There are places where the words, gestures, they are far above the landscape. That happens to the Sikumi Tree Lodge, a lovely hotel, whose rooms hang from the trees, located at the gates of Hwange Park, from providing for a trough and a huge green corridor became infinite sight and animals.
But Sikumi is the home of a couple, Dutch and Zimbabwean her he, given off quiet, love, joy and respect. "Decided that I liked in mi life, I closed my restaurant in Amsterdam and went to the U.S.. There I ended up denying the visa and came to Zimbabwe to see a friend. Then I met the most wonderful man I married and stayed to live ", she explains. She said no fuss, no lessons. He said it with the firmness of one who is halfway around the planet without lines on maps and found their place in the world. Travel, travel stories, where ever you come across people who are lost and found behind an unknown frontier.
Hwange is a park, like all Zimbabwe, disused. Leafy, making it difficult to see animals, but full of the charm of human vacuum. Of the two nights we spent there I'll take the walking safari. We left Kent, a white hunter with a history full of scars made in Mugabe. We follow a herd of elephants near, almost hear her breathing. He threw earth to control the wind, loaded his gun and looked not meet me surrounded by pachyderms. In the jungle, the market, without defenses, and controlling the rustling of leaves that were on the floor carpet. Africa.
And at the end, without lowering the head, said: "This is my country, I am Zimbabwean, and my skin will not leave me ".
Kent was part of the gestures and words that made him a special place. In the evenings, next to the bonfire, recounted the days when his family, of Scottish, then moved to the land of Southern Rhodesia (fourth generation). His grandfather was the first man to build a pool in the nearby city of Bulawayo; his father owned a sugar and creator of a mixed-race first school opened as the first student that his brother. Remembered, almost jokingly, the horror of the previous years, the past-present. The times when calling for the food and the mind both in restaurants because inflation was two percent per minute; in which the bank was going to make a deposit with boxes full of worthless bills. He spoke of the farms who lost theirs in the spiral of hatred that has rotted the country, corruption of a political class emerging luxury lodges took free semi-abandoned and practiced unrestricted hunting for new owners. And at the end, without lowering the head, said: "This is my country, I am Zimbabwean, and my skin will not leave me ".
Then, the trip had already placed the groups. Mine was the small, the individual, where strong friendships were forged from the need for distance and respect. Berni, Portuguese guide, Fernando, Seville's globetrotting and I, with the three Zimbabweans who worked on the truck, Lion, Y Jenson Benson, we were a group of jokes and curiosity. It is the curiosity that brought us together more. Curious to try to understand, by mixing with local people without having a photo that witness, by night in the shelter of a whiskey at the end silent and listening to nothing after a succession of laughter to the weight.
Sikumi was the first sad farewell. It hurt macharme of that hotel where everyone was trying to make you feel you and not you. Even today exchanged some email with some of the characters I have narrated above. Even today I remember the afternoon when I decided to stay at the hotel and not go to a safari by car watching the sun collapse on the horizon with a glass of wine shared with a fauna that I looked askance. There are places where you spend and places where you stay a little. Sikumi Tree Lodge belongs to the latter.
This trip is part of the route of the agency Katanga Zimbabwe.
Route Kananga: http://www.pasaporte3.com/kananga.php
