn't have any openings for our vaccine, so hopefully they can squeeze us in before we depart on Friday. We are also hoping to meet Aunteater at the international departure terminal as she is in town for a whirlwind 3-day trip. I just learned today that in addition to the Rocca Fellowship from the UC Berkeley Center for African Studies, I also got a Simpson ABD (All But Dissertation) Fellowship from Global, International & Area Studies! We have been pretty frustrated because we have had to rebook three of our flights at the last minute when the airlines cancelled our flights with the onl...
The power situation in Zimbabwe leaves much to be desired. My colleagues and Viv have all informed us that it has recently worsened. Fortunately, the cottage has a backup solar powered generator, but during outages, which can last up to 18 hours or longer, we cannot use the microwave, toaster, washing machine, tea kettle, oven, etc. Internet connectivity is also not great. Kyusik and I have repeatedly been dropped from our Zoom calls. There is no dryer either, so we have to hang up all of our clothes on a clothesline outside. At least we are able to use the gas stove, so we have been frying or toasting our bread in a pan and boiling water or heating up leftovers on the stove. It has also been pretty cloudy most of the time, which means that it doesn't ever warm up in the cottage. The only ways to get warm include taking a shower, getting into bed, building a fire (which only warms up the living area), and going for a run. Last week, while I was gone for 2.5 days in Mutare, a city a...
We just returned from an incredible overnight stay at a rhino conservancy, which is about a 2 hour drive southeast of Harare. I’m hoping the boys will write about it tomorrow. We have a lot of catching up to do with this blog on what we’ve been doing ever since we left Bulawayo, arrived in Capetown and are now Harare. In fact, I failed to document the visit we made to the 3rd of 5 UNESCO World Heritage sites here in Zim. The other two we visited were Vic Falls and Matobo National Park. The Khami ruins date back to the 15th century, rising to prominence after the fall of Great Zimbabwe (another UNESCO site). Fashioned similarly to Great Zimbabwe, the stone walls at Khami were built as retaining walls for terraces upon which huts were built. Similar to the walls in Cusco, Peru, these walls were impressive in that they were built by bricks that were carved to fit together rather than held together by mortar. The Khami walls were also decorated in layered check, chevron, herringbone, and o...
Neat!
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