Under the arms of the shady Sausage tree I sat with a group of friends watching the sandy river bed to see what we could see. We had just been watching warthogs feasting in a pile of elephant dung but now the vultures were circling, anticipation was high.  A pair of black backed jackals trotted down to the silver stream of water far across the sandy river bed. A fish eagle had just caught a fish and stood atop its still wet prey. The jackals approached, we were too far away to see exactly what happened but within a couple of minutes the jackals had the fish and the eagle flew away to hunt again. This certainly wasn’t what had attracted vultures and so we scanned the golden sand again until we saw it.  A big male lion was watching us, his russet and black mane framing his face. As we sat in silence watching what followed, I was struck by the overwhelming magnificence of Zimbabwe: such enormous diversity, stunning beauty, bountiful resources and wonderful people and yet we remain suffocated by decades of corruption, bad management, widespread plunder and selfish enrichment by a few, all of which have reduced our country to a state of near collapse.