harare – Prasojo's Family Blog

Chance to see the outside world is one of my reason to take this job :). Never ever crossed in my mind before that I will visit this country. I have heard about this country before when economic crisis hit this country around 2008. 1 trillion dollar zimbabwe equals to 1 USD, such an epic story. My impression first time I hit this country is that, it looks like Indonesia, on 1970’s 🙂 ( don’t get me wrong, I see 1970’s picture of Indonesia in some old movie, I wasn’t born yet that day :p ). If you see the buses, the people, and how the city looks like, then you might end up with the same conclusion with me :D.

No pic hoax ? Here’s one of the picture I took during my journey from hotel to /// office. Unfortunately I don’t have the picture for the old buses (updated), but you can imagine inter-city bus, with full of bag loaded on top of it. Yeah, one of the problem here is transportation. Those buses seem to only pass once in a few hour. Once they passed, there will be so many people waiting, together with their belongings. I also see some people waive their hands on the streets looking for a car lift. Not sure if it is safe to give them a lift, since I’m just a foreigner here.

—- Updated

Here’s the bus view in Harare..

But wait, there’s also tall building here in this country :). During my first week here, /// put me on Crowne plaza hotel located on the city centre, surrounded by few tall buildings.

See ? Not too bad, except the internet speed :D. I can only really browse the internet on 5-6 AM in the morning. When I came back to hotel from the office around 7-8, the internet speed is horrible. I waited so long to open a webpage ( which then ended up with me closing the laptop and go to sleep :p). Yeah, the infrastructure is not good here. Telecommunications and Transportation, those 2 things need to be improved first here before they want to go to the next step.

— Updated, here’s the other city view of Harare..

Now, the good thing about this country is that, there’s almost no traffic jam :). We can go to the airport from /// office in about 30 minutes on daytime.

Wider road with less cars, compare this to Jakarta :). And yes, I rarely seen any motor bikes here, which is probably a good thing :D.

And the other good thing, Indonesia has its embassy here. So, I went there to meet with the people and to introduce myself. It’s good to have Indonesian friends in this nowhere country :D, at least I can speak bahasa again after so long. Feels like home, but not the real home :). The embassy staff are very helpful, if you imagine that all government officers are hard, rigid, then you are wrong. They are all very friendly here. I went there almost every weekend, just to say hi, and to talk to them. And yes, they held a friendly 17an match to celebrate Indonesia’s independence day, where I won Gaple match, with pak Tachsin Fernandi as my co-player….:)

There’s only about 40 Indonesian people here in Zimbabwe, including the kids. Not so much, but that makes them big family together in a foreign country 🙂 If you are interested more, just invite their Facebook account “Perwakin Harare”.