Bound for the Great Zimbabwe Ruins south of Masvingo, we pass through six different police stops. The number plate light which was broken and cost us a $10US fine is now fixed and we are waved through all the cordons. Roads conditions are passable in places and abysmal in others – a sign announces “Road Failure Ahead” and it isn’t kidding. More potholes than road for a long way, with big trucks dodging the potholes and us dodging the big trucks.

This is the center of the center of Zimbabwe, a land of small farms, bushveld, and villages interspersed with bus stops. Along the road people are selling a small dark purple fruit and since we aren’t going anywhere very quickly, I pull over to see about what the fruit is. Fruit sellers come running when we stop. They can’t tell us what the fruit is, they don’t speak much English. Only thing to do is try eating one, after washing it off with our drinking water. I was hoping for a plum or cherry taste, but it was mealy and sour. No one seemed offended that we didn’t purchase any. Wish it had worked out, they were such a pretty color.

Visiting Great Zimbabwe Ruins is a dream come true for me. John Reader, in his book Africa: Biography of the Continent, painted a vivid picture of the stonework walls and the artifacts discovered here – even if you don’t read the entire book, the chapter on Great Zimbabwe is remarkable. Being here is even more remarkable. The ancestors of the Shona people built colossal dry stack enclosures using the readily available granite, with pieces all about the same size. This alone is mind-boggling. The amount of stone touched by human hands is difficult to fathom, every single stone had to be picked up and shaped and placed or filled into the walls. Walls 30 ft high and 6 ft thick, stretching 850 ft in places, some with lovely curves – what did the people building them think? Were they proud – they should have been. How many people worked on them? What did they eat while they worked so hard? A time machine would be nice right about now. The ruins are the fourth largest stone structure, after the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids and Machu Picchu.

And this isn’t the only such site in Zimbabwe, it is just the biggest. Artifacts in the museum include pieces of Chinese pottery and beads found on site as well as the important bird statues the Zimbabweans take great pride in. Looters took the statues in the early 1900s but somehow they have survived to be displayed here for everyone to see.

We are reminded of Chaco Canyon and other Desert Southwest ruins we have seen. Those settlements too fell into disuse, the area around them depleted, about the same time as Great Zimbabwe, half a world away.