Skating on holiday in Zimbabwe

December 2002

I recently went back to Zimbabwe for a month's holiday with my relations, and happened to take my skates along.  Actually, I very nearly didn't take my skates at all, but luckily we ended up having some spare space and baggage allowance.  Taking a one year old along doesn't exactly make for light travelling!

A while I ago I remember reading a thread on the newsgroup rec.sport.skating.inline where Bob Cardone kicks himself for not taking his skates on a business trip!  Bob, I was thinking of your story when packing our bags.  :)

Wayhay, wasn't it great to be going towards summer weather in the southern hemisphere after the dreaded winter weather here in London!  We arrived to 30 degrees Celsius warmth, and boy was I glad I'd taken my skates.

The weather was so balmy that I skated up to the nearby Westgate shopping mall the day we arrived.  What a difference to skating in first world countries!  None of this "you can't skate here", "skating not allowed", etc. stuff.

Many places in Zimbabwe have this weird system where the parking lots have security guards stationed whose job it is to hand you a ticket as you drive in.  You keep this ticket and hand it back when you leave the car park, and this is supposed to reduce car theft on the theory that you'll only have a card if you drove a car into the parking lot.  Anyway, as I skated in the main car entrance the guard was plenty amused to see me pretending to reach for a car parking ticket.

I got a lot of attention skating around - inline skates are uncommon here because imported goods are extremely expensive when compared with the meagre earnings of most locals.  Can't say I minded too much!  I did see a few kids skating around, and even one teenager in a pair of K2 recreational skates.

One of the nicest parts of skating around Westgate was that no-one wanted me to leave the mall.  I could also skate into nearly every shop, and by the end of the holiday only one shop had asked me not to enter on skates.  What a refreshing change from the U.K.  Most of this is no doubt due to the lack of litigation culture in Zimbabwe, together with having very few skaters around.

I also spent some time skating at Borrowdale shopping center in the suburbs to the north of the capital, Harare.  Westgate is on the eastern side of the city, by the way.  This is near to my Mum's house, and I was lucky enough to get a load of skating in there as well.

On the way to Borrowdale I had to skate along a main road for a bit, and quickly caught up to 5 cyclists travelling one behind the other.  The rear one noticed me after a bit, looked back, and exclaimed "Ah!  Iwe!", (an expression of amazement and calling out to the guy in front), who looked back and did the same thing.  This went all the way up to the first guy, by which point I was chuckling away.

Good holiday in all, and plenty of skating to keep me happy!

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