Here are our hosts, Dr. Simbini
on the left and Dr. Rob Borland on the right.
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Here is the group who took the
course. What a
fun group, very motivated clinicians and quite Internet-savvy!
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I stayed at a nice hotel,
the Bronte. It was somewhat
spartan, but the grounds were very pretty,
with nice shubbery and some statues. Most importantly, the phone worked
and I had a connection to a local dialup ISP.
The hotel was only a couple blocks away from the palace of President
Robert Mugabe. Unfortunately, it was against the law to take pictures
of
it, and the place is ringed with his security police.
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Another view of the grounds of
the Bronte. The pool looked pretty nice but noone was using it, maybe
because it is fall.
My room was the
rightmost room seen here on the ground floor.
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Across the courtyard from my
room was this nice statue that I saw each day.
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Here is a view of the street in
front of the hotel. Harare does not have very many tall buildings.
Although there is a downtown, there is not a whole lot to see. The real
scenic places around here are the nature parks outside the city, but I
didn't get there on this trip. On the upside, the city streets were not
too congested or polluted.
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The money situation there was
fascinating. They had hyperinflation, with a rate in the last month of
1700%. A recent AP
newswire story described the situation well.
Shown here is a stack of a million Zim dollars! With the "parallel"
exchange rate on the street of 20,000 Zim dollars to US$1, this stack
was worth about $50.
It was quite weird to buy a can of soda for 48000 (Zim) dollars!
The "official" exchange rate of the government was 250 Zim dollars, but
they only let you exchange one way. So I could not exchange this
million Zim dollars for US$4000, but I could give them that many US
dollars for the million!
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Here I am, outside the
UZ Medical School. Like a typical medical campus,
with hospitals, clinics, labs, office buildings, etc..
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The door outside the center
where Drs. Simbini and Borland work, with an advertisement for a great
course!
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Here is the nice office they
provided us, with my laptop on the desk. With wireless Internet access,
I could work like normal, but halfway around the globe!
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Tunga took me to a nearby
market, where I wheeled and dealed with the locals to acquire goods to
take home.
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And if course I had to emerge
from the market dressed like a local!
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A shul in Harare? I kid you not!
Right near my hotel, and I found it by accident when out running.
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On my way home through
Johannesburg Airport, where some of these relics sit out in the field.
Look to me like a DC-8, a Boeing 747 SP, and an Ilyushin Il-76.
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