Zimbabwe Absurdity

The Tsetsera mountains are between the Burma Valley and Cashel on the eastern border of Zimbabwe. One of two places registered to grow seed potatoes they rise up to 2200m so can be pretty cold in winter. Tuesday, however, was a perfect day to visit them and worth braving the appalling road. A complete abscence of anyone else remotely resembling tourists of course helped!

The valley was essentially unsettled from 1980 to 1992, there having been a Renamo perpetrated massacre of some 40 inhabitants in the the early 80s. Now there appears to be a thriving if small community. The lower reaches of the valley are well watered with gravity fed irrigation and there were some very reasonable wheat crops around. Potatoes are still grown on the top of the mountain but I have difficulty believing that they are viable given the 45km of tortuous road out to the main Mutare road.

I was last in the area in 1990 when I got a lift up with an amateur botanist. In those days there certainly was no-one living on the mountain and I recall the valley being very sparsely populated. There was talk of land mines around so we didn’t wander around too much but it seemed to be fine this time!