Zim, part I: getting there

For a long time -- I forget exactly how long -- a friend of mine engaged to a Zimbabwean woman had been working out his lobola. (In Botswana, we call this bogadi, and for our purposes here, let's just just gloss it as a transfer that generally happens from his family to hers.) I got a message from this friend sometime in June informing me that the lobola had been finalized, and that they were going to have a wedding sometime in August. A few weeks ago (by which I mean mid-July) I got a message that the wedding was on 4 August.

Well, what else does a girl do? She sorts out her car registration, goes dress shopping, and drives up to Bulawayo by way of Francistown.

But it's always a bit more complicated, isn't it? The groom in question is a classmate of mine. The next nearest classmate of ours stays outside Cape Town. This fellow -- let's call him Mr Bojangles -- arranged to fly to Johannesburg, where he would catch a bus to Bulawayo. The only catch was that Mr B was engaged until early afternoon on Friday, and so wouldn't be able to arrive in Bulawayo until 9am Saturday, an hour or so before the wedding was meant to begin. I planned to drive the 700km from Gabs to Bulawayo during the day on Friday, arriving before darkness fell. I agreed to meet Mr B at the bus station Saturday morning, and go from there to the wedding.

Mr Bojangles ran into some trouble, however, in booking his bus passage. And because our doughty heroine (by which I mean myself) is mad as a hatter, she suggested that Mr B fly from Johannesburg to Gabs, and drive with her from there to Bulawayo.

Due to Mr B's above-mentioned engagement, his flight to Gabs only arrived at half past eight. I had been running errands in preparation for a funeral with a friend whose sister had been killed that week in a combi accident, and was nearly late meeting Mr B at the airport. Mr B actually had to dash out of arrivals to ask me my address, and then dash back to complete his immigration process. As he walked back out through the arrivals gate, he was followed by one of my informants. Yes, this is a small town.

Mr B and I hit the road. We drove some 200km before stopping in Mahalapye, where we bought some snacks and we -- OK, I -- had a long chat in setswana with a some folks who worked at the petrol station about who we were, where we were going, and how many cows my parents might want as bogadi. (New vocabulary word: dinaka - horns; as in dikgomo le dinaka - cows with horns.) Some of this arose out of questions as to whether Mr B and I were hitched, a theme which was to follow us all weekend and which inevitably resulted in a duet wherein I described in detail my parents' demands, while Mr B asserted his poverty. Mr B ga a na dikgomo. Dikgomo ga di yo. Mr B later told me a story about an anthropologist who made increasingly extravagant claims about her availability, first asserting her domestic incompetence, then that her parents wanted a lion. Batsadi ba me ba a batla tau ka bogadi. Claiming Mr B was my brother, o kgaitsadiake, got me nowhere at all.

We continued on to Francistown, some 433km from Gabs, rolling into town sometime after 1am. A friend in Gabs, C, had given me the keys to a furnished flat where he stays when his works takes him up north. He had left out one crucial turn in the directions he had given me, though, and Mr B and I drove around Francistown for much longer than we would have liked. We eventually called C, who was lovely and generous about being woken in the middle of the night to think about the geography of a city he barely knows. We got ourselves sorted out, and after some late-night tea and snacks, went to bed -- but only after a long deliberation about where we should put my cellphone so as best to wake at least one of us two and a half hours later.

The cellphone woke me first (after several minutes of peeping away). The plan was to purchase whatever we needed in Francistown, including 50L of petrol, cross the border, and arrive in Bulawayo with enough time to change our clothing and find the church. As we were getting ready, the groom SMSed me, asking if we could pick up 'some bread, maybe 10 loaves'. Where do you find ten loaves of bread on Saturday morning in Francistown? The proprietor of a milk bar directed us to a bakery, where we also picked up some samoosas for breakfast. (Samoosa, samosa, let's call the whole thing, etc.) We filled the car with petrol, as well as the two 25L jerry-cans I had brought from Gabs, and headed for the border.