The Rural Areas

Since I have the time, I should explain further exactly the state of the rural areas in Zimbabwe.  Outside of the major cities, the majority of the population lives practically as if they exist in a different century.  The rural areas do not have running water, electricity, or indoor plumbing; the main methods of transportation are walking and donkey cart, there are no metal fences, and old plastic bottles are saved and treated with reverence.  Most water is gathered in old gas cans from either local streams or boreholes (which are few and far between).  As I've explained earlier, the rural clinics cover vast areas of the rural areas, and only staffed with nurses (the Victoria Falls hospital only has nurses, what does that say about the staffing in the rural areas) serving thousands of people with only the most rudimentary health care practices.

As for accommodations, typically, a family compound consists of a few thatched mud huts, one of which is partially open-air with half-walls for cooking.  When a son of a rural family wants to get married, he builds a house for himself and his future wife/family close to his family compound.  After this house is complete, his father then negotiates with the father of the future bride for her lebola, the price the groom's family must pay for taking the bride from her family.  Traditionally, this is paid in cattle, but in modern days, it can now consist of money and modern goods as well.

All of the buildings in a housing compound are made of mud and thick logs with pointed thatched roofs.  Mud benches are built into the inside of the buildings for seating and sleeping as furniture is understandably scarce.  The buildings are either round or rectangular, the best and most prestigious of which even have windows.  Although the buildings are made out of natural materials, they are quite beautiful.  Extreme care is taken when building, resulting in clean, symmetrical buildings with smooth walls and neatly thatched roofs.  The thatching can be done in stylized layers or cut-out swags as decoration.  Often family compounds have beautiful designs painted on all the houses, each design unique to each family group. 

A typical cooking hut (foreground). Also, notice how the buildings match in the decorative painted stripes at the bottom.

Another rural house, with thatching drying (on the right) and a traditional stick fence.

Quite a large rural house although its grounds are desolate.

A housing compound, in pretty bad shape

Another housing compound

And another

These pictures were taken at the height of the dry season (mid-October).  That's why the vegetation is nonexistent and there is no visible wildlife.  At the moment, even though the rains are not at full force, all of the trees that were brown and barren have fully sprouted their leaves.  The terrain has changed so much, in the rural areas the dirt is no longer even visible outside of the roads and the housing clearings.