From Zambezi Depths: An Outsider’s Vacation in Zimbabwe’s Heights, South Africa’s Urban Pulse and Falls

From Zambezi Depths: An Outsider’s Vacation in Zimbabwe’s Heights, South Africa’s Urban Pulse and Falls

Leaving Johannesburg, I carried two truths that sit side by side without canceling each other out. South Africa is a place of astonishing beauty, creativity, and resilience. It is also a place wrestling with inequality, broken systems, and the unfinished work of liberation. After three and a half weeks in South Africa and Zimbabwe, returning to the United States feels like stepping out of a vivid, sun-soaked world into a cold landscape of unrel…

PAUL TIYAMBE ZELEZA - From Zambezi Depths: An Outsider’s Vacation in Zimbabwe’s Heights, South Africa’s Urban Pulse and Falls - The Elephant

After three and a half weeks in South Africa and Zimbabwe, returning to the United States feels like stepping out of a vivid, sun-soaked world into a cold landscape of unrelenting gloom, as if the country itself had forgotten how to breathe warmth and optimism. The saturated colors, layered conversations, and unexpected encounters of the past month still cling to me, like a second skin not yet ready to be shed. What lingers most is not only the …