Visit Every City

19th August 2026

(From Josh Vazquez)

Some people say that the best conversations are always the ones that go full circle. Now of course this is a blog post and not a conversation, so it’s not the best fit. But it only feels right to end my trip to Africa in the same way it started—by writing a blog.

Now before I get into the trip, I would like to say some “thank yous.”

The first thank you is for Lewis for inviting me to go with him to Zimbabwe, as well as all of the coordinating that he put into it. Also a big thank you to him for being so easy to travel with as well as keeping a blog so that everyone can be up to date. The blog writing grind is a real one that Lewis steadily persevered through, which allowed people to read about many details of our journey that my reflections won’t touch upon.

The second thank you is to Mabasa and his entire family. They took care of me like I was family, without having ever met me before this trip. They provided us with a solid, comfortable home base and took care of us when we got colds. Mabasa also spent a lot of time planning the trip out and thinking through how to do everything we did (which was a lot) without getting burnt out. I was also so grateful to have someone along with us for the long journeys, who knew the country, culture and language. This allowed me to not only learn all about the country but to feel comfortable and confident while traveling.

Another thank you to my wife who took care of our baby, Joshua, back at home and encouraged me to go out and experience a life-changing trip. As well as everyone who spent time and supported them while I was gone.

My final thank you, at least for now (the list can go on for longer than this), is to all the wonderful brethren that I was able to meet in Zimbabwe. Thank you so much for taking care of us and allowing us to come into your homes, and for being so warm and welcoming to us. Being on the opposite side of the world and still having welcoming brethren is a blessing from God that is hard to put into words.

So here I go trying to put this experience into words…

First off, flying so far away is quite literally one of the weirdest things in the world. You get on this plane for 8-9 hours and then 13-14 hours and you do nothing but sit in a chair, sleep, get up and stretch, listen to things, read and play games. Time goes by and then you land and it’s almost like you teleported. Everything seems the same, like you’re on the same planet and yet by the time you’re done, two days have gone by and you feel like you’re in a completely new world.

Yesterday this is what happened returning home, but the weirdest part is showing up in a place that you are completely unfamiliar with… and that was Zimbabwe. When we got out of the airport, I was in a different place with people who didn’t speak English. We went to get into a taxi and Lewis told me I should get into the front seat and I almost got into the taxi-drivers seat… because the steering wheel was on the right side!

The rest of the trip was spent getting acclimated and learning about a completely new world. I learned two words in Shona (the native language of Zimbabwe.) Makadii which means “how are you?” and sadza which is one of the staple dishes within the country.

I learned a lot about the history of the country—the governments, the time their currency was so inflated that there were 100 billion dollar notes, and more current things like their industries of gold mining and agriculture.

Most of the time we spent traveling from place to place, meeting with brethren and visiting their homes. I did some rough calculations. In the week and a half that we were there we drove well over 635 miles or 1,030 km. This is a rough estimate that doesn’t include any of the bumpy village roads. Village roads should count as triple…

So, often we would drive through these cities where the roads were sometimes okay—then we would turn off into a village and at first I was shocked, wondering how any car could drive on these roads day in and day out and survive. We were in a truck and it still felt worse than any other road that I’d been on.

The list can go on and on of the things that I learned and saw. I know Lewis captured a lot of it in his daily blog. I did think maybe I should blog so I can talk more about the things that I was learning, but it never felt like the right time. So if you want to learn more about the details of the trip and things I learned feel free to message me.

But to truly make this a full-circle moment the main thing that I feel this blog should be about is the same thing my first blog was about. If you didn’t read my original blog, Lewis had asked me to write about why I was going to Africa?

In summation, the answer to that question was:

1. To serve and meet the brethren in the Church there.
2. To gain the perspective of what it’s really like for church members living in Zimbabwe.

So the real Bible nerd in me is going to approach this in a chiastic structure and talk about the second one first.

Before traveling to Zimbabwe, I think my perspective on what it is like in Africa is probably very stereotypical for an American. If you were to think about Africa as an American what is the first thing that would come to mind?

For me it was two different things.

First I thought of the savannah and all of the different wildlife, but primarily the king of the jungle, the lion. And no, I didn’t see a lion… Well if you count statues of lions, then yes I did see lions. The closest thing that I saw to wildlife was monkeys. Other than that, Lewis would make a joke as we passed goats, cows, donkeys and different farm animals on the road, he would say “Look! Wildlife.” To which we would laugh.

Overall this perception of Africa, I think, comes from the media consumption about the wildlife that definitely exists in less populated areas, but to many people in Africa, or Zimbabwe at least, it wasn’t really relevant. In talking to Mabasa one of the days about my love for lions, he responded very nonchalantly and said there’s places where lions are on the side of the roads like the cows that we see. Now I’m not sure if he was joking, or if that’s still true due to the hunting of lions. A guy we met in line on our way home said that they didn’t see one lion on their safari trip because there has been a lot of poaching and the others often cross over the border to other countries.

I will say I tried my very best to not come across as touristy for the sake of being respectful to the culture, but my love of lions couldn’t help but break through at that moment.

I think it’s worth exploring that dichotomy of perspective. For many Americans (or maybe just me), one of the biggest attractions to go to Africa is the wildlife safari. Of course, I was going to meet and serve the brethren, not for touring safaris. But for Africans, safari animals and that whole experience is almost irrelevant. Why is that?

You could say well they’re just used to it. It’s like us seeing raccoons in the Northeast, it’s not really a spectacle.

But the reality is that I don’t think that is correct.

I’d be curious how many Africans have seen a wild lion. I would guess that the percentage is very low. Google didn’t provide me with any evidence. So the math teacher in me is going to start to provide you with some numbers so you can start to get a feel for why I don’t think the hypothesis is correct. Google said that the large majority of people live in urban city centers. So I looked it up. About 38 to 39% of people who live in Zimbabwe live within a city. Out of 17.3 million that’s 6.6 million people.

That means 6.6 million people live in cities, so if someone who lived in a city wanted to drive to experience going on a safari, how far would they have to drive? Through brief research the average person would have to drive between 185 to 250 miles (300 to 400 Kms) which would take about 4-6 hours (probably not including the awful roads as described above). Now you might say well it’s worth the drive, it’s a continental attraction. But the reality is that only between 7.6 and 8.3% of people actually own a vehicle. That’s only about 1.47 million registered vehicles (probably not including people who own multiple). Lets add one more number to the equation, now this number varies. But somewhere between 49 percent and even upwards of 60% percent of people within the country of Zimbabwe are considered to be in poverty. That means somewhere between 8.4 to 10.38 million people live on less than $3 a day.

Let that sink in… It’s hard to even really understand what that even means. But it’s when you start to combine the numbers and really think about the question, “how many Africans or in this case Zimbabweans have seen a wild lion?” You realize that the question itself isn’t even relevant.

Which is why I think the other perception of Africa is one of a continent that contends with a large amount of poverty. Now before I comment on the subject a couple of side comments must be made on the disgusting reality that hits hard from visiting this country and now seeing the numbers. There are roads that you drive down where there are houses that by worldly standards are mansions. There is a house that this “charismatic preacher” owns that is unbelievably lavish. The polarization of life that these people have to me is something that is completely unjustifiable in so many ways. Especially from a “preacher.” What is the biblical precedent that you hold which makes you okay with having an unbelievable home while so many people around you are living on less than 3 dollars a day. To me it is absurd on face value and gets me very frustrated.

Now taking a step back for context, growing up I lived in a middle class suburb of Connecticut. I lived a very comfortable life, all thanks to God and my parents providing for me. But I also did have the opportunity to travel to neighboring cities like Bridgeport, where there is a large percentage of the population that is in poverty. In a lot of ways my dad’s family were not well off people. They had enough to survive. So I’ve seen some rough areas in my short life up until this point.

Now with that in mind the question that has to be asked is, does the reality of Africa actually match the perception of Africa? I always ask this question whenever I’m talking about something that I’ve only learned about through the media, the news, statistics and watching movies.

But is that reality? Often I find this not to be the case, you truly can’t understand the situation in some place in an intimate way unless you’ve been there. On the plane ride back to the US we were sitting next to this guy from the UK and he was asking us questions about America. He was saying he was afraid to come to the US because people who are racist with guns might come and kidnap him and he would go missing. He was wondering about how much of the things he had seen were actually real and same with me for the UK. The more we talked the more we realized although there are real problems and things going on in our own countries our perceptions of the other countries were in some cases exaggerated.

So what about Zimbabwe? Well you can’t deny that there are a lot of people who are not financially doing well. You drive through the streets and there are a lot of people who live in huts that have holes in their roofs. In some places there are so many people that live within such a small amount of space. In Africa it seemed common for people to share a room for most of their family and even some of their extended family. In talking to some of the brethren we learned that it takes $1 to take the bus to town and $1 to get back and yet most people can’t afford that, so instead they walk. They walk everywhere and sometimes get public transportation, like a taxi where the taxi-bus drivers squeeze in as many people as possible into the cab to make the drive worth it. A traditional kitchen in Zimbabwe is a hut in which they cook over coal. Bathrooms, when you go out into the villages, are usually a hole in the floor. People who work in the schools or have a job often travel to their job on a Sunday, stay the week and then return home on Friday so that they can send their kids to public school that is supposed to be free but isn’t.

These are to just list a few of the practical things that in the United States we don’t necessarily grasp. A lot of things in our lives that we have, we take for granted.

And yet…

Even in all of these financial struggles and lack of structural development within the country. The thing that I kept coming back to as we were going from village to village and seeing people within this context was just the beauty of life that so many people had. Now of course there are criminals and people doing evil things. That is a universal truth no matter where you are in the world and yes maybe some places are worse than others.

But the real perception that changed, the real thing that I kept coming back to was that despite all of these circumstances that people find themselves in financially, there is still so much love and joy in life. I think sometimes we and maybe I can just speak for myself here, can have this perception that how well off someone is financially indicates the level of happiness and meaning that someone has in their life. But we know that to not be the case, we have this saying “money can’t buy happiness” which is correct in a lot of ways.  But as Americans sometimes we look and summarize how someone is experiencing life based on their financial capabilities.

Now I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be better if people were better off financially, I hope and pray that they all can be. But there was such a beauty in seeing people who live in these communities spending time together hanging out and trying to sell things. It was so beautiful to see the kids playing in the street laughing and having a grand ole time. There was a beauty in seeing a family going down to a stream and washing their clothes together. Life is so much simpler and focused on the things that matter most.

The world we live in here in America so often allows us to focus on everything else because we can meet our most basic needs most of the time. But what this causes is for the problems and the dilemmas that us Americans experience, when viewed in the grand scheme of things, seem so insignificant.

In Zimbabwe, people in the villages often work together as a community. They build relationships with the people around them and work together to provide for their families. That’s not to say that all villages are perfect but it is to say that in the environment in which people are focused on what matters most; community, support and being focused on providing for their family come into full focus in a way that I think we have lost in the West. In a way that I think we as a country and even as a church need to make sure we are focused on because that’s what allows us to persevere and stand during times of difficulties.

Which leads me to our church brethren. I feel like going out and going into the brethren’s homes all around the country of Zimbabwe allowed me to see the wide variety of lifestyles that people live. Whether it be in an irrigation scheme in a mountainous village, a home in a mining city, homes in and around the capital, or personal farms outside of the city. Every home, city and village had their own dynamic. But the thing that was consistent in each of these homes was the level of love and hospitality that we felt was unbelievable. The brethren who come from all walks of life welcomed us into their homes with open arms, fed us a full meal and sat there and talked with us. Most of them couldn’t even believe we were there with them in their home and they were so appreciative that we were there. One tradition that was unique was that before you ate a meal, they would come with a pitcher of hot water and a small basin in which someone would pour the water on your hands to wash your hands before and after the meal. This almost every time has this feeling of the Passover Foot Washing, it is so uncomfortable and I’d much rather wash someone else’s hands. So I would always say “it’s okay, you don’t have to do it” or “please, let me do it,” and almost every time they refused.

The beauty behind these experiences is it’s an example of how God’s love transcends beyond any boundary, across any distance and through any culture. It’s through anyone who has the heart to allow God to work with them, that no matter where you are in the world, if someone is there who is on the same journey as you, you will feel the love. Whether it be sitting talking about the Bible while eating a fruit (whose nickname is African chewing gum) right off the tree, sitting hearing about someone’s story of coming to the church, learning about someone’s day to day life and honestly just being there, feeling the excitement of the brethren for having us there to just talk and spend time.

Going to Africa was an experience that is really hard to fully encapsulate but it will forever be one that has completely changed my perspective. God has blessed me with the opportunity to do this adventure and I am so grateful that my wife encouraged me to take it despite having a small baby at home. I hope one day when the time is right that I will be able to return.

But I can’t help but imagine… During a conversation Lewis and I had on the trip, while I was learning the history and understanding the level of wealth that Zimbabwe could have based on resources, as well as seeing just the beauty of the land the country does have—at the same time, I was learning about the amount of corruption that prevents that prosperity from occurring and I was frustrated. But it made me think and I said it at the time…

It’s going to be such a beautiful day when Zimbabwe—and the whole world—will be ruled by the King of Kings, Jesus Christ. A time when everyone will be ruled by a just and loving king who will be able to turn every country around. A time when there is no poverty, no starvation, no corruption, no crime. A time when those glimpses of love, family and meaning aren’t just in these pockets where Christians exist. But everywhere. Where all people are going to have the opportunity to live the most meaningful and love-filled life. Where every kid is going to play on the street and the joy and laughter will fill the air. And so as I looked out through the hundreds of miles we drove and the multitude of cities that we saw, I thought about how beautiful that day will be.

The day that the love of God, which I saw in the brethren on this trip, a love that transcends any boundary, distance and culture, will be over the entire world and I think what a beautiful world that will be.

God speed that day.

With love and peace,

-Josh Vazquez