"Mike Resnick - Between the Sunlight and Thunder" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

between the sunlight and the thunder


Copyright (c) 1996 by Mike Resnick. All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without the
express permission of the author.


Like all my safari diaries, this one appeared originally in the Hugo-winning fanzine Lan's Lantern.

by Mike Resnick

August 28, 1990: Between the bright sunlight of East Africa's safari countries, and the ominous
thunder coming out of the Republic of South Africa, there exist four nations: Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, Malawi, and Botswana. We had originally hoped to visit all four on this extended
safari, but Mozambique is in the throes of a brutal civil war, so we confined ourselves to the other
three countries, where I would be researching Purgatory and Ophir, a pair of novels I'll be writing in
the next couple of years, and hopefully coming up with some more ideas. This was a unique safari for
us, in that we did not arrange to go with a single guide, as we always do in Kenya, nor did we care to
join a package tour. Instead, we made a list of all the locations we wanted to see in all three
countries, then hunted up a travel agency (we found it, finally, in York, England) that was able to
arrange our itinerary. The first step, as always, was the 8-hour flight to London, during which time I
did my best not to feel bitter over losing the Hugo after leading for the first five ballots. I didn't quite
pull it off.

August 29, 1990: We landed at Gatwick at seven in the morning, took a bus to Heathrow after
clearing customs, and waited around the airport for almost 12 hours for our 10-hour flight to
Zimbabwe to take off. I love Africa; it's the process of getting there that I hate.

August 30, 1990: We landed in Harare (formerly Salisbury), the capital of Zimbabwe (formerly
Rhodesia), and dragged our exhausted (formerly energetic) bodies to Meikles Hotel, a large, luxury
hotel in the city center right across from Cecil Square. While Carol took a nap, I went out walking,
and found that there is an enormous difference between Harare and its Kenyan counterpart, Nairobi.
One gets the feeling that if the tourist industry vanished, 98% of the people you see in Nairobi would
find themselves out of work; whereas if it vanished from Harare, no one would know the difference.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that Harare is a working city, with very little to interest the
casual tourist. In fact, we soon came to realize that Zimbabwe is a working country. President Robert
Mugabe continually gives lip service to communism, but it's a capitalist country from top to
bottom...and unlike most African countries, it works. The roads are all paved, the electricity works
around the clock, the water is safe to drink, there are schools every couple of miles throughout the
countryside, poachers have made almost no inroads in most of the game parks, and unemployment
doesn't seem to be much of a problem. In fact, I would say that Zimbabwe is as well-developed, and
runs as smoothly, as most Eastern European nations. I realize that doesn't sound like much, but when
you compare it to Kenya or Tanzania or Zambia, it's a quantum leap forward. I signed copies of
Ivory and Paradise in a local bookstore, then returned to Meikles and changed for dinner. We ate at
the Bagatelle, a 5-star dining room in the hotel, where, in a delightful twist, the proprietors were black
and the piano player was white.

August 31: When I checked out in the morning, I presented Meikles with a paid voucher -- which
they refused to accept. Evidently they had been paid in Zimbabwean dollars, and because the
country is so starved for hard currency, they have a law stating that all foreign travelers must pay in