After some time in Mozambique, crossing back into Zimbabwe felt like stepping into abundance. Markets were full, colors loud, fruit piled high in ways that felt almost theatrical after the dry austerity of the road behind me. The air carried a sense of movement, of possibility. I remember thinking that this was what relief looked like in physical form. Not dramatic, not loud. Just full tables and people going about their day.
The Chimanimani Mountains stayed with me longer than most landscapes do. There was something deliberate about them, as if they had chosen to be there rather than simply ended up there. The light moved differently across those slopes. Mornings arrived quietly, without announcement, and the evenings seemed to fold themselves neatly into darkness.
At the hotel, I met white farmers who had left after Mugabe came to power. They told stories of departure with a strange mix of grievance and nostalgia. One of them mentioned that they had ended up in the United Arab Emirates, making moonshine of all things. That took a moment to process.
We talked about Bulawayo. I asked how big the city was. Five thousand, one of them said casually. That puzzled me. I had imagined a place much larger.
Oh, you mean those, he clarified when he saw my confusion.
Those. The word hung there, stripped of decoration. It did not take long to understand that in his arithmetic, people who were not pink did not count as people at all. It was not shouted, not defended, not argued. Just stated, as if it were an obvious truth. I remember my quiet unease settling in. It became harder to relate to the stories I heard. Who was visible and who had been made invisible long before I arrived?
Bulawayo itself faded quickly. But I met an American there whose company stayed with me. He said little about himself, and I was never quite sure what had brought him there. I did not ask. Yet somewhere in the conversation, the idea that life could unfold far outside familiar expectations began to feel less like a thought and more like a possibility.
Victoria Falls took my breath away in a way I had not thought possible. The scale refused to fit into the mind. The water did not simply fall. It roared, surged, and insisted on being noticed. Mist climbed into the sky like smoke from a fire too large to contain. Standing there felt less like sightseeing and more like witnessing something that existed entirely on its own terms.
Later, after Kariba Lake, we took a canoe onto the Zambezi. The water moved slowly enough to feel calm, but never still. We swam in the river despite crocodiles and tiger fish, a decision that made sense only if you ignore logic and thrive on borrowed confidence. Our guide carried a calm that felt earned rather than performed. I trusted him because he moved like someone who understood the river, not someone trying to impress it.
One night, deep in the dark, the guide woke me. Quietly, without urgency. He asked me to move a little to the side of the tree where I was sleeping. Just enough so I could see.
On the other side stood a full-grown elephant.
Not ten meters away. Massive. Still. And completely silent.
I waited for the sound that should have followed something of that size. A step. A shift. The crack of a branch. But there was nothing. No vibration in the ground. No sound in the air. It did not walk so much as glide, moving slowly past the tree and into the darkness again, as if weight did not apply to it.
It stunned me more than it frightened me. Something that large should announce itself. Should demand attention. Instead, it moved as if it had no weight at all.
One of those images that never fades, no matter how many years pass.
I lay awake afterward, listening to the darkness settle again.
This is the second part of a journey that began in Mozambique. The first part is here: Edges of the Journey
