The Flea Market, Elephants and Nandos!

As a reward for all our hard work, we spent the weekend exploring more of Mutare including meeting up with the volunteers from Simukai and DOMCCP and visiting the Flea Market, where second hand clothes which have generally been driven in from Mozambique (where they are much cheaper) and sold on stalls in the market. The set-up of the stalls ranged widely from well-presented clothes on hangers or mannequins to unwieldy piles of clothes which looked like they might topple over at any minute. In order to find anything you have to almost dive into the piles of clothes and dig to unearth the gems. You then have to negotiate your price with the seller, which is helped a lot if you have a Zimbabwean friend with you to negotiate in Shona!

Once we had shopped our fill at the flea market, it was off to treat ourselves to Nandos – a well deserved break from Sadza and Kouvo, before hitting up the internet café for some wifi.

Sunday was spent at church and then a group of us headed up to Cecil Kop national park, which is a small national park of around 245 hectares which is home to 2 elephants, a crocodile, a giraffe and a few zebra, and it is only 10 minutes walk from our work place. A few other friends had been there the previous weekend and had only seen the crocodile, but no other animals. We were heading up in the hope of seeing the view, and to our amazement when we climbed the steps to the lake the elephants were down at the edge of the lake! We spent ages just watching them relax by the lake, and then the gamekeeper came out and told us it was feeding time, so he brought the elephants up to the feeding spot, which was right beside the fence. We were able to get right up close and watch the elephants enjoying their dinner. It was a really amazing experience, and it has whetted the appetites of the volunteers to visit a bigger game park, to see what other animals we can find.