A week in rural Zimbabwe

Garikai Dzoma Avatar

The road to Hauna Growth Point.

The statistics are quite clear. According to the 2012 census 67 percent of Zimbabwe’s population still lives in rural areas.

For those of us who aren’t sure of the classification, a rural settlement is any settlement that fails to qualify as an urban settlement, where an urban settlement is one whose population is more than 2,500, has a compact settlement pattern and more than half its population is engaged in non-agricultural activities.

Just over a week ago, I decided to take a richly deserved vacation to my rural home after a couple of years of absence. For a place that is supposed to be home to the majority of Zimbabwe’s population the place seemed oddly deserted.

There are supposed to be just over 800,000 men and 900,000 women in Manicaland but apart from schools, health centers, churches and other community meeting places, Honde Valley looks a little underpopulated.

When I was a young man the place was bustling with human activity as people went about their business in what was then Zimbabwe’s richest province.

The hard times have forced most young people to leave home in search of better lives to settle in urban centers both local and abroad. I could not meet anyone I went to school with in the whole village. It seems one morning everyone just up and left!

The whole place now resembles an alien landscape except for the obvious signs of human occupation such as cultivated fields. I talked to the headman and the elderly folks about this and that is when they proudly showed me their smartphones.

You see my rural home is one of nature’s paradoxes. Located near Nyanga in the Eastern Highlands it receives lots of rainfall typical of the area, but being a deep steep sided valley means it is a natural greenhouse that comes with plenty of sunshine as the rains are often limited to violent thunderstorms that give the Manyika their mythical famed ability to strike their enemies and foes with lighting.

The elders proudly explained how their young sons and daughters had not abandoned them. During each holiday the “children” come to visit and they come bearing gifts of smartphones and solar panels. They spend days tutoring their parents and grandparents on how to use technologies like WhatsApp and Facebook so that when they go back to town they can keep in touch.

With the Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) having placed their Base Stations along the mountains it means every nook and cranny of the valley has network coverage so the parents and their children keep in touch with one another.

The giant solar panels that grace each roof mean that charging the smartphones is not a problem. The elders seem to have fully embraced the new technology as they expertly took selfies in their gardens and send them to faraway places like London via WhatsApp.

Almost every village has a Facebook page that keeps track of the local gossip, village events and obituaries where people pay tribute to the departed. This way followers can keep track of events back home.

I was curious, most of these smartphones were Android devices with the odd Windows Phone here and there, so how did they keep their WhatsApp apps up to date? That is when I was taken to e-Connect Internet Cafe at Hauna Growth Point.

The place is like a local portal that links the place with Zimbabwe’s urban centers. All the technological amenities one can find in places like Harare were full on display. An orderly queue of elders stretched to a glass counter where a well dressed young man was installing the latest Whatsapp apps in exchange for a $1.

Struck by this irregular sighting I approached him and we started a conversation on technology. He showed me off his merchandise of the latest tablets, smartphones and laptops. He even had over 10 machines with i7 processors which according to him are quite popular with the Banana farmers.

That is when I noticed the room actually looked like one of those internet cafe’s of yore that used to grace many a street of Harare. A number of elderly people were glued to some of the computer screens.

I asked him about how the cafe worked and he told me they, like everyone else, were using TelOne/Avanti’s VSAT service and charged a dollar for every hour of usage. They even had a WiFi service. Intrigued I decided to take the service for a spin so I parted with my dollar.

For some reason the choice of browsers was limited to either the accursed Internet Explorer and Firefox. No Chrome. I was miffed and made a mental note to tell the administrator about this once I was done.

The browsers also had a lot of unnecessary plugins installed; probably a direct result of people unwittingly clicking on adware bait. The surfing experience was not very smooth as VSAT connections tend to have very high latencies but it was pleasant enough and workable.

The experience was especially great with most well designed pages but I noticed that a lot of Zimbabwe’s websites are poorly designed when it comes to slow connections.

A lot of them have multiple get requests, render blocking css, are javascript heavy and have unoptimized images that take ages to load. If you are one of the culprits just remember you are missing out an opportunity to reach 67% of the population out there.

After the somewhat trying experience I decided to take a stroll around the place and that’s when I noticed why the internet cafe proprietor had seemed surprised by my inquiries.

The Telone/Avanti satellites graced the roof of every shop,hospital, registration office and school in the area as far as the eye could see. Upon asking I was told that every school of note had an internet connection.

Between mobile broadband and VSAT my entire rural home seems to be covered. Everyone from farmers to school children can now Google like the rest of the developed world as they tap into the resource that is the internet.

Every shopping center has an EcoCash agent, they are everywhere in shops, grocery stores, supermarkets and even in remotely located grinding mills, where people can receive money from all over the world.

As I turned to leave the internet cafe I looked back to give the place a final look over. My eyes met with old Mr Chandiwana’s as he sat behind one of the workstations. He beckoned me over and, driven by my ever investigative spirit, I heeded his call.

The man was at least four decades older than my father and there he was, despite his failing eyesight, his eyes almost touching the screen, as his nimble fingers expertly worked the keyboard, composing a message to his son in the UK. He deftly worked the mouse to another tab as he sought to hide the private message and landed on a Wikipedia page about Potato blight with the sort of finesse that would put any teenager to shame.

Huh!Some rural area I have.

20 comments

  1. Frank

    Aah. A nice story indeed. Imagine of our economy was firing on all four cylinders we would be light years ahead of many African countries

    1. L.S.M Kabweza

      Why do we need to be light years ahead of other African countries. Why not everyone together light years ahead of themselves? What’s with the competition against other Africans, other people?

      1. Frank

        Humans where made with an innate ability to fly above others. China is developing fast to be light years from America….there is no way China wants America to progress at their pace.

        If everyone wants everyone to develop, start by donating your smart phones and computers to the street kids so that you are at par in terms of developing.

  2. Clement Siby

    Lovely post..all that’s missing a photos and a couple of selfies with the rural folk.

  3. macd chip

    Nice one Garikai, even though my rural is home to the second largest platinum deposits in world, its the worst area in everything, far behind every rural in Zim.

  4. Huku

    Rubbish we have had VSAT for the last 15 years in lower gwelo and vic falls

    1. Garikai

      iwe urikurohwa nemheni chete. Handiti ichanaya hayo?

  5. SimplyGift

    What a story!!!!!!!you are a great writer hey.

  6. Jaynyak

    So touching, can’t wait to join these folks back home.

  7. Dee

    The advent of Facebook and Whatsapp has transformed rural communities across the globe. In fact most rural folks are not backward as we think. Judging from your account it seems that some internet cafes are still doing fairly ok out there.

  8. joey k

    excellent.

  9. Emupita

    so good to hear such news from my rural home will visit the area soon.

  10. Nyatimhenyu

    Great writing skills.. informative too

  11. Gumbi

    Nice one Gari,as soon as i saw that pic i knew it was kumba.

  12. Elvin

    I love this place. Having worked in the area for the past year doing ICT4D projects with my organization and realizing how these people embrace Technology. Special thanks to TelOne for its cheap Vsat services that have provided unlimited yet efficient services to the Eastern Highlands. Am proud to say also held Computer training with various schools in the area where we have trained teachers and kids alike. The Honde Valley people know how to move forward and progress. I wish we could do more

  13. PaulTheJavaProgrammer

    I was surprised khule vangu could root his own nexus ..#lmfao

  14. Silas

    What is in the article is very close to what is on the ground and of course as a writer I understand he has been “creative” in some of them!

  15. tatendahb

    Nice article, fortunately your rural home is one of those few really connected in Zimbabwe, i have burning questions im hoping you can help me with. Forgive me for typos im not really a writer and Qeen Elizabeth isin’t on my family tree.

    I live in Chikukwa which is in Chimanimani District (Manicaland), we barely have mobile service our side of the world and there is only one location we can access VSAT services…and its not exactly cheap for individual homesteads. Community elders have tried to engage service providers for years and even “honourable” Undege is not helping…what alternatives do i have? someone told me signal Boosters, Amplifiers and Repeaters would work and where can i get them in Zimbabwe and at how much.

  16. Welshman Matambo

    What is the cost of TelOne VSAT

  17. aa1

    Nice article!!!

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