Travel Experience: My Trip to Zimbabwe in 1998 - Yahoo Voices - voices.yahoo.com

In January of 1998 I had the opportunity to travel to Zimbabwe and Kenya as a part of a service learning trip from my college. The previous year I traveled to Calcutta as a part of another group. In Calcutta, I experienced abject poverty and despair on many levels. Calcutta was a big, loud and dirty city. There were many people living in the streets and begging on the sides of the roads. Children would mob us to try and take money from us. Zimbabwe was different. Zimbabwe is also a very poor country. Our group, however, was in the country. We were not in a major city. We stayed at a boarding school run by the Methodist Church.

Because Zimbabwe is south of the equator, when we arrived in January the students were still on their summer vacation. Within a few days of our arrival, the students also returned to school from their break. It was common for our group to come to Zimbabwe from the States every couple of years and so the students were used to seeing us. In fact, four years before I came, my brother had been a part of this same group and had made friends among the students of the school. One of the boys was still there. He had graduated but his mother worked at the school. His name was Simba, just like the character from the Lion King.

Our yellow school bus full of white faces pulled up outside of the dormitory that we were going to be staying in. Immediately upon getting out of the bus, there was a boy a standing there waiting for us. It was Simba and he was asking for my brother. The other members of the group, most of whom did not know my brother, were shouting toward me telling me that there was a boy out there looking for someone with my last name. Before I left for Zimbabwe, my brother gave me a gift to give to Simba. Simba was a big fan of NBA basketball and so I went with a basketball magazine for him. When I got off the bus I told Simba who I was and gave him the magazine on my brother's behalf. He seemed to be happy about it, though, I think he really wanted to see my brother.

The thing that surprised me the most about Zimbabwe was how green and mountainous it was. There were trees everywhere. I had always envisioned Africa differently, as flat and dry. But Zimbabwe was so lush and completely different from what I had imagined. While that made the biggest impression on me immediately, the people of Zimbabwe are what will remain in my heart. Zimbabwe was poor. But the people were alive. It seemed that every face was full of joy. The students would smile at us when we would walk around the campus. They even learned our names and shouted at us.

The women who fixed are meals always smiled and seemed genuinely excited to see us each time we came to eat. We even went to a rural village to see how people lived in Zimbabwe. They lived in huts with straw roofs. They all greeted us with warmth. I will remember a lot of things about Zimbabwe, but I will most remember the smile.