eBusiness Weekly
Tawanda Musarurwa
There’s nothing quite like watching the African sun melting into the landscape.
Of course there is! There is watching the Zimbabwean sun setting on the hills of the Khami Ruins.
Splendid!
It’s almost indescribable, but I think the rich crimson hue over the widespread extent of the ancient rocks simply took this writer’s breath away.
There are no words that can adequately describe a Zimbabwean sunset (not that I have seen other countries’ sunsets), it is something that has to be experienced personally.
And so there I was, bubbling and excitable over a daily occurrence.
With our cameras and phones we certainly had fun immortalising our silhouettes as the day drew to a close.
As I watched the sweltering rich golden ball of fire sink into the green landscape, I realised that indeed another day had come to an end.
I thought of how many times the sun had set over this landscape, giving its rich hue to these ancient rocks.
But then Khami was never always ‘ancient’.
At this time at some point, some 500 or so years ago children would have been running across these structures without a care in the world, women taking out their clay pots ready to prepare evening meals from their husbands’ catch of the day.
At some point, some 500 years or so ago, someone may have stood at this same spot and speculated as I was over the future of this property.
I wonder the day when the Khami transitioned from ‘property’ to ‘ruins’. Was the sunset any different?
It must have been different, in fact special, for it marked the closure of an enchanted time in Zimbabwe’s history.
Our sunset experience at the Khami Ruins was just that – a sunset. No decorations, no trumpet blast. And of the hundreds of thousands in Bulawayo, it seems it was only us three who were taking exception to it.
The beautiful sun quickly and quietly slipped over the horizon and before we knew it, it was gone.
But did it go by simply as just another sunset?
Or did it silently mark the end of another era? An era of enchanting anecdotes and myths that will capture tomorrow’s young.
What I’m sure of though is that the Khami Ruins are still here and so as well the sunset and both will be here for a very long time to come.
