The Gumleaf Gazette: Late to the Party

THE GUMLEAF GAZETTE

​“News you can chew on."

G'day. For those just joining us, here’s the score: Your favorite Aussie journalist boarded the wrong plane and ended up in Madagascar. While I was busy mourning the absence of Vegemite, a "Disgruntled Reader" sent me a scathing letter. They called me "soft" and challenged me to find a "real story" on the frontlines of a conflict.

​Naturally, I traded my Baobab tree for a potato-sack vest with "PRESS" written on it in permanent marker and hitched a ride across the border into Zimbabwe, ready to stare danger in the eye.

If only i had read https://app.warera.io/article/6996b783f26eabff0806d256 before left so i knew what i ws heading into. Well apparently, while I was navigating across the Indian Ocean, through Mozambique, the "numerous wars" I was told to report on reached various stages of ceasefire. I came looking for the "thunder of artillery"; instead, I found a quiet dirt road and a stray goat that looks like my cousin Bruce. I’m a week late and a few hundred kilometers short. Without a battle, I’m just a journalist in a Hessian bag, in 32-degree heat.

Eastern Mashonaland

​Since the tanks aren't rolling, I’ve had time to look at what’s actually here. And wow,what a beautiful landscape. Let me tell you Reader,it’s hard to stay grumpy when you’re looking at a landscape like this. Zimbabwe doesn't look like the dusty, orange-brown postcard I expected. It’s lush, it’s rolling, and it’s a shade of green that makes the Daintree look like a dried-up lawn.

Eastern Mashonaland is a place dominated by "Inselbergs"—massive, smooth granite hills that rise out of the plains. If you think the "Twist" family lighthouse was weird, you should see the balancing rocks here. They are stacked in gravity-defying piles that make no sense to me.

​As already mentioned, this isn't just dry scrub. It’s a patchwork of emerald-green maize fields and Msasa trees. In the spring, these trees turn a deep, wine-red color that rivals any autumn in the Adelaide Hills.

​The Local Hospitality: The people here don't care about my "hard-hitting" credentials. They care that I look like I’m about to faint from the sun. I was offered a bowl of Sadza (a thick cornmeal porridge). It’s not a meat pie, and it’s definitely not Vegemite, but it’s hearty, honest, and tastes pretty damn good.

The "trauma" I found wasn't a battlefield, but the quiet, struggle of a beautiful country trying to regrow. It turns out the "real story" isn't always where the noise is—it’s where the silence is being put back together.