Chimanimani

The Ndau, whose language and families extend across the mountains into central Mozambique, have farmed these valleys for centuries, and the range was a corridor for trade between the plateau and the Indian Ocean coast long before any European arrived. The border drawn between British and Portuguese territory in the 1890s cut straight through that world and left relatives on either side of a ridge.

A party of settlers who trekked north under Thomas and Dunbar Moodie founded a settlement in these hills in 1892, moved it to the present site in 1895 and called it Melsetter after the Moodie family home in Orkney. It became a small farming and forestry centre, its altitude and rainfall suiting timber, coffee, fruit and cattle, and it kept the name until 1982, when it was renamed Mandidzudzure and then, after consultation with residents, Chimanimani. The national park on the Zimbabwean side of the range was established in 1949, covering 82 square kilometres at first and about 155 today.

The border made the district a front line during the liberation war of the 1970s, with guerrillas crossing from Mozambique and heavy fighting in the surrounding country, and afterwards it saw the spillover of Mozambique's own long conflict. Its hardest modern blow came in March 2019, when Cyclone Idai crossed from Mozambique and the resulting floods and landslides killed at least 634 people in Zimbabwe, at least 169 of them in Chimanimani, with the Chimanimani and Chipinge districts hit hardest. The village was cut off, roads and bridges were destroyed, and the district still bears the marks of that week.

Chimanimani is Ndau country, and its culture looks east as much as west. Ndau is distinct enough from the Shona dialects of the plateau to be considered a separate language by many of its speakers, and the music, dance and spirit traditions of the district are shared with Mozambican communities over the ridge. Cross-border family ties, trade and church networks are ordinary facts of life here.

Spiritual practice is layered. Mission churches founded in the colonial period sit alongside independent and apostolic congregations, and traditional healers and spirit mediums are consulted widely; certain hills, pools and groves are treated as sacred and are not entered casually, something visitors are expected to respect when walking. Ceremonies to ask for rain, and gatherings after a death, draw people back from the cities.

The village also has a long-standing second identity as a walkers' and artists' retreat — a place Zimbabweans go for quiet, cold air and mountains, with a small resident community of craftspeople, growers and lodge keepers, and a tradition of music and arts gatherings in the village. Since 2019 the memory of the cyclone has become part of local identity too: the anniversary is marked, and rebuilding and relocation are constant subjects of conversation.

Chimanimani is a village of a few thousand people, most of them living in Ngangu above the old square, serving a mountainous district of scattered homesteads and farms. Government offices, a hospital, schools and the police account for many of the formal jobs, along with timber, a handful of lodges and the park.

Farming carries everything else. Smallholders grow maize, beans, bananas, potatoes and vegetables on steep plots, coffee and macadamia are grown commercially in the district, and pine and eucalyptus plantations cover whole hillsides. Prices are higher than in Mutare because everything comes up the mountain road, and cash is short: many families rely on relatives working in South Africa, Mozambique or the cities.

The rhythm is early and weather-bound. Transport leaves in the morning and thins out by afternoon, mist can shut the village in for a day, and power cuts and patchy mobile signal are normal. Since the 2019 cyclone a good deal of daily life has involved rebuilding — houses, roads, bridges and schools — and some families were moved to safer ground away from the slopes where landslides ran.

The everyday plate is sadza, the stiff maize-meal porridge, eaten by hand with a relish of covo or rape greens cooked with tomato and onion, beans, okra, or beef or chicken stew when the household can afford it. Peanut butter is stirred into greens and into bota, the thinner breakfast porridge, and dried kapenta and matemba fish carried up from the lowlands add protein.

The mountains give the district its own produce. Bananas, avocados, mangoes, macadamia nuts and coffee grow in the warmer valleys, potatoes, cabbages and temperate fruit on the cool uplands, and honey is collected in the forests and sold at the roadside. Wild mushrooms appear after the first rains and are a seasonal delicacy, gathered in the pine and msasa woodland and cooked simply with onion.

Tea and coffee from the Chipinge estates to the south are the district's best-known drinks, taken strong and sweet against the cold mornings. Maheu, the thick fermented maize drink, home-brewed sorghum beer for ceremonies and gatherings, Chibuku from cartons in the beer halls and the usual national lagers complete the picture, and lodges cook plainer fare for walkers coming off the hill.