So this morning we had a proper lie in and didn't emerge until 10:30! Since we had a huge number of these posts to upload we figured we should head into town and find a place to eat breakfast/lunch that had free Internet. We showered and drove to town arriving at the same place we ate lunch the last time we were in Bulawayo. They didn't have Internet but we figured we knew the food was good so sat down for a much needed meal. Jenny wanted a chocolate milkshake but they were out of chocolate ice cream, so she had a strawberry daquri instead. I asked for a coke and a double espresso and the espresso never came. O well. None the less we had a decent lunch and asked the waitress if she knew anywhere that we could use the Internet. She recommended a place in the basement of a shopping centre next door.
True to her word the place did have Internet but looked very dodgy and smelled like fish. We decided that if we didn't find anywhere else we would come back the next day. At this point we remembered that we needed to try and find the Zimbabwe currency for our monopoly board so we headed down the street past a place Jenny calls the corner. The corner is actually a street pavement, that is lined on either side with people selling all manner of African curios and crafts. When I was little and my family would visit Bulawayo, my parents would give Jess and I a few Zim dollars and set us off a one end of the corner and collect us at the other end, and it was up to us to see what we could get for our money. It was a brilliant way to learn how to haggle from a young age, a lesson that has stayed with us ever since, and comes in handy a lot! Thanks Mum and Dad :D
We stopped in a bank and asked the staff if they had any of the old Zimbabwe bank notes or we where we could find them. The woman was very helpful but told us that their bank did not have any because they only opened after the US dollarisation. We thanked her and walked across the street to a Barclays, where we asked a lady on the information desk, called Leocardia, if she knew of where we could get hold of these notes. She was extremely helpful, and explained that the banks could not give out the old notes, but she did have a friend who she thought had a trunkful of them left. She asked is what denominations we needed and how many, and she told us to come by tomorrow to find out if he has what we need. We thanked her and set off to find an old ice cream shop that I also used to go to we. I was little, called Eskimo Hut.
Because it was not on the sat nav we got a little lost and ended up pulling into a shopping centre to ask there. A car guard tried to explain where we needed to go, but as soon as he told us to to straight whilst pointing to the right we gave up listening. We found a place that had Internet and looked clean and did not smell like fish, so we paid the $1 each for half an hour. I downloaded a couple of iPad mortgage calculators despite telling the lady we were not downloading anything, ad uploaded a few of the blog posts. Even though I know we will love them when We are done this trip, they are a pain in the ass :D I also looked up on google maps how to get to Eskimo Hut and when we had used up our 30 minutes we went to find it.
The shop sells soft serve ice cream in cones and cups, but also dips that into a few different flavours, my favourite being crunchie, a melted caramel and honeycomb flavouring which freezes to the outside. They also used to have two flavours called green mamba and pink pantha, sprinkles that stick to the ice cream. Unfortunately they didn't have any if those three flavours, they just had the normal chocolate coating and flake bars, which is what I had. They haven't had the other three for the last two months and are not sure when they will get them again, which I found quite sad. We programmed the sat nav to Grantham road and went in search of Dave's clothing factory, Jasmines Clothing.
It was extremely interesting, Dave gave us a tour of the factory and we watched the clothes being cut, sewed in all manner of ways, ironed out and eventually hung up with tags attached for sale. We also saw the layers of cloth for a skirt being cut up, and with an insane hand saw that could cut 20cms of cloth at one time! Dave also showed us the way that he calculates the numbers for each item, how much fabric is used and wasted, how many can be made by each employee in an hour, how that relates to output and final sales value, and eventually what his profit margin is on each item. After our tour we said thank you to him, and he told us he would only be home at around 9:30pm as he was going to play bridge with friends after work. We then decided to head back to the same shopping centre we had been in with the Internet as there is a large supermarket there called TM.
We bought two T-bone steaks for our dinner, and also some drinks and Mazoe orange juice, the most delicious concentrate in the world! While Dan was paying I stood outside to quickly check my email again and a girl walked up to me while I was doing that. She told me that she knew me from somewhere and when I questioned her as to where she told me her name was Lorinda and she also used to live in Selebi Phikwe! It is such a small world, she used to be in my junior school! She and her brother love here now, as her fiancé comes from Bulawayo. After saying goodbye to her we drove home. We watched some tv and wrote more of the blog before preparing the potatoes for dinner. We ate basically the same as yesterday, the T-bone steaks, potatoes, butternut and salad. We stayed up watching tv and sitting enjoying the gorgeous evening outside till Dave came home at half nine, and we spent the rest of the night chatting till it was time to go to bed.
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