A Happy 2013 to one and all. Many of us resolve to make positive, life-affirming changes at the start of a new year, aiming to break bad habits and launch good new ones. Opinion by Rosie Mitchell
One of my brothers-in-law in his early 50s had a sudden heart attack just before Christmas which his doctors attributed entirely to smoking. He gave up there and then and his new healthy lifestyle continues into 2013 — well done! Smoking is a tough one to beat.
Multitudinous smokers worldwide will undoubtedly have resolved to kick this very dangerous habit this year. Once a moderate, sporadic smoker myself, I know just how compulsive this insidious health hazard is. Even giving up two cigarettes a day was hard!
So to all the would-be quitters, go for it resolutely, reminding yourself daily of the myriad benefits of being a non-smoker, from financial, to health, to the welcome absence of stale smoke-smell in hair, clothes and furnishings, to being free of a literal ball and chain that impacts on your life every single day. New non-smokers often remark on the delightful novelty of no longer having to anxiously ensure enough “fix” to hand to see them through the next 12 hours!
One of my own health-related resolutions is to eat less sugar. I really love chocolates, sweet drinks and sweet stuff generally. I keep up-to-date on the latest health research studies for my work and the more I read up on the folly of modern diets and lifestyles, the more warnings I find about the negative health effects of too much of the sweet stuff! The most recent American studies on dietary links to major health concerns — heart disease, cancers, clogged arteries, liver and kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes — have pointed to excessive sugar consumption, especially high fructose corn syrup found in numerous processed foods and drinks, as quite possibly the biggest culprit of all.
Mountain summit, a small forest The San art in these caves is especially good, in fact, boasting four caves and more paintings in one place than at any other known site, this is a “must-see” for rock art enthusiasts.
I was devastated to find the scourge of ancient-rock-art-defacement had arrived even out here in one of the caves. I write regularly on the topic of ruination by persons unknown of such priceless art, which are our country’s oldest historical sites and evidence of some of humanity’s earliest ancestors from whom we’re all descended.
Fortunately, the other caves at Chikupu are as yet untouched by such vandalism and the paintings are numerous and truly fascinating. A scramble up the steep, bare rock face to the summit of the mountain just has to be done. The view is magnificent and in a dip atop this huge granite whaleback is an entire ecosystem all of its own, a small forest in fact.
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This area is still home to small game, including enchanting, nimble klipspringers, one of which we were lucky enough to see. We found evidence of civet, enjoyed a troupe of baboons, and not far from one of the caves, to my delight, encountered a black mamba which obligingly hung around just long enough for me to get a photo before it hid itself away under a rock ledge.
Rock art: A priceless heritage at Chikupu Obviously, physical inactivity co-mbined with consuming too much sugar only makes matters worse; a sin which could not possibly be ascribed to the group of 17 visitors from the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa, in Zimbabwe for a wedding, whom I took to Chikupu mountain to see the amazing San paintings there, before Christmas!
Asked to guide them somewhere interesting and scenic by a friend of my brother’s, I was delighted to oblige; any excuse to get out into the beautiful mountains, landscapes, vistas and forests of Chinamora, a hiker’s paradise!
Tinashe (one of my merry team at Wild Imaginings) and I undertook a most enjoyable recce to check the state of the road and plan the expedition, ensuring a small bus could cope with my proposed destination. We had a marvellous afternoon rediscovering this particularly stunning part of Chinamora which I hadn’t visited in over five years.
A week later, the hearty group of friendly visitors aged four to 65, all just arrived from their various shores, enthusiastically tackled the steep granite slopes, loved the views, landscape and experience, and of course, enjoyed the paintings, too. One, an inspirational, sprightly looking lady of 65, among various other recent energetic adventures with her also very fit husband, ran her first London Marathon in 2012! The roads were in good condition, the local people welcoming, the countryside and mountains beautiful.
As Tinashe remarked, few Zimbabweans are even aware of, let alone take full enough advantage of, all that this country has to offer, in terms of spectacular scenery and fascinating artistic evidence of humankind’s very earliest history, to be found at many thousands of sites nationwide, some, yet to be found. Let’s hope that through better education, these paintings will soon come to be valued and cherished as the priceless art that they are, by all Zimbabweans of all ages.
