On the road

After a weekend shrouded in mist at Nyanga, without power most of the time, on Sunday lunchtime I hit Halfway House near Headlands having recharged my laptop on my mobile power machine.
It is set back from the road with a Cape Dutch façade and a beautiful acacia tree in the central courtyard. But the tree had lost most of its leaves so it was a bit hot at mid day, and noisy with two lots of beer drinking men shouting at one another across the courtyard. So I chose a table under the eves away from the noisy group but this was next to the door to the bar.
There’s a tendency for places on the road to become little better than shebeens and I hope this is not going to be the case with Halfway House.
I enjoy a drink as much as anyone but I was looking for a quiet spot to write up a few notes for this, and didn’t want to have to listen to the inane and rowdy comments of patrons who’d had too much to drink .
I decided to go and park under the shady trees at the side of the car park and eat and work there in peace. So I took my toasted cheese and tomato sandwich and coke zero (US$5) picked up my laptop and went back to my car.
“Is there internet there?” asked the astonished man in the twin cab parked next to me.
“No, I was just writing up a few notes,” I laughed. He’d obviously thought that with all the evidence of trench digging and cable laying along the road that the internet had already arrived at Halfway House!
On Monday I left early for Chinhoyi for the first of many visits to dentist extraordinaire Gerhard Lung who operates out of a small but very well equipped surgery on Chinhoyi’s main street, with a very large generator outside the front door.
‘Have a good breakfast,’ I was warned, but when I finally got out of there at three o’clock that afternoon I was starving despite a very sore mouth.
I was advised to go to the Mega Market just before the traffic lights where I found the small but spotlessly clean restaurant shown in the photograph where I bought another toasted cheese and tomato sandwich.
This one came in a polystyrene container and included some salad and a spoon to eat it with for US$3. (You’re getting off very lightly again this week Fingaz so brace yourselves for next week.)
The place has a nice small town friendliness to it and two women were there with their children having a late lunch.
I was taking a few photographs when my camera battery warning light came on. I asked the shop side of the premises if they sold batteries.
At first I was told no, then another woman produced some AA batteries from below the counter and sold me two at US$0,50 apiece. They took two photographs then failed.
“Hey, these batteries are dud!” I said to her.
“Ah yes,” she replied with a hefty dose of Zimbabwe logic.
“Those AA ones are not good!” The mind boggles at the naivety of the response after I’d asked if I could take a few photographs and had explained why! But at a dollar I wasn’t prepared to argue!