On a walk with his friends, wives, and girlfriends, Roy George Tinashe Decinia, 40, missed a step and slipped while walking parallel to the edge of the canyon.
The roofs were wet and slippery due to the heavy rain and he couldn’t hold his fist, and he slipped on rocks and eventually fell from a height of about 108 meters, his friends told CNN.
Dikinia, who is originally from Harare, has lived in Victoria Falls for a year and knows the area well.
His body was found on January 2, but the area where it had fallen was difficult for rescuers to reach as the river was high after heavy rain.
Farao said that people had drowned at the site before, but this was the first time someone had fallen into the valley.
A video seen by CNN shows his remains being raised again over the edge of the cliff with a zipline and a pulley system. Farao added that the rescue operation also included the army, miners and volunteers from the tourism sector.
Dickinia was a fitness trainer and father of two twin boys, Trey and Lionel, and two girls, Hayley and Taya from a previous relationship.
“I hope soon after the landing he will make it happen because he is fit, strong and a good swimmer,” his partner, Mazuy Shamu, said during a telephone conversation with CNN while the remains of Dikinia were being transported to Harare on Thursday.
“I had so much hope that he might have clung to a rock or fall into the water and swam ashore.”
Shamu said the couple had planned to announce their recent engagement with friends and family and were planning to travel across Asia.
“He was assertive and hardworking, he wanted to live his private life,” his mother, Eileen Guerra DeKenia, told CNN by phone. She added that he used to make a lot of jokes and was an artist, and he laughs heartily at some of her memories of him.
His mother said that Dikinia was a foodie, and was determined to help others lead a healthy lifestyle.
He built a gym in his home so that the locals could come and train and encourage the people around him to exercise and eat well.
Reginald Mattinanga said he was a football fanatic and fan of Harare’s Dynamos Football Club and was attending matches regularly on Sundays.
He said, “He was a practical family member and I will forever cherish these moments and memories.”
Located on the western edge of Zimbabwe, Victoria Falls National Park is a UNESCO Natural Heritage Site. Often listed as one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World, the local Kololo tribe knows the waterfalls as “Mosi-oa-Tunya” – meaning “smoke that makes thunder”.
With a width of 1.7 kilometers and a height of 100 meters, it is not the tallest or widest waterfalls in the world, but many consider it the most amazing.
ZPWMA manages one of the largest real estate in the country, which has an area of about 5 million hectares or 13% of the total land area in Zimbabwe.
