Bulawayo and Matobos, Zimbabwe

The handpainted stoneware dinner service is a popular item as are the Batonka stools from western Kariba. Once again, shop for a good cause at their premises on Robert Mugabe Way in the city centre near the eastern end of the City Hall car park.

Mzilikazi Arts and Crafts Centre

This is a non-profit, self-supporting welfare organisation which runs a commercial pottery, an art gallery and a free art school. Sculpting, carving, stoneware and ceramic pottery goes on in the classrooms where visitors can watch the artists at work and then purchase some of the creations from the office shop.

Bulawayo Home Industries

Across the road from Mzilikazi Arts and Crafts is another self-help project, this time for vulnerable women. Here, too, you can watch the artists at work. Batik textiles, knitted sweaters and crochet work, needlecraft and tapestry are on sale at prices more reasonable than formal curio shops. The money goes to the crafters themselves and is ploughed back into the business.

Cyrene Mission

Cyrene is 32 kilometres out of town on the Plumtree road. An Anglican mission school with a wholly African artistic and historic bent, the thatched chapel is covered inside and out with colourful murals painted by the students.

Biblical stories and scenes from African history are depicted with generous dollops of local colour. The mission's founder was an artistic priest who supplemented the three 'R's' and vocational training with art lessons. His enthusiasm seems to have paid off

Matobos National Park

It is the Matobos National Park that is the major attraction of the Bulawayo area. 32 kilometres south of the city, you will find a landscape as surreal as its name. The balancing granite domes gave rise to its Sindebele name meaning 'bald heads.'

The Matabos National Park has the highest concentration of prehistoric rock art in the world and the fading pictures tell of forty thousand years of human habitation. This ground is sacred to the local Ndebele and is also the final resting place of Cecil Rhodes, the founder of settler Rhodesia.

National Park headquarters at Maleme Dam has horse stables, accommodation and a general shop. This is the starting point for most of the National Park hikes and horse - rides.

Whovi Game Park houses white and black rhino, giraffe, zebra and leopard and both horseback and walking safaris are offered. Private concerns nearby advertise elephant-back safaris and cultural excursions into a traditional Ndebele village complete with witchdoctor.

Copyright © 2002 Laurianne Claase. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without the permission of the author is prohibited