Travelling Back In Time In A City Called Slaughter
You know how sometimes a place name captures your imagination and sounds and feels exotic? For some reason Bulawayo hits those notes for me, though with no real reason – we don’t know much about it and it doesn’t exactly have the ring of a Kathmandu, a Timbuktu or even a Casablanca, yet somehow it’s been calling. Which is how we come to be being driven by the ever reliable Kenny to Victoria Falls airport to board a small but smart Air Zimbabwe plane to the country’s second city.
One thing we have learnt about it is how to say it, and it’s definitely not the “Buller-way-oh” pronunciation that the media back home would have us believe. The first syllable is “blu”, as in “blunt” which, with the “o” at the end being less rounded than in British English, means that the actual pronunciation sounds rather like someone with a Cockney accent saying “blue whale”. Try it and you’ll see. However you say it, Bulawayo is indeed a city which in native tongue is named Slaughter, emanating it is said from the fact an African warrior leader who seriously impressed Livingstone, one Mzilikazi, used the site to slay his enemies in the 19th century.
Wide boulevards bring us through the bustling City of Slaughter to our next home….
Beyond the large wooden doors there is a dimly lit interior where foreboding portraits of stern looking men look down from mahogany panelled walls. The creaking of the floorboards echoes in the silence; the hushed tones make even our breathing sound too loud. Huge bound ledgers sit upon a central desk, speaking of days gone by: a members’ register, a ledger for suggestions, a betting ledger which records wagers between members. A voice from the gloom. “Welcome to the Bulawayo Club”, says a guy lurking in the dimmed light of reception, his dulcet tones bouncing off the walls despite speaking quietly.
The elevator has a grille and an uneven floor. As the grille opens on the second floor, he is already there, as if he’s teleported ahead of our ride, on Floor Two faster than the creaking elevator can make it. In Room 12, the vaulted ceilings are high, the windows with their cracked paint look out on to the city, the oversized silver taps show tarnished Victorian splendour above the moulded bath. Drapes billow even though the windows are closed. Wooden wardrobes with nylon tassels on the handles stand in corners, a writing desk invites the composition of letters home from explorers or pioneers. The toilet flush requires biceps to activate, takes an age to refill. Somewhere just outside our window the 21st century is in progress, but not in here, not inside the time warp which is the Bulawayo Club.
A former industrial powerhouse, Bulawayo has according to the internet suffered successive and significant downturns in the last fifty years as the double blow of de-industrialisation and a strife torn economy has taken its toll. Nevertheless its wide tree-lined avenues and bold, grand architecture clearly speak of former glories when the city, its strategic location and its surrounding savannah were coveted by more than just the British.
It’s humid today, the streets are clammy, the skies are overcast. The wide boulevards are punctuated with the resplendent colour of the jacaranda trees and the colourful stalls of street vendors. People mill everywhere on this Sunday afternoon, chattering loudly, doing business in the markets, hauling families through the malls. If this is a city in downturn then it must have been mighty lively before. And yet…
And yet it doesn’t take long to see that, in Bulawayo’s case, bustling doesn’t necessarily equate to thriving. Many of those street vendors are selling items of minuscule value, such as individual sweets being sold one at a time, old men whose entire stock is ten bags of crisps and four bottles of Coke. Women sell oranges outside boutiques, mums with babies hold out hands for cash, those trendy boutiques in the shopping malls are outnumbered by shutters-down bankrupt stores. Life for some is a struggle beneath these majestic buildings; the Blue Whale has seen better times.
The grand architecture and spacious boulevards tell their own story, one of colonial grandeur and significant standing, of wealth and investment and of historical pride. Beautifully designed buildings with detailed balconies and majestic porticos border the avenues whose width speak of glamour and power. Bulawayo feels like a city with a long proud history, yet we know it is also a city with a history of troubles and of bloodshed – there’s no doubting this is a place with stories to tell and secrets to keep, one which will be enthralling to explore.
Our footsteps echo embarrassingly as we cross the hall towards the bar. One guy on a laptop sips his beer in silence, the girl behind the counter smiles sweetly but is slow to serve. There’s a language barrier before we get as far as a Windhoek beer and a G&T, yet the stock behind the bar is distinctly international: several Scotch whiskeys, Gordon’s gin, Tia Maria. Rose’s lime juice. We order dinner, there’s no prices on the single sheet menu. There’s a closed door which leads to the snooker room, lists of club members who died in the world wars, a huge sweeping staircase and more framed paintings than in a dozen galleries.
Out in the hall the members’ ledger has entries on page one from decades ago, the suggestions book goes back still further. Some of the echoes on the wooden floor are not of today’s footfalls, they are the echoes of a grand colonial past, an age when the Bulawayo Club was strictly off limits to women, when the bar was filled with cigar smoke and ribald laughter, when iniquity was a privilege of the wealthy…
From the outside the Bulawayo Club is yet another of the city’s majestic buildings, inside its grandiosity is on a different level. At times we feel we are inside one of England’s great stately homes, at others wandering through an art gallery or maybe a museum, but stray down a different corridor and we are in the backrooms of a railway company’s offices in 1965. Whichever and whatever, to step onto the Bulawayo Club’s polished floorboards is to step into a different time, a bygone era.
Inside the club
Originally opened in 1895 when the city was in its infancy, the club sought to emulate Gentlemen’s Clubs elsewhere in the world, notably London. Rebuilt in the 1930s and only opened as a hotel to non-members in 2008, the club is now once again operated by the members whose names are listed in one of those weighty ledgers. Such renovations as have been carried out have served to restore and retain rather than reinvent: antlered heads of beasts watch over proceedings, probably still disapproving of the fact that women are now welcome too. A question hangs in the air: how did such an apparent bastion of white supremacy survive the Mugabe era? As it happens, we are soon to learn the answer.
Bulawayo boasts three museums of renown, the first of which to draw us in is the railway museum – I’m a sucker for anything to do with trains and railways. It would be easy to say this museum is a metaphor for the city: beautiful powerful steam engines trying hard to retain pride while their wooden floors turn to rot and their iron hulks crumble into rust. They are truly magnificent beasts though, all but one British built, standing here on lengths of track where the platforms of the central station used to burst with life.
And here amongst these iron horses is another piece of bygone splendour, the Rhodes Coach. This, of course, is Cecil Rhodes’ private mobile living quarters, plush enough to have received royalty – a railway carriage which could serve simultaneously as his apartment, his transport and his office, kitchen at one end, bathroom (with bath) at the other. Cecil Rhodes will, of course, appear again before we leave here. More than once.
Cecil Rhodes carriage
Immediately outside the electric gates of the club, city life goes on with street vendors scraping a living, discarded plastic littering the gutters and cars with missing fenders or even wing panels snaring a parking lot. In this city of mixed fortunes, virtually every outlet shown on Google maps as a restaurant turns out to be a fast food outlet where the furniture and the food are made from the same plastic. The Selborne, which looks so good on its website, is closed for a refit.
This, though, is the centre of the city, and as our days here unfold we are also to see the wealthy suburbs where grand well-built houses sit in large plots of land, two or three cars on the driveway. Life for some is a struggle beneath these majestic buildings. Not, it seems, for all.
The white tablecloth looks pure and pristine in the morning sunlight. It’s almost as if the Bulawayo Club has two characters, just as it would have in its days as a Gentlemen’s Club. By night the subdued lighting and liberal use of mahogany combine to form a dimly lit place with dark corners and even darker secrets. By day sunlight streams in through the atrium and bounces off those same wooden panels, breathing new life and light into even the furthest spaces.
Full English Sir? Oh I don’t mind if I do….coffee for me, a pot of tea for the lady. Thank you. You are most welcome Sir.
36 Comments
Monkey's Tale
It really is a step back in time, but I’m not sure it’s to a good time for the locals. You’re not selling me on a trip to Blue Whale 😊 Maggie
Phil & Michaela
More to come on that score too….
Nathan Muzenda
Despite the Beaty and the madness happening to bulawayo I still to get inside of the bulawayo club and every other in bulawayo I feel it’s really beautiful inside and peaceful as the country should be!!!!
Lynette d'Arty-Cross
I visited Bulawayo 20 years ago before women were allowed into the hallowed halls of the Bulawayo Club. As a city it was fading pretty hard even then. Interesting post.
Phil & Michaela
There seems to be a good deal of things which aren’t so good about the state of things in Zimbabwe. More to come on that…
Brian
Born and bred in Blue Whale Bulawayo, l miss you my beloved homeland. Enjoyed reading and viewing the photos.
Phil & Michaela
Thank you Brian, glad you enjoyed. We are definitely of the opinion that Bulawayo and most likely Zimbabwe as a whole, have seen better times when things were managed and governed better.
Mxolisi
Lovely article, plz do visit again.
Thought there is two thing l would like to point:
1. Blue-Whale pronunciation means you had a non Ndebele speaker mislead you about the correct way to say Bulawayo. The Bu has now “boo” sound and it definitely is not combine with the “L”.
2. “Place of Slaughter”…another distortion, Bulawayo got it’s name from where Mzilikazi came from in KZN South Africa, remember Mzilikazi had to get away from Kjng Shaka Zulu KwaZulu-Natal. So it happens one of King Shaka’s capitals was called kwaBulawayo(meaning place of the Oppresser or Victimised) in respect to his upbringing.
It was along the same lines that then King Mzilikazi name kwaBulawayo in Zim as he also had his throne challenged when an heir was installed in his seat when it was thought he had died, hence he said “sengingobulawayo ngisaphila” and the place was named kwaBulawayo.
Phil & Michaela
Thank you so much for your valuable comments, so much appreciated 🙏
Heyjude
I only passed through Bulawayo so didn’t see the Club, but the wide boulevard were impressive. You might find my last post about my camping trip, amusing.
http://traveltalk.me.uk/2013/12/27/rocks-rock-art-and-rock-music-snippets-from-an-african-diary/
Phil & Michaela
I’ve just read it….lots of it sounds so familiar, there’s a lot that hasn’t changed, as you’ll see from our next post. It’s as if life has stood still here, reading your diary notes. We even had a very similar rhino encounter. Oh and the shoot to kill poachers policy has worked, it’s now five years since they last lost an animal to poachers. Unfortunately the new poaching craft is felling trees and selling firewood.
WanderingCanadians
So much history and not all of it good. I couldn’t help but laugh at your comment about how the furniture and food are made from the same plastic. That Jacaranda tree is gorgeous.
Phil & Michaela
Jacarandas are an unreal colour, it must be amazing in season when they are all in bloom.
Toonsarah
What an atmospheric place to stay, I really like the look of your room and your description of it 🙂 I always love jacaranda trees, and of course that stone elephant carving caught my eye, but the other side to the city, as you describe it, sounds a little unsettling – not dangerous, more invoking a slight feeling of guilt at being able to stay in that beautiful old building when so many locals are struggling. I’m sure you’re feeling it too. I can’t wait to hear more about Blue Whale / Slaughter / Bulawayo 😀
Phil & Michaela
Well. That feeling – being lucky enough to travel like we do yet witnessing such poverty – is not an uncommon feeling. There’s another edge in Bulawayo though, where it’s very clear (and very often voiced out loud) that the desperate state of the country is entirely down to poor Government. It’s definitely unsettling, but in a slightly different way from other similar cities/countries.
Toonsarah
Interesting, and yes, unsettling. We’ve been in countries where the local people are accusing the government of mismanagement, but probably not on that scale.
Travels Through My Lens
Interesting history and photos too, but with a disturbing dark side. The Jacaranda tree is gorgeous. Safe travels!
Phil & Michaela
It’s definitely a country with troubles. More on that subject to follow…
grandmisadventures
I love the look and feel of the splendor of a 1930s gentleman’s club and private rail coach. Seems perfect for a movie setting. But the city itself seems to have a sad history that came with those lovely buildings for the elite.
Phil & Michaela
Yes. Things have definitely been better in the past than they currently are. The country isn’t well run.
Andrew Petcher
Enjoyed reading this.
Phil & Michaela
Ta. Cecil Rhodes to make another appearance shortly…
Andrew Petcher
Any evidence of the “Rhodes Must Fall” movement on your travels?
Phil & Michaela
Not in the slightest. You might be surprised by a couple of Rhodes features in our next post
lam recipes
What an outstanding work! Anyone interested in the topic will find it a must-read due to your interesting writing style and excellent research. Your inclusion of examples and practical ideas is really appreciated. I appreciate you taking the time to share your wise words.
leightontravels
A really absorbing read on a place I didn’t know existed before today. Love the whole wonky vibe to the Bulawayo Club, it might be far from perfect but lord does it have bags of character. Even by just looking at your photos I get the feeling of a city that is on its knees but with a fascinating history and reminders at every turn. Like you I also love anything to do with trains, so would love to experience the Rhodes couch myself someday. The Jacaranda tree is magnificent.
Phil & Michaela
Hey, either you are a very astute reader or I’m good at getting messages across, or both…(!)…because “on its knees” is exactly the phrase I originally used but then changed in case it offended people. Bulawayo is a city of huge mixed fortunes, both contemporary and historical. More of that in next post…
Annie Berger
The contrasts were stark and disturbing, for a reader from afar but they must be far more so for both of you experiencing life in Bulwayo, a place I’d never heard of before you mentioned it in a previous post. Terribly sad that the city and country’s decline rests with those in power, past and present. Looking forward to reading more about a place I’m sadly ignorant of.
Phil & Michaela
Hi Annie. There’ll be a second post on Bulawayo as we unearthed more of its current plight, although we’re now in a much more rural setting close to a marvellous historical site. But it’s clear that the country has its issues, that’s for sure.
Alison
All so very colonial still isn’t it? The roads are so wide I noticed. A real step back in time, must be hard for the locals to see such splendour.
I read the Wilbur Smith trilogies years ago which I enjoyed, all about the history of Rhodesia.
Phil & Michaela
I think it’s been a time full of difficulties since independence, Ali
wetanddustyroads
I smiled silently when you described your accommodation in Bulawayo – such places still exist in South Africa you know. When we stayed in Cape Town, we had a gardener who was from Bulawayo. He told us a lot about how prosperous this city once was and how the poorest of the poor people are now struggling to survive there. His mother used to worked in that very same library in one of your photos. Your post bring back memories of our many conversations with Henry (his English name).
Phil & Michaela
Well Henry’s opinions certainly back up what we’ve seen with our own eyes. Such a gulf between the two halves.
Nompilo Moyo
I’d like to add on this pronounciation like the other commenter had stated I was born and bred in that city blue whale is not even close I’m sorry to say at least buller-wah-yo but again with the Bu there is a bit difficult showing somebody how to do it properly
Phil & Michaela
Thank you for input….but honestly, as an Englishman listening to the guys in Victoria Falls, our ears heard it as “blue whale”. And as a traveller, you repeat what you hear. In Vic Falls it was definitely close to “blue whale”….but only if you say it like a Cockney…
Nick
The Gukuruhundi certainly crushed Bulawayo.
I met some people a long way from Matebeland and in the Gona re zhou, miles away. Their Shangaan was shaky and their Shona nonexistent. The locals referred to them as “Ndevere”. Turns out they were the descendants of people forcibly transferred in the 1930s.