The Dairy Fairy

Once upon a time, far far in the eastern highlands of the kingdom of Zim, there was a little farm. It had geese and chickens who loved to tussle. It had a fat black labrador who loved a good belly scratch. And it had the most beautiful cows who loved to munch on lush green grass. Presiding over all the farmyard bliss was a little fairy called Debbie.

Like all good fairies Debbie was a tad scatterbrained. Giggling away she would ride around her farm on a quad bike and would always do three things at once. Like all fairies she was also very kind and generous. She took in all the wandering hobo-cyclists and overlanders and fed them magical melk tarts and cheesecake in her little tea room.

One day two of these hobos made up their mind to visit Debbie and taste her famous milky treats… and this is where we come in. After successfully installing the new spring in Jo’s rear derailleur and saying goodbye to everyone at the golf club, we’re off. We have planned a short first day to get back into the rhythm and stop at a fancy hotel that also allows camping.

On the way in we happen to meet the owner and he promptly offers us a cottage for free “to get cleaned up”. We wipe the street grime off our faces so that he can see our thankful smile. We spend the afternoon walking around the expansive gardens and reveling in the clean white linens of the giant bed (of course after cleaning up). In the evening we enjoy a fancy dinner before burrowing into the bed.

Over the next couple of days we slowly wind our way north towards Debbie’s dairy. It’s a 50km detour with more than 1000m of elevation gain – we’re quite committed to eating melk (milk) tart. At times it feels like we’ve cycled all the way from Kenya just for that. On one of the sweaty climbs we stop briefly to help a different Deb whose Land Rover just broke down.

While Ben impresses with his abilities as a mechanic, Lina makes sure that the dachshund Snickers is petted. You have to play to your strengths. A couple of hours later we visit Deb at her farm to have a little chat and a much needed drink of water. While Lina catches up with Snickers, another of Deb’s dogs tries to climb on her back. Unfortunately this one is a Great Dane and probably weighs more than her.

Another hour and too many hills later we finally arrive in paradise. Debbie, the dairy fairy, welcomes us with a giggle and installs us in her spare room. We then sit down in her tea room for a chat with her daughter Coral and some people we met at the Vumba fair the week before. It’s a small world. Then it’s time to taste the famous melk tart. It’s a South African dish with a thick but somehow still light custard filling. Its taste is truly magical.

We spend a couple of days and an exorbitant amount of money on melk tarts and other milk products at the farm. We cheer on Coral as she finishes a 30km mountain race in the blistering heat. Debbie shows us the works of the dairy and how well behaved the cows are when it’s milking time. She also tells us stories about the civil war in the 1960s and 70s, when Zimbabwe was still called Rhodesia and she was just a little child.

She and her three sisters would have to hand ammunition to her dad who then fired at the people attacking the farm. His old shotgun still sleeps under the bed in our room. One outcome of the civil war was the rise of Robert Mugabe and his ZANU-PF party. In the early 2000s the long time autocrat decided that it was time to make society a little more equal. To that end most of the white farmers were effectively (and often violently) expropriated during a “fast track land reform”.

The confiscated land was given to black Zimbabweans but without any regard for whether they could cultivate it. As a result most land became untenable and the economy crashed big time. To this day the country is under international sanctions because of continuing human rights abuses. Debbie shows us the 10 trillion Zimbabwean dollar notes from 2008 when hyperinflation hit the country hard. Nowadays people just use USD or Rand to avoid losing their life savings.

Traveling through any part of Africa you cannot avoid seeing the effects of colonialism. We are confronted by them in one form or another every day. It’s easy to see the white man as the villain of the story. But only now are we beginning to understand how nuanced that picture really is. We are still too uninformed to attempt to reach a definitive conclusion of the topic of colonialism. But we agree that the way its legacy was handled in Zimbabwe was and remains disastrous for everyone.

And so, after lots of fireside history lessons in the home of the dairy fairy, it was time for the hobos to pack the ol’ stick and bindle. They ate their last melk tart, scratched the fat lab’s belly one last time and hugged Debbie goodbye. By the light of the blood moon and for years afterward they would talk of the wonders they witnessed and how meeting the dairy fairy was worth a 50km detour. And they cycled happily ever after.

The End.