The Third World as seen from the saddle

After almost 3 weeks away, Jenny, Wallace and I have to go back home to Zimbabwe, with no small amount of trepidation. Actually, Wallace is going back with lots of trepidation, on account of the fact he went to the dog parlour. Some background for those who don’t know Wallace, he is a Scottish Terrier. Jenny and I took him on our holiday come business trip because we’ve always wanted to walk on the beach with a dog and it is near impossible to rent one. It was a toss-up between taking Wallace or taking one of the Great Danes, Chuck or Molly but Wallace not surprisingly, pulled the short straw.

Before Jenny dragged him off at the parlour, Wallace was a big rough tough farm dog, just with short legs. If he could speak, his first words would’ve either been obstreperous or swagger. After the parlour and sans all his hair and all his street cred, Wallace now looks like he might bark with a lisp and has forgotten how to cock his leg. True story, Wallace now wees like a girl, apart from a pair of hither to well-hidden pendulous and rather unsightly testicles. Alas. Poor Wallace. He’s just working out that he’s going back home to hang with a pair of Great Danes and already he can hear them laughing.

In a foot note to this story, having a dog on the beach was not quite as much fun as expected. The dogs on the beach that we’d seen previously ran around like Lassie, playing in the surf, barking at waves and chasing seagulls and frisbees. Wallace didn’t do any of that. As soon as he hit the beach, the only thing that Wallace was moved to do was have a pooh. And then as soon as he’d finished that pooh, he’d have another. And another. I think Wallace must have either have been a cat in a previous life or very constipated. I’m very glad we didn’t bring one of the Great Danes. Walking the beach with full to bursting Pick and Pay shopping bags is bad enough but trudging in sand with full to bursting black dustbin liners would be unbearable, in more ways than one.

Jenny and I are trepidated about going back to Zimbabwe, because we’ve had a 3-week glimpse of normal in a little town called Wilderness in the Western Cape. If trepidated isn’t a proper word, it should be. I don’t know about the rest of South Africa, but stuff in the Western Cape seems to work, including policemen, and passport offices. The friend we stayed with applied for and collected her new passport and new ID inside of two weeks and didn’t have to pay in foreign currency.

For Zimbabwean readers who have forgotten, here’s how normal works. For starters, policemen aren’t employed to whip, beat and or shoot citizens discontent with their lots in life. For people around here, normal is you get a job or start a business, you get paid a salary in a stable currency that you use to buy clothes from a clothes shop and vegetables from a supermarket, not from a university graduate on the side of the road. Once a week, maybe you treat your family to KFC, because it’s a fast food and not an investment. You drive on roads, not potholes, you turn on the lights and there is light, you open the tap and water comes out, water that you can drink. You save hard to buy a nice house and invest in a decent pension plan and after a lifetime of normal, you get to retire on your pension, in a town like Wilderness, or George next door, and you play bowls, or you ride your mountain bike, or walk on the beach with your dog and a stock of supermarket bags.

Apparently, we can expect none of the above when we get home. Apparently, we’re heading back to a Zimbabwe set to be rocked by civil unrest. The students of Njube High School staged a protest in the streets of Bulawayo last week and have called for more of the same, nationwide ‪on February the 3rd.  Apparently, almost the entire police force is currently hunting down a biology teacher from Njube High for supporting his students’ stand, apart from the 50 police officers arrested for protesting about poor working conditions. We’ve found out the hard way that policemen in Zimbabwe are prepared to whip, beat and shoot mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters. We’re about to find out if they are prepared to do the same to children. I hope the world is watching closely.

We’re going home to a Zimbabwe without mealie meal, which is like Italy without pasta, to a country where the machete gangs continue busy, hacking people up on the mines but now also in Mbare, after a rousing Nelson Chamisa speech there was well received by the people. The machete gangs would appear to be operating under some sort of protection because after laying siege to the Matapi Police Camp, just five kilometres from the City Centre, and I’m talking Harare City Centre, not Mogadishu, in search of the MDC MP who’d gone to the police station to demand police protection for his supporters. Silly man. As far as I can make out, not one machete gang member was arrested. The cops did however manage to arrest a few MDC supporters for being beaten.

The long arm of the law back home continues very selective. For example, our Supreme Court has just ruled that all US Dollar debts older than February 2019 can be repaid in Zimbabwe dollars, at a rate of 1 to 1. Pity that didn’t come out in time for Davos because it would have had international investors gathered there, slavering for a bit of the action. Despite his natty stand-out scarf, and despite his assurance that inflation in Zimbabwe as seen from his penthouse suite in the Meikles Hotel was well and truly licked, Minister Ncube would appear to have not landed a single foreign investor. International investors are a tough crowd and remained un-swayed by Ncube’s news that he’d soon be rolling out a brand-new and shiny $50 banknote to fix unsightly bank queues once and for all. I’m guessing they also track the Market Watch rate and have worked out Ncube’s biggest bank note is still worth less than 2 bucks US. And I’m guessing they’ve also worked out that the same will apply to Ncube’s $100 buck note, as and when that comes out, ditto his $1000 buck note. Alas. Well, I hope that he made full use of his very expensive air ticket to Switzerland and that he popped into see his wife and kids at the family home whilst there.

I bet you Ncube was relieved to hear the doctors are set to return to work in Zimbabwe, for 6 months at least, courtesy of a bail out loan from Econet’s Strive Masiwa. It remains to be seen whether Strive will also bail out the rest of the Civil Service who have just rejected government’s offer of a 140% salary increase. And in other news, Econet have just been awarded a massive increase in cell phone tariffs, not that I’m suggesting the bail out loan and the increase are in any way linked. And the Vice President’s wife’s criminal charges of fraud, illegal externalization of foreign currency and attempted murder in that order, appear to have been parked for now, whilst the couple slug it out in a dirty laundry Game of Thrones divorce squabble.

As mentioned, Jenny, Wallace and I have been in South Africa to press the button on my book, Running Dogs and Rose’s Children. I’m very happy to be able to tell you that it has gone to the printers and will be launched in Harare and in Johannesburg in February. According to the back cover, the book is a story of love and courage. Apparently, it is outrageous, exciting, funny and tragic and my irrepressible sense of humour bubbles throughout, especially on pages 14, 30, 51, 65, 92 and others too numerous to mention. I will be donating R30 per paperback copy sold to the pensioners and hope to raise R150,000 for them from the book in 2020.

Along with supermarket bags full of Wallace pooh, stressing about the pensioners at home has taken the gloss off 3 weeks on the beach. I have been in touch with charities throughout and am told that things are back to 2008 bad. I am happy to report that the Old Legs Tour has been able to provide an 85-year-old pensioner without a pension with oxygen for 6 months. He has a very clever machine that makes oxygen but hadn’t had electricity for 24 days to run the machine. We’ve also just been asked to help an old guy with a bust femur and no money for an operation. I think I’ll ask Strive if he has any largesse left over.

But I am also going back to Zimbabwe full of hope that this year Zimbabweans will finally change what they cannot accept, instead of the other way around.

One of our pensioners has suggested a novel fund raiser challenge for the 2021 Old Legs Tour; riding the Zambezi River from source to mouth on water bikes. He assures me the ride will be epic with no up-hills or punctures. I’m scared to look at water bikes on the internet in case I get infected.

Water bikes on the Zambezi will have to wait for at least another year though, as our plans for the 2020 Tour to the Skeleton Coast continue to take shape. I’m hugely proud to re-introduce you to Jaap, Tjeerd, Floris and Jans from UFO Supplies in the Netherlands who have come on as sponsors, yet again. Thank you, guys, for your continued help and support.

The hardest job in the Tour peloton is feeding the peloton. Not surprisingly, because we’ll average 125 km, often on sand and dirt, and 4000 calories plus burnt per day, on the Skeleton Coast Tour. And so, I’m especially pleased to introduce you to the second member of our Support Team, Vicky Bowen. Married to Peter, ex Horseshoe Guruve farmer now living in Christon Bank, Vicky is mother to BJ and Brandon and grandmother to a cast of four. Vicky will bring loads of energy on Tour and loads of humour.

In training news, Jeff Brown has been training in Spanish on a spinning bike in a hotel in Colombia while Alan Crundall racked up 220 kms in a week in Australia. In a pathetic attempt to get rid of his Castle Lite inspired paunch, which he blames entirely on Paul Vermeulen, Bruce Fivaz is headed back to Zim to train at altitude for a month. Not to be outdone, Ron Roper has introduced Carl Wilson to Fokof Lager, apparently the ultimate for carbo loading and developed especially for the Zimbabwean market. In anticipation of his resultant paunch, Carl is planning a training ride for all of us to Umfurudzi and back, followed by a ride to Marondera to introduce the new Old Legs to Borradaile Trust and Ida Wawako.

I am woefully under done on the training front and will hurt all the way to Umfurudzi. I was cruelly exposed on the hills up and out of Wilderness on the 4 rides I managed to squeeze in. I rode with Jock Thompson, best friend from 35 years ago. Unable to breathe, let alone talk, Jock and I struggled to catch up on the rides but did so over a million beers after. Half-way up a particularly harsh hill, a lady in a Land Cruiser stopped to ask Jock and I if we’d seen her run away Border Collie. Using sign language, we told her she’d have to wait for us to get our breath back before we could answer. After 3 minutes of waiting, she left in a wheel spin, in search of her dog and or cyclists more fit.

In closing, please remember the Old Legs Tour is offering a one-off chance to become World Record holders.  Please find someone to tie your legs to and start practicing for our assault in March on the Guinness World Record for Three-Legged Racing. All proceeds to the pensioners. Watch this space for details.

And a huge shout out to Ryan Zimdollar Moss for his epic video that captured our ride to Mt Kilimanjaro. Check it out on Facebook

Until my next blog, survive and enjoy if possible

Eric Chicken Legs de Jong.

Photos below – my book, Wallace before and after, me and Jock, a beer brewed for training in Zimbabwe, and, Jenny and Wallace on the beach. Please note Jenny is carrying zero shopping bags