Walking through Bulawayo

My home town is Bulawayo. City of Kings. “The place of slaughter.” Once the capital of the Ndebele kingdom under Lobengula, now the second city of Zimbabwe. Rail centre and industrial centre, often overlooked by Bamba Zonke (Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, “takes everything”). My home, where I grew up and where I worked.

I went to school in Bulawayo (Hillside and Hamilton) until Form Three. I taught in the Matopos for three years and then again in Bulawayo for another three years: Maths and English; Theology and Bible.

I walked a lot. I was younger then. Bicycled a lot in my youth and walked more as an adult. I learned to ride safely on the streets by going downtown to the Mobil Traffic Training Centre just off 4^th Avenue. They had a small layout of streets where one learned to use the correct hand signals and was introduced to the mysteries of giving way to the left (or was it right?). I rode every school day 15 minutes from our house on Leander Avenue to Hamilton High School and learned another mystery – that girls rode past us the opposite way heading for Townsend. No girls at Hamilton in those days.

 I remember walking through Bulawayo once in those days. From our house (Leander Avenue) to Queens Park for a cricket match. An English team was touring, and I intended to watch the last hour or so. The walk took me too long – it was about four miles – and the game ended just before I got there. So I walked home.

I walked more often when I taught at the Theological College of Zimbabwe, then just behind the Matopo Book Centre of Lobengula Street in what used to be the YMCA. We lived on Wiltshire Avenue in Hillcrest, about a three mile walk. It took me normally about an hour.

The first bit was through an open air market around the corner to the bookstore. I might stop for some peanuts or boiled maize in the market, or just enjoy the sounds and sights – music coming from open doors of shops around the market.

Past the bookstore to the High Court and turn down 8^th Avenue into the commercial centre of the city. I enjoyed that stretch, people everywhere, walking past the city library and Bulawayo Club and post office. Down the street towards what was once Haddon & Sly and then the city hall and bus rank. I could have taken a bus from there home, but walking was too enjoyable.

Past the city hall to Robert Mugabe Way (Grey Street as was) where I turned right and headed towards the suburbs of Bradfield, Hillcrest, and Hillside. There was a petrol station at 12^th Avenue and another at 14^th, where I might stop and buy a bag of biltong at the kiosk. Few delights were better than walking and nibbling on shaved biltong.

 I remember occasionally seeing a white beggar there named Arthur. I have no idea what happened to him, except that I occasionally shared my biltong before carrying on. I assume he slept rough in the open bush just beyond Parirenyatwa (Borrow Street, as was).

Turn left at 14^th or 15^th and join Parirenyatwa then head out Hillside Road for the longer stretch of the walk home. First came the trade fair grounds on the left, with Eskimo Hut at its entrance. These things have all changed now, but they live on in my memory.

After the fair grounds (reminding me of other scenes inside the grounds) came an open space and then the Bradfield Shopping Centre. Famona and Bradfield on either side of Hillside Road were medium density housing – reminders of a relatively vibrant middle class in Zimbabwe of 1990. A class soon to lose its vibrancy under crushing inflation.

I passed the shopping centre, resisting the urge to step inside and buy a Fanta, and walked on towards the Mater Dei Hospital, where I would cross the road to go towards Wiltshire. Now I was in the home stretch – right on Durham, left on Hampshire (or just beyond it, Gloucester) and right again on Wiltshire. Such incredibly English county names, glowing with echoes of “there’ll always be an England”, even in dry and dusty Zimbabwe waiting for the rain to come.

If I had stayed on Hillside, I could walk on to Leander and turn left on Cecil (past my old school, Hillside Junior) or on Leander and thence to Flint Road. I lived for some time at the corner Flint and Leander. Cecil John Rhodes; Leander Starr Jameson. The roads carry the history of Rhodesia, swallowed up within the history of Zimbabwe.

That route would also take me past the Malindela Baptist Church, where I attended for seven years as a boy, sitting under the preaching of Tom Anderson, a Scottish pastor and devout Bible preacher. I have still a book of Scottish stories I got from him.

Walking through Bulawayo. It’s all changed now, of course. Time rolls on, but my memories are still with me, and I walk or ride down those roads within, grateful for the years I lived in my hometown, City of Kings.