Zimbabweans Do Not Like To Honour Their Heroes Properly

"Go and tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, That here, obedient to their laws, dead we lie" - Simonides of Ceos (556-468BC), Epitaph on the monument marking the Battle of Thermopylae (480 BC).

It is an anomaly is it not? (As I read more into Zimbabwe’s history) that Changamire Dombo defeated the Portuguese using superior military tactics way back when - and the Portuguese even acknowledged this rout in their historical documents - yet travel the length and breadth of Zimbabwe, you will not find a single statue commemorating Changamire Dombo’s military genius. Search high and low, and you will not find this victory honoured in any medium - drawings, films, re-enactments, nothing! 

Yet, here I am, in the picture above, in Thermopylae, at a monument erected in honour of King Leonidas of Sparta who lost a battle here to the invading Persians in 480 BC. There already has been 2 major films made in honour of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans. When I arrived in Athens, while relaxing and trying to get my bearings, I was talking to a young medical student in the Gazi District. Not only did she know of, word for word, the Battle of Thermopylae, she also recited the stories of Thucydides, Herodotus and Homer. I, on the other hand, am only getting to know the stories of my country the hard way, and retro-retrospectively too.

"Three hundred Spartans and their allies held off the invaders for seven days, until, their weapons smashed and broken from the slaughter, they fought 'with bare hands and teeth' (as recorded by Herodotus) before being at last overwhelmed.

Thermopylae means Hot Gates, named so because there are hot springs at this place. On the day I visited, it was overcast and raining, the mist you see there comes from the hot springs that are still active to this day. There can be no mistaking the site of the battle.