Africa Tour - Shopping in Harare

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Tuesday, September 19, 1995

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Shopping in Harare & Elvis
We had decided to sleep in late, but get an unexpected wake-up call from Linda Law at 8:00 AM. I might have been a little grumpy with her as I had been up quite late the night before, in a futile and frustrating effort to get back on the net and send Harlan the latest entries. I was to finally succeed later this morning by paying the fare and dialing back into the US. Even so, it takes about ten tries to get through. I don't know what is going to happen when we check out of the Sheraton tomorrow. Anyway, Linda was quite apologetic and promises to take us to the airport for our flight to Victoria Falls tomorrow.

Harare has a population of over 1 million, almost double the population of our adopted home, San Francisco. We spend the day shopping in Harare. At the Mbare Market, Sigrid negotiates some tough deals on handcrafted items, and I make an astounding Elvis discovery (details later).

The Director of the Shona Designs Artist Cooperative takes us on a tour to watch the sculptors working, and we admire some of the finished work in the yard out front.

My favorite is the one at the top of this page, but we can't decide whether to buy it, so it is probably still there for you. We then head into the city where we visit the National handicraft center and lunch at the cafe next door. I again order sadza nyama and a Zambezi beer, which is fast becoming my favorite meal.

 Later we visit the Denabe Gallery in the city centre.  Then back to the hotel for the Italian Night buffet at the Sheraton. At the buffet I meet and congratulate members of the Egyptian tae-kwan-do team for their outstanding performance at the African Games. In the Lobby bar I have a drink with the National Director of Sports from Swaziland. He is fresh from a conference in Beijing and seems quite happy to be back in Africa.

Guinea knocked off Algeria in a game that required police intervention to protect the referees from the players. They will meet Zimbabwe in the semifinal round tomorrow. Egypt will take on Nigeria. I regret that I will not be here for the finals on Saturday.

Elvis Alert!

Take a look the following images recorded at the Mbare Market today:

Now consider the following:

• Elvis sightings at Burger Kings in the US have declined dramatically in recent years.
• Simultaneously, hand carved wooden masks bearing an uncanny resemblance to the "Old" Elvis are turning up in Harare, Zimbabwe.
• Searching the entire market, I could find NO "young" Elvis images!
• Coincidence? I don't think so.

I would advise any Elvis hunters to immediately buy a ticket to Zimbabwe before the trail gets cold.

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NOTE FROM THE FUTURE: This is a back-post / cross-post from my first on-line journal/blogging effort - a journal of our Southern Africa Tour in 1995. Originally posted to an abandoned domain (NetSnake.com), the term "blog" had not yet entered the parlance. I am migrating the original posts to this blog. Links to the original journal Date Index or Africa Tour Home Page will likely eventually disappear. The images from the original post were graphics and screen caps from video which I am leaving in it's low-rez glory for historical integrity. My intent is to also add some of Sigrid's higher quality scanned photos to these blog back-posts.  The difference in images should be obvious.