I moved to Dubai in 2004. It seemed
quite daunting at the time after 23 years in Zimbabwe, and at least 5 years of
increasing economic stress and decline. We agreed on a 3 month trial period.
Then I had a month back in Zimbabwe to put my affairs in order.
I spent some time digitising what I could of my
accumulated papers and photos. Part of this was a project I had been working on
for a few years to document the built history of Harare and Zimbabwe.
To impose some order on this, I created maps in Autocad
and divided the city up into zones, with increasing resolution, zooming in
towards the centre. I haven’t looked at these for a long time, but my recent
visit stimulated a renewed interest.
There are folders within folders with the maps acting
as an index. In some cases there are folders for individual buildings with date
built, architect, etc. Here I show a photograph I took on 2004 of Standard Bank
in Manica Road at the bottom of First Street, by Alfred Cope-Christie, one…