Ice Cream Vendors

In Zimbabwe, the promise of an ice cream sounds like a cowbell. We didn't have ice cream vans with loud speakers; there were teams of dedicated and extremely fit vendors who cycled all around town pushing cooler tubs on thick rubber wheels while ringing their cowbells. They'd cycle through the residential areas or park outside schools at home-time to sell Zimbabwe's very own flavors: Nutty Squirrel, Monsta Mouse, Green Giant, Super Split, Bigger Bear, etc.
I'll always remember climbing up onto those big fat tires, leaning deep into the cooler box and feeling the cold air on my face as I picked out my treat.
The ice cream men are still going strong and Nutty Squirrels are still the bomb.

Absurd Christmas Decor

Despite being in the tropics, we celebrated Christmas in Zimbabwe with the same decorations and Christmas cards that are commonly seen in the Northern Hemisphere - never mind how absurdly out of place they looked or the fact that most of us had never even seen snow.
For kids in Harare, the closest thing we had to a mall was an open-air commercial hub called Sam Levy's Village; you knew Christmas was in the air when they set up the larger-than-life My Little Ponies and Tom & Jerry figures in between the palm trees. They also mounted a whole cast of tacky, anonymous cartoon characters that lit up at night onto the sides of the shops. It was an annual highlight.
It's only after having been to Sweden at Christmastime as an adult that I've understood that some celebrations are all about context. Christmas somehow makes sense in Sweden in a way that it never will in hotter climes.

Baby car seats

Baby car seats Seat belts These are not things Zimbabwean children experienced. Parents are far more likely to pop their kids into the back of a pickup truck, or bakkie, where they may or may not fall out when going over speed humps. You don't know driving until you've had your brains shook up and your bum bruised in the back of a bakkie. Driving along a dirt road with the wind in my face still whips me into the same state of silly happiness that it did when I was a kid.

Thunderstorms

With immense skies come immense thunderstorms. When I think of the rainy season I think of the smell of rain on hot soil, chongololos underfoot, and the click-BOOM of the house being struck by a thunderbolt.
Zimbabwe has one of the world's highest death tolls from lightning strikes. In 1975, 21 people were killed by a single lightening bolt in the Eastern Highlands. With storms like that, you can't just unplug your computer and leave the cable lying near the socket. The electricity can still jump across the room from the socket into the cable and burn out the entire network.

Wrist flicking

Every playground has its own brand of shaming and in Zimbabwean schools, if ever a child did something cheeky or embarrassing, the other kids would gather around and start chanting 'I-i-ih, i-i-ih!' while doing wrist flick snaps at them like Ali-G.

Snakes in the house

Most Zimbabweans will have a couple of snake stories to tell: a boomslang in the shower, a cobra in the stairwell, or that time the dogs found a snake under the car in the garage that had just eaten a toad whole and was too fat to make an escape, so it barfed up its dinner in a panic and sped off.
While these make for sensational stories over dinner or around a campfire, living in such close proximity to snakes actually teaches you that they are generally more afraid of you than you are of them. As long as you act accordingly and back off or use snake tongs to remove them gently, then there's often no need for dangerous confrontation.
Unless it's a black mamba. You'd better hope it's not a black mamba..