25 Even Granite Falls Apart

The Rhodesian civil war had ended over five years earlier. We had a map and a borrowed Peugot 504. Nothing could go wrong.

When David and I drive into the national park, surprisingly few people are camping. The campground varies little from those back in the States—gravel roads, marked camping spaces among the trees with spots for tents, a picnic table, campfire rings, and boulders to sit on. There’s even a showerhouse with hot water. David and I pitch our tent under tall evergreens old enough to have been planted by the British colonialists. The Brits started the Boy Scouts, and our tent is an old green boyscoutish thing we borrowed along with the car. Zimbabwe may now be independent, but we’ll likely have a cup of tea later. Very civilized, in a British sort of way.

David and I are not great friends, but we are both young 20-somethings teaching math in Kenya, a fact that has brought us into the same orbit. And we both like to travel and see new sights, soon hiking to an overlook on a granite dome so steep and high that Cecil Rhodes called it “World’s View.” He chose to be buried there.

Because of its durability, granite is the preferred option for countertops and tombstones. Little Johnny may forget the cutting board when chopping his carrots, but granite is tougher than his knife. That pretty white alternative, marble, is softer. It’s easier to carve and shape, but a tombstone of pure marble doesn’t last like granite. It dissolves away with the rain, leaving a marker of lost significance.

That night we meet white Rhodesians in the campground. A brother and sister, faces well-worn, seem much older than us—maybe even in their 40s. They invite us to their campfire.

“You’ve been in Zimbabwe all your life?” I ask.

“Yes. I loved growing up here. But the last 20 years have been pretty tough,” the brother replies.

“Bad times,” the sister adds. “The war lasted fifteen years. Brutal.”

“We formed convoys to get the kids to school. The Rhodesian military trucks had V-shaped bottoms so that landmines would blast outward instead of killing the people inside,” the brother says. “Our military was among the best in the world for its size. Very creative.”

He pauses.

“Still, sanctions, a cut-off of supplies from Europe. . . We were too outnumbered,” he adds.

“But we’re staying,” the sister says. “This is home.”

Robert Mugabe, the first and only president of the newly independent Zimbabwe, has welcomed whites to stay.

The brother picks up his guitar, the firelight upon his face, and begins singing Neil Diamond’s “Solitary Man,” the Eiseley Brothers, and pre-Graceland Paul Simon.

David and I sing along. “So far away from home, so far away from home.”

Granite is one of the most durable of rocks, made predominantly of large crystals of harder-than-steel quartz and feldspar. But the pull of the moon and the shifting of huge tectonic plates produce cracks, weak spots where warm and cold air and a little moisture enter, and the granite slowly disintegrates over billions of years. Some of the blocks of granite gradually become spheres, producing what look like the gods’ enormous marbles for some inscrutable game of chance.

On another morning in another part of Zimbabwe, David and I decide to drive around a bit, soon realizing we are low on fuel. My trusty map shows a station down a nearby road. As we draw close, no BP/Exxon/Mobil appears. Instead, we unexpectedly approach a dusty military compound. David and I heard that some tourists went missing in this area dominated by Mugabe’s 5th Army Brigade, a division trained by the North Koreans.

“Get us out of here,” I whisper to David.

But we are too late. An armed guard runs out from the gate, shouting, “Stop the car. Out.”

As I open the door, I hold the map in my hand.

“See,” I say, pointing. “There’s a gas station on the map. That’s what we were looking for.”

“Stand over there,” the guard says. Then he begins searching our car.

David and I watch nervously. We’re young and ignorant of colonial history, just out to do good—both teaching at mission schools such as the one Mugabe attended when young.

As the guard continues to rummage through the meager belongings, an officer drives up in a Peugot 504, the upper-class car of choice. He rolls down the window, and speaks to the guard in a language I don’t know. I point to the map again, holding it up toward the car, 10 feet away. Though I can’t understand the officer’s words, I read his expression, “Stupid tourists.” He orders the guard to dismiss us, rolls up his window, and enters the gated compound.

Inside old thermostats is a sandwich of two different metals fused together, like granite’s quartz and feldspar. They shrink and expand at different rates, causing the sandwich to deform and bend, touching contacts that turn on or off the heat. Inside the granite, the tiny differences are magnified by expansive time. The bonds sever, and the granite disintegrates.

Notes on Weathering:

Weathering is the natural process of altering rocks and minerals into different forms:

mechanical weathering: the breaking apart of a rock into smaller pieces through processes such as the expansion fo freezing water.

chemical weathering: the alteration of a rock through processes such as the dissolving of minerals, hydrolysis of feldspar into clays, and oxidation of metals, like the rusting of iron.)

biological weathering: the alteration of rocks and minerals due to the action of living organisms, including tree roots but particularly the activity of microorganisms in soil.

Think about the difference between how limestone and granite weather. Limestone is formed mainly from calcite, a mineral that dissolves (chemical weathering). Karst, the landscape formed when lots of limestone dissolves, is characterized by sinkholes, caves, and disappearing streams. But when granite weathers, mechanical weather separates the quartz and feldspar than form it. The quartz is tough and weathers slowly into sand. The feldspar weather chemically through hydrolysis into clays. A mixture of sand, silt, and clay forms a soil called loam, the kind of good soil that much of Iowa is known for.