Harare

For the moment, I am in a place where there is no reliable fast Internet connection; just dial-up. I can’t Skype. I can’t use Gmail without waiting about 10 minutes and switching to HTML mode. And I certainly can’t upload photographs for the blog (a real shame, because I’ve got some good pictures of women boxing at Lusaka’s agricultural show).

It’s almost like I’m in a Third World Country.

Except that many things about Harare, Zimbabwe don’t look Third World at all. The downtown, with its tall, angular buildings, calls to mind several American cities. The streets are paved and wide. Suburbs contain large houses with swimming pools (all surrounded by high walls and electric wire, of course). The infrastructure is here; it’s easy to imagine how this city looked 10 or 20 years ago. It looked modern -- and really nice.

But signs of decay are equally apparent: Piles of trash, crumpled lampposts lying alongside the road, decapitated traffic signals, no streetlights at night, shuttered stores. Just outside the city, farmland lies unused and the charred aftermath of brush fires extends in all directions. The power cuts out almost daily. (It’s perfectly reliable, I am told, if a general or an important political figure resides near you.)

My host told me that when I arrived on Sunday, they had running municipal water for the first time in two years. It lasted a few hours and then stopped again. In recent years, those who can afford it drill a “bore hole” -- basically a deep skinny well, I think -- and get their water from that. Those who can’t afford a bore hole usually have no source of running water.

My host has received municipal water bills each month for the past two years, even though the water hasn’t worked. Since he didn’t get any water, he refused to pay the bills. Recently, he received a notice stating that this was his last warning: The municipal water would be cut off unless he immediately paid up.