Picture Me Walkin'

(the Great Enclosure on the left, home to only the most favored wives of the king) While in Zimbabwe we decided to check out Great Zimbabwe, the largest pre-colonial structure in sub-Saharan Africa. There's not a lot to say about it really, the pictures really tell the story. (The king and his buddies live on the top of the hill. Sorry, no girls allowed) I don't really remember the facts unfortunately. It is dated to around the 15th (or was it 12th?) century. It is now accepted that it was built by bantu speaking peoples, despite the best efforts of white historians to ascribe it to just about anyone other than the Natives- Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, whoever. (Scholars postulate that this structure could possibly be phallic in nature. Hard to imagine) It was thought that about 2000 people resided there in its heyday, with status determining who makes it inside the walls. It was abandoned well before the colonists arrived, for unknown reasons. (The walls appear to be built...

(Beautiful central Harare) Zimbabwe has a reputation that precedes it. Tell someone you're going to Malawi or Zambia and more times than not they'll just stare blankly with an obligatory "Is that in Africa?" Zimbabwe however, people know. Zimbabwe carries a specific set of images to most Westerners with a solid grasp of current events (I think). Think about the word Zimbabwe, what comes to mind? For me it was three things. Robert Mugabe: governmental mismanagement at the most unimaginable scale. Trillion dollar bills: The utter failure of an economy and the highest inflation rate in the world outside of a war zone. White farmers getting their land stolen: official government policy placed any land owned by whites up for grabs to any squatter with a gun and started a land rush to the bottom. Zimbabwe in the Western media is a Bad Place whose president is leading them to their own destruction as fast as his old legs can carry them. I was under the impression that white...