Worst place I ever went to was Heaven Lodge in Chimanimana. Abysmal experience - how on earth can you recoment it. fantastically impressed with the bushwalking company. Give them a plug, they deserve it. Chimanimani Bushwalking Co. The only reason to go there

Swaney's guide to Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Namibia is the best on the bookstore shelf. The level of detail is superb, from major cities to rural villages. She should consider herself more a regional geographer, as her detail concerning things like history, climate, people, and place are akin to that of one! All this and she manages to fit in the best deals on lodging, food, and travel sites, not to mention important info concerning safety and hazards associated with travel. I used this book extensively during my travels throughout last year, when I lived in Windhoek. Indeed, you can find no better than this- and the information is as good or better than what the locals give! I once had the opportunity to meet her at a hostel in Windhoek, when I was doing some academic research there, and never had the chance to tell her how much I praise this guide!

What happened to Rhodesia? Answer: It was offered as a sacrifice by colonial powers, to appease left-leaning world powers. This is a story sad, but true. Read "Red Zambezi", and find out more.

Like Bob Mayer and Gale Rivers, Joe Hale is also a para-military pro turned writer, and actually a very good one. These retired military writers have a very common but excellent specialty: Their writtings were based upon realistic experiences, therefore, they could write in an accurate and concised style which is very good for a total logic and precised reading. This is a true and personal experience of the writer who did fight as a mercenary in Rhodesia. It's a shame that a wonderful writer could only find a tiny publisher to marketing his book and lost silently.

A wonderful account of a young college student's experience in third world Zimbabwe. Though focusing mostly on a feminist aspect of the country, Perrin's travels are well rounded and insightful. She takes you out of your comfortable lifestyle by showing us what and how we take our lives for granted. Very motivating in you are interested in world relief.

"Tonderai" is the Shona name that was given to Perrin. Appropriately, it means "Remember." Tonderai conveys a vivid sense of Zimbabwe - the land and its indigenous people; readers feel they are literally looking over Perrin's shoulder. Embedded in the book is a concept of education as an active process of doing, of experiencing life with all the senses, and learning through interaction with others.

Everything that the previous reviewer said is absolutely true. This is a wonderful resource with rich photographs and helpful information. I recommend it to anyone interested in nations of the world.

This is a wonderfully concise reference book. The book offers "at a glance" facts which give a quick overview as well as text synopsis of the people, economy & land and history & politics. Each contry is represented with at least one map, most also offer scenic pictures,and population & ethnic group pie charts. To be complete, the book begins with facts, pictures and graphs about the solar system, the earth, continents, volcanoes, lakes, population, etc. Of course, there are also detailed maps of the world and each continent.

Our family has found this book usefull for writing school reports, planning vacations, and just enjoying learning more about the world. It's a very complete book I recommend for every household library.

Employing an exhaustive amount of first-rate materials and interviews into his research, Andrew DeRoche, an up and coming scholar of diplomatic history, has provided a splendid account of the complexities - setbacks, victories, racism, pain, pleasure and other elements that were a part of the relationship between the United Staes and Rhodesia(eventually Zimbabwe) from the Eisenhower years to the latter years of the Clinton Administration. DeRoche uses outstanding research to provide his arguments. His analysis (often cutting edge) of the more than 4 decade relationship (45 years to be precise) is nothing short of splendid. The book was enormously informative and it was a pleasure to read. I would reccomend it for anyone who is intersted in groundbreaking work in diplomatic history.

I haven't been to africa yet, so take this review with a grain of salt. I got it from the library and have found it to be quite informative. I also really enjoy the stories and fables in it. There is a watercolor guide to the animals you are likely (and not so likely) to see. Generally, my impression is that it is well written, though, perhaps written for someone with a larger budget than myself. I have yet to see if the info is up to date. Get this book. It has a lot to offer.

After spending two years in Zimbabwe I must admit I will probably never fully understand the beauty, depth, and mystery of Shona traditional beliefs ... try as I might to do so.

One of the closest keys to unlocking the mystery and getting a tiny understanding of traditional medicine and Shona beliefs came to me when I read "The Children Who Sleep by the River."

I have talked to many Zimbabweans in the past two years and found that although most were Christian, there was also a deep belief in communication with "the ancestors." They see no conflicts in this. Traditional medicine and modern scientific treatment of medical matters are equally practiced. Taylor makes this very understandable.

Although this work deals with childbirth, it is not "a woman's book." It brings across the role of women in Africa ... a role I learned to respect during my exciting time there. Zimbabwe's women give birth, feed, clothe, and raise their offspring. They grow the food to sustain the children; carry the firewood to warm the children; fetch the water to bathe the children; and make the clothes to cover the children. Women are the "beast of burden" as they lead a child by the hand, carry a second child strapped to the back, and ballance a hundred-pound load on their head.

Although Taylor doesn't dwell on the subject, I see most members of the other gender spending their time drinking the home-brew beer and keeping the women supplied with children. Zimbabwe is a great place to be a male without a conscience.

If you want to gain a picture of the life of women in the Zimbabwe bush and get a hint of the beauty and depth of Shona beliefs, put this wonderful book #1 on your reading list!

The book has good information on different sections of the security forces and the history of the military, starting in 1890, WWI, WWII. The conflict in Rhodesia, the roll of honour and the clear background of the conflict inside Rhodesia, which was not black/white but an ideological war, between East and West.

*****Celia Winter-Irving writes that Zimbabwe's stone sculpture is unique, not only because of its individual form and content, which is highly valued and acclaimed in the art centers of the world, but because it springs from the indigenous talents that lay hidden until the 1960's. How could such creativity and craftsmanship suddenly flower? What is the inspiration that guides the Shona, Chewa, Yao and Mbunda artists who have produced it? Who are the actual individuals who fashion stone that is unlike anything produced anywhere else in the world? Her book answers these fascinating questions and has become the standard work on the subject. She believes that contemporary African stone sculpture from Zimbabwe is perhaps the most important new art form to emerge from Africa in the 20th century.
*****Although Zimbabwe stone sculpture is argued to be firmly located within a modernist discourse, its content and form are informed by traditional spiritual beliefs, myths, legends, oral history, customs, and rituals, which impart a new function and modernist aesthetic for creative expression in stone. Prestigious galleries around the world have been honored to exhibit the work of many of Zimbabwe's finest stone sculptors, such as the Paris Rodin Museum and the New York Museum of Modern Art. The larger pieces have been exhibited at the Kirstenbosch Gardens in Cape Town, the Kew Gardens in London, the Parlmengarten in Frankfurt, the Berlin and Hamburg Botanical Gardens, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Yorkshire, the Hannover Expo 2000, and the Missouri Botanical Gardens in St. Louis.
*****Celia Winter-Irving is the Writer and Documentalist in Residence at the Chapungu Sculpture Park. She is also the lead writer on art for the Zimbabwe Herald with her own column in the Herald 'Art and Leisure' each Saturday. At the park she writes books on sculptors, produces the newsletter, compiles and writes essay/biographies on sculptors represented by Chapungu, and organizes media relations. A listing of her more recent books includes Lazarus Takawira (Lazarus Takawira June 2000), Anderson Mukomberanwa (Anderson Mukomberanwa June 2000), Tengenenge Art Sculpture and Painting (World Art Foundation, Eerbeek, The Netherlands, April 2001), and Soottie the Cat at Tengenenge (Tengenenge Pvt Ltd, April 2001). In 2002, she finished a book concerning the successful Zimbabwe sculptor, Agnes Nyanhongo.

Africa is not cursed with a supernatural phenomena or aura of failure in development and growth; this belief is a travesty, since failure all waters down to human error, nothing more. Indifferent and corrupt leaders have played such a nasty role in their countries' demise (with help from varying colonial legacies), with Zimbabwe being a contemporary example of this kind of demise. Some six million Zimbabwean civilians are in danger of starving to death by the end of 2002. A Catholic Bishop in the country has admitted that the economy is in tatters and completely bankrupt because of the government's incompetence and mismanagement. Foreign investment is shying away from the country because of its horrific blight of corruption and social anarchy, with government mobs running affairs and intimidating any slivers of opposition, real or imagined. Thanks to Robert Mugabe, the country's xenophobic, racist despot, Zimbabwe is now a pariah state, teetering on the edge of an uncertain abyss.

It was not always this way, writes journalist David Blair (who for a twenty-nine year-old has seen more than what others have seen in an entire lifetime). His book is an exhaustive recounting of the contemporary history and situation in Zimbabwe, beginning around January 2000, when Mugabe attempted to change the country's constitution to suit his agenda, and the country refused, throwing him his first political defeat since 1980. His book, along with another by Martin Meredith, serves as the only two recent works about the country. While Meredith is more concerned with the historical pattern of power accumulation at the hands of Mugabe, as well as keeping Mugabe as the focal point in his work (it is also largely a biography), Blair is more concerned with the present. His first two chapters are historical, albeit brief, providing background to Mugabe's life, past brutality and ideas as to how he ticks. The rest deals with the years 2000-2001, written in a first-person narrative because he was present as a journalist for the British "Daily Telegraph" paper until he was forced to leave the country in mid-2001 (as part of a wholesale crackdown on independent, foreign journalists by Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF party).

Blair has much to recount about the regime's brutality and determination to keep in power, irrespective of the crucial human and financial costs. Important foreign aid that should have gone to lawful and equitable land reform and development instead would go to a Mugabe family mansion, or perhaps a new Mercedes-Benz, or perhaps to keep Zimbabwe's forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (in itself an ambiguous decision, since those profiting from the Congo's diamond riches were all Zanu-PF people). Blair argues that Mugabe amounts to nothing more than a corrupt, aging despot whose sole intention is to keep in power; everything that he has done has been aimed toward this 'vision.'

The ironic comparisons between Robert Mugabe and Ian Smith, the last white ruler of what was then called Rhodesia, are striking, since both were bitter enemies, yet have both unwittingly complimented one another. Mugabe has been no different from Smith - racism, xenophobia, brutal suppression of opposition, and more were traits of both leaders. Says Blair: "Neither should have been allowed anywhere near running a country. Smith's true station in life was, perhaps, treasurer of a provincial rugby club. Mugabe would have made an excellent junior lecturer at the Revolutionary University of Havana. It was their country's enduring tragedy that these men were given such power" (p. 244).

On a final note, Blair writes that Smith's UDI from the UK in 1965 and resulting rule was ultimately self-defeating. It remains to be seen if Mugabe's rule will end as Smith's did; his rule has already ingrained lots of self-defeat for everyone and everything in Zimbabwe. Who knows what the future still holds? If Mugabe has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor up to now, who is to say that he won't follow through all the way to the bitter end?