THE A1 OUT of Harare must be the worst highway in Zimbabwe, if you can even call it a highway with its tractors and goats and cattle, and old Japanese hatchbacks dodging semis and cement mixers and steel-laden flat beds—to say nothing of the road itself: a cratered, shoulderless garden of gravel and asphalt worked over daily by a parade of industrial traffic.
For eight hours I didn’t take my eyes off it, terrified I’d be taken out by a tandem trailer grinding and swaying its way up from the Zambian border. Note to Jesus: if you choose to return here—to this highway—in your second coming, I am telling you that it will not end well. You will be sacrificed
