Domboshava National Monument Site

By Klara Wojtkowska

Domboshava Balancing Rock - Pictured By Sam Nyaude

The Caves of Domboshava

We couldn’t find the cave. The cave that contained evidence of an era by-gone, that which today still serves as a place where the Shona people of the surrounding area meet with their Provider - The Rain-Maker- through traditional ceremony.

Running over the red rocks – round the kidney-shaped stone balancing on the line of the horizon – we couldn’t find the cave.

Standing next to the giant stone shaped like God’s big toe, a cryptic testament to an elusive order, Nature’s ability to balance things – we couldn’t see the cave.

The people of the cave that was hard to find, the people who had – centuries ago – first given in to the burning human desire for remembrance and creativity, and become painters, these people who had drawn pictures of their world – full of animals and themselves – onto rocks – have long since gone.

Their paintings have weathered all storms.

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Panoramic view of the Domboshava Area - By Sam Nyaude

Domboshava, lies 27km north of Harare, a short drive out from the busy city into the more dusty rural landscapes that lead to the “RED ROCK” – a direct Shona translation of the name Domboshava.

Upon disembarking from the rattling bus onto a dry earth, we – my friend and I – were immediately swept up in dust. Tall, brown grasses shrouded the sides of the roads, reaching towards the spreading wings of savanna trees. A seemingly starved dog sat in front of a house, trying in vain to pick up his useless hind legs, crippled assumedly from being hit by a vehicle from the nearby main road that proceeds to rural areas in Mashonaland Central.

Ahead of us, on the dusty path to Ndambakurimwa, the “enchanted forest that refuses to be farmed”, a herd of cattle skipped playfully across a dirt road leading towards Domboshava National Monument Site.

Somewhere in those hills, we knew, was a cave where people a long time ago had slept, burned fires, painted pictures. Somewhere, a cave, a reminder or a clue, vague outlines of four-legged creatures sprinkled with their two-legged admirers. Somewhere, holes in rocks from which long ago smoke rose in ceremonies we struggle these days to understand.

First we walked through forest of Musasa trees, a part of the forest that, legend has it, “refused to be farmed.” “When the settlers first came,” my friend began, “the story goes they tried to cut this forest down. But the forest immediately grew back. So then they cut it down again and every morning, the trees would have sprung back exactly where they stood the previous day.”

But the forest wasn’t only made up of Musasa trees – sprinkled in it were tall, silver trunks and short, twisted ones, spiny Muzhanje trees, and dry grasses. On our right, another ‘forest’ – a forest of sculptures – sprouted in an empty field. The artists guarding their works waved. Their faces animated, in contrast to the stilled faces of their sculptures – stoic women, wide-eyed children, united families, cold rocks carved into the warm curves of human and animal forms.

Up ahead, the hills of Domboshava pushed up the line of the horizon, setting the bar high for us, as we prepared to climb these natural skyscrapers.

My friend had been here before. He was the one who spoke about the caves. I couldn’t understand what he was trying to say – caves in this cracked savannah? Caves where? Caves in the rocks that stretched far and wide like a desert plain, its reddish tinge challenging the monotonous bright blue of the open sky? “There are caves here,” my friend insisted. I was satisfied to skip across the rocks, balancing on each other like trusting friends, rocks hedged in by tall, dry grasses.

Once we climbed to the top, we sat down, looking over the other side of the hills. On a nearby hill, a group of people dressed in an array of colors sang exuberant songs in what must have been a church service. Cows droned along from far off planes, and in the far distance loomed tall mountain ranges. But where were the caves?

It was only later, after running up and down the steep cliffs, in the late afternoon, that a boy pointed us in the right direction. The silver arrows that lead from the entrance of the monument to the caves had eluded us this entire time. Other visitors most likely, have a much easier time getting there.

Rock Art @ Domboshava By Sam Nyaude

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The cave was a large gaping mouth that was surprisingly shallow. Trees and bushes hid the entrance, so that it seemed what we were standing in front of was not a cave, but a wall draped in flushed greenery, a shadowy oasis in the middle of a dry savannah. Various other people milled about, sitting on rocks in front of the ancient paintings of elephants and rhinos, or walking towards the gaping hole in the wall, presumably used for ceremonies, for burning things – for fire and smoke and a sign, that some god, somewhere, is indeed listening.

Sitting there, I thought of how little we know. And how much we think we know. Doubtless, the signs authoritatively labeling the pictures as meaning this or that, classifying the gaps in the rocks with some utility, possessively reminding those who come and see the rocks, to respect the cave, and keep it clean – these signs will whither away and maybe fall down. But the paintings drawn long ago by a human hand, run over by multi-colored lizards and mulled over by black and blue birds will continue to mystify those who come to see them.

“Some time ago,” my friend told me, “these paintings were coated by scientists with a chemical that was supposed to preserve them – and as soon as they were coated, they started smearing and bloating. As you can see, the paintings are faded and dripping. It’s a lot worse now, than it was the last time I was here,” he said, worried and annoyed, at what seemed to him the ultimate disrespect – the arrogance of present generations who thought they knew more than those who came before. The presumption of generations that felt free of the invisible string of history linking the hands of the cave artists, with the hands of the tourists – fingers dipped in paint long ago, with fingers pressing buttons on cameras today.

A group of three children with their parents wandered up as we sat, admiring the paintings. The little children looked up at the pictures of elephants and rhinos. “How did they paint so high up?” One girl asked. The red-haired girl with a cap said, with some authority: “The ground was higher back then.” Noticing my interested look, she turned away shyly.

Meanwhile, stone-age art of rhinos and elephants and giraffes and hippos and people looked down at us, so alive, so full of what it means to be alive, oblivious of the passing of time that threads through the string of lives that makes up the melancholy passing of generations.

The Domboshava Hills National Monument and Museum Site are a great day retreat in the outdoors for many who need an escape from the busy noisy malls and streets of Harare. Tourists to this site can carry in their picnicking basket and beverages into the monument site though there is the Cave Affair Restaurant close by.