No one has ever believed in my abilities the way Masimba does. When I had not written a single line of code in three years — three years of digital marketing, spring suspension companies, rat-infested offices and glorified cooking — he walked into my workplace at Willowvale Road in March 2023 and pulled me back. Not with a speech. With an idea drawn on a piece of paper.
He wanted to build a booking system so fast it would feel like magic. Type your dates, your destination, your number of people — and in under thirty seconds, five complete trip packages would appear. He called it Tsoka 3.0. I looked at the paper. I started mapping the logic in my head. And just like that, after three years, I was a developer again.
The Road to Victoria Falls — Third Chapter
Working from Harare was not working. Power cuts killing momentum. Unreliable internet strangling progress. Masimba made a decision. Victoria Falls had electricity twenty-four hours a day. ZOL fibre internet. He made this decision in the morning. By 4pm we were on the road. He also clipped the bumper of a car parked next to us on the way out. He glanced at it, said nothing meaningful, and told me to get in.
Somewhere between Bulawayo and Lupane, while I was deep in the project on the ThinkPad Masimba had given me, I forgot my one job — watching the speedometer. Masimba accelerated. There was a petrol station ahead. Then the pothole appeared. The car hit it at speed, lost control, left the road and headed for a tree. On my side. I saw the tree coming and had exactly no time to do anything. Then the car corrected and we missed it. The driver-side tyres had burst. A joint was broken. We waited six hours in the car on the highway.
Fired By Millionaires
We built two blockchain platforms for companies launching new cryptocurrency coins. Then we got a job with a company in the United States. We used a VPN to appear as if we were operating from there. Two weeks in, the company called a meeting. They had detected the VPN activity. Masimba's video feed was so dark his face was barely visible. Screaming Africa from every pixel. They acknowledged the quality of his work. Their security policy was non-negotiable. The call ended.
Masimba turned to me and said: I have just been fired by millionaires. He said it like it was an achievement. Maybe it was.
The Family Chapter
It had been three months since I had seen my wife and daughter. Masimba told me to bring them down. Three days. We did everything — the crocodile cage dive, the snake museum, a buffet dinner at Jungle Junction. My daughter Makatendeka ate so much ice cream that night that she had an accident in the early hours of the morning. She was not sorry about it. Then the Falls. Then a sunset cruise on the Zambezi — elephants on the bank, hippos surfacing, crocodiles absolutely unbothered by our presence. My wife did not want to leave when it was time to go home.
Thirty Seconds
After the family left I poured everything into Tsoka. And then it happened. I built the search functionality. You typed your dates, your destination, your number of people. The system returned five complete trip packages in under thirty seconds. Masimba looked at it and said: this is it.
The Baboons
Masimba was on a WhatsApp video call. We came to a section of the path where a large group of baboons had settled. Masimba saw a baby baboon and moved toward it, phone extended. The baby startled. Made a sound. And in the time it takes to blink, the entire troop responded. They came for us.
I turned and ran for the car park as fast as my body would allow. While running I looked back to check on Masimba. I did not see what was on the ground in front of me. I went down. Three milliseconds later Masimba also went down beside me. Both of us on the ground. Baboon still coming.
A taxi driver had seen the whole thing. He leaned on the hooter. The sound startled the baboon. It stopped. Looked at the taxi. Decided this was not worth it and turned back. We became the story of the week in Victoria Falls.
He called himself the Monkey King after that. I let him have it. He had earned the title.