shoo fly

"Keep your voice down." She edges her chair closer. We are metres from her garden hedge. I can't see anyone but there may or may not be rustling. Four weeks to an election and we're all a bit paranoid.

"The guy next door is ZANU-PF. He's something to do with food distribution," she mouths. There's an unfamiliar stink from the bottom of the garden: ah yes, the hanging flycatcher. No rubbish collection for nearly three months means we all have to devise ways of getting rid of flies. You might burn your rubbish every morning, but there's no saying your neighbour will. In the towns, there are huge mounds of festering banana skins and cabbage leaves under the posters urging us to vote for our land and RGM. A popular local flycatcher is a bottle filled with a mixture made from dried kapenta fish, tiny papery minnow-like things with eyes. They sold by the packet in the grocers, next to the dried caterpillars. Kapenta is poor man's food in Zimbabwe, the sort ZANU-PF bigwigs have been heard to scorn. Not flies though. They swarm to the smell and stick to the bottle. Disgusting but effective.

"There was something going on last night, lots of unmarked BMWs and big cars," she says. She wraps her arms round herself protectively.

snippets

Things are never as black and white as they seem.

"Where's Mai X?" I ask. I'm in a sitting room again, barefoot. I have handed over my basket at the door as you do, inquired after everyone's day, assured all present that my husband and my child are fine. I like these slow unhurried rituals. Speed begets tardiness, the Shona say.

"She has gone to a funeral. It is her aunt. In fact, the aunt was like her mother. Mai X's mother passed away so the aunt, who had no children, brought her and some other children up."

I like Mai X. She is careful, funny, gentle and she treats me like a daughter, buying me a huge box of soap powder for Christmas. When I injured my head last year and had to have a cyst lanced at a local hospital, it was Mai X I turned to.

"The burial was supposed to be Sunday. But then her cousin-brother said, no, it could not be Sunday because he had business to do. He's that boxing man, you know? Stalin Mau-Mau. Well, Stalin Mau-Mau said there were relatives who wanted to come from England...

I've stopped listening, trying to digest what I just heard. Stalin Mau-Mau was a ruling party bigwig back in 2000, before he turned into a UK-based businessman. White farmers say that he -- backed up by war vets -- played a part in the early wave of land invasions in Harare (though he claims he was merely "negotiating" with farmers to help alleviate a housing shortage).

Mai X was brought up with Stalin Mau-Mau?

********************************

Illegal gold panners are an increasing problem.

"They wreck all the greenery," says a friend whose parents -- by hook or by crook and most probably because the powers that be have realised Zimbabweans need minimal amounts of milk -- have managed to hold onto their dairy farm. Gold panners are panning in the stream that runs through their farm in eastern Zimbabwe and there's absolutely nothing her parents can do.

"My mother never used to have any problems in her garden," she says. We're sitting round a sparkling pool, eight or nine mums, munching coffee cake and watching our horribly-privileged preschoolers splash around with rubber bazookas imported from South Africa. There is no power but no-one notices that anymore. "Now she's got monkeys and pythons. They come because it's the only bit of greenery left. She lost the whole of her lychee crop and then last week a python took her dog.

She takes a breath. "My little boy (aged three, approximately goat-size, just right for a python) was playing with the dog three minutes earlier."

There's silence, white coffee mugs stopped staccato in the air. We do live in Africa, girls.

***********************************

In the morning, I drive past the Anglican cathedral with the huge red AIDS ribbon painted above the entrance, under the flamboyant trees, past a nursery school. Through my open window -- it's going to be a sweltering 30 degrees today, the radio says -- I hear the sweet sound of childrens' voices, one adult voice leading the song: "...everybody here, in His hands/He's got everybody here in His hands." Nothing could ever happen here, surely?

The police chief appears on the eight o'clock TV news bulletin. His officers are empowered to use "full force, including firearms," against protesters before, during or after next month's polls, he says.

mrs mugabe, I presume

The first time it happened I was shocked.

"Hello, Mrs Mugabe." I'm walking down the street and a passer-by shouts out a greeting.

Mrs Mugabe? Surely not. Mrs Mugabe is older than me by a few years (she has a teenager who's taking her A-levels), she's glamourous and she has a penchant for shoe-shopping in luxury boutiques around the world. Judging by the battered flip-flops I wear every day (my mother's cast-offs), we're not in the same league. Oh yes, and I'm blonde and not married to a president.

It happens again. I'm reversing out of a parking spot and a woman taps on my side window.

"Mrs Mugabe? Have you had the baby yet?"

The baby? I haven't had a baby for ages and neither has Grace, as far as I know. And I do tend to keep my eye on these things. She had at least one baby before she and His Excellency were married while Mr Mugabe's first wife Sally was dying from a kidney complaint. There were a few raised eyebrows though the First Couple still held a lavish wedding in a Catholic church.

"I'm not Mrs Mugabe,' I say carefully.

The woman looks at me. "Now I see that you aren't," she says with more than a hint of disappointment.

Grace, the president's junior by around 40 years, is an object of national fascination. She was the president's secretary when she became his "small house", Zimbabwean slang for mistress. (A wife is known as a man's "main house.") Grace was on the front of this weekend's Sunday Mail, sporting a filmy green turban and wraparound sunglasses. She was cutting an enormous cake for her husband's 84th birthday. A cake, I notice from the red and blue logo, which was kindly baked by Lobels Bakeries. Lobels has been having a few problems keeping the nation supplied with bread for the past few years. Price controls and critical grain shortages following the land invasions can make bread baking a wee bit tricky. Cakes are still available but their prices push them way out of the reach of most: a small round party cake cost 35 million Zimbabwe dollars in Spar supermarket last week, more than what a low-grade employee with the national ZINWA water company earned in January.

Grace looked fairly happy at her husband's 3-trillion dollar party in Beitbridge on Saturday. It's not clear if she'd seen the banners on the South African side of the border, hoisted by exiled former opposition MP Roy Bennett and other party supporters. "Happy Bye-Bye Bob," the banners read. "No half-baked elections in Zimbabwe." That might have wiped the smile from her face.

I met the real Mrs Mugabe in a cafe a few days ago. She's tall and blonde-ish and she's married to a Mr Mugabe who isn't the president. He's a plumber.

mealies

"When can you come to my house?" she asks on the 'phone. "I've got something to give you."

It's a short conversation. The state TelOne phone company has just hiked its charges by 200 percent. E is minding her money. A grandmother, she used to run a church creche but left last year when her monthly salary barely stretched to a bottle of cooking oil. Now she minds neighbours' preschoolers at her home in the mornings, using a cardboard box full of toys and books. And she works in her garden. Much more profitable.

When I arrive -- having negotiated potholes big enough to hide a baby giraffe in -- she's waiting, her three-year-old granddaughter skipping beside her. There's another child too this time, a boy. "Sean," she says. "I've taken in his mother. She had a problem with her pelvic bones." Mai Sean turns out to be her sister's grandchild's wife, if I've followed the family relationships correctly.

We sit in the sitting room, which is like so many sitting rooms I've sat in here. Minimalism certainly isn't in in Zimbabwe, not if you are or ever were middle-class. You cram everything you've got into a small space so knees are touching coffee tables (plural) and antimacassars graze the wall. There are glass-fronted cabinets and family photos and trophies and religious pictures. A DVD player in pride of place amid the crocheted doilies. Everything is scrupulously polished. Outside is a swimming pool with a few centimetres of brown water in and an open fire with a black saucepan on. There's no power, of course.

"When we have power, I get up at 1 in the morning to make some bread," she says.

(The minister of energy development insists today the reason there's no power has very little to do with sub-economic tariffs the goverment insists on maintaining so as not to anger voters. Our bill for a bungalow with security lights but no washing machine came to about four pounds last month. Power cuts are because the World Bank stopped financing Zimbabwe's energy sector some time back, the minister says. That and investors who haven't fulfilled their "recapitalisation obligations.")

"Do you want to come and see?" she says. We push through a sidegate and what I see is a field, no, two fields and the far banks of the stream full of mealie plants, all tall as -- well, baby giraffes. "These are all mine," she says proudly.

When E's sister last came (from the UK), she brought no presents. "No perfume," E stresses. Perfume is a favourite gift from relatives in the diaspora. But when she got here she bought a bag of maize seed and gave it to her sister.

The sun is about to set. Night falls fast in Zimbabwe, around 6 to half past, whatever the season. This is my favourite time, five o'clock, when the light is soft. I look at the fields of mealies, months worth of mealies, mealies as far as the eyes can see, in front of me and behind the backs of the neighbours' houses and my heart lifts. There are not just mealies. In the sun by the wire security fence, there's a big pumpkin, orange and green speckled. We decide it is not ripe yet, not quite. If it was, I know she'd insist I take it.

She presses a plastic bag (they call them packets here) into my hand, full of plump, milky cobs.

"Don't ever buy any," she says. "Come back here whenever you need some more."

my friend the inventor

Will's full of great ideas. He thinks that soon we'll be able to pop a tablet that'll mean we don't have to waste time sleeping. Will's big thing is saving time. Ten years ago he launched the gwatamatic, a machine that makes your sadza for you. Sadza-making is hard work, lots of stirring and sweating. With the gwatamatic, you put in your mealie-meal and water and the machine does it for you. He gave us a couple of freeze-wrapped packs of his sadza to try at home, large slabs of what looks like dense creamy-white mashed potato. What you do is you dunk the packet (do NOT pierce the bag, whatever you do) into a saucepan of boiling water and you simmer for 20 minutes, maybe a bit longer. What you get is great-tasting, no-lump sadza, no stirring involved. My mother-in-law loved it.

Will's gwatamatics are used in universities and factories here. The thing about his sadza, he says, is that it will always have the same taste.

"You've immortalised your mum's recipe, Will", I told him over boerewors sausage one lunchtime. He looked pleased. His mother hosts orphan parties in the town of Marondera, an hour's drive from Harare. She sounds like a good person to immortalise, even if only in mealie-meal.

Will stood for president last week, or tried to. Last month he launched the Christian Democratic Party at the Jameson Hotel (third poshest in town, after Meikles and the Monomatapa). The men in dark suits were there, complete with ancient video cameras. Will says he filed his nomination papers at a Harare court last Friday "for the kicks of confronting the dangerous." Not surprisingly, he was disqualified. His papers were not in order, the Herald said: Will blames poor quality nominators and a suspect voters' roll. A couple of days later the authorities said they'd soon seek constitutional amendments to bar "presidential chancers" in future. In the end the inventor of no-stir sadza caused quite a stir.

And he did get to register as a parliamentary candidate.

be my valentine

The assistant bends over the bread counter conspiratorially.

"So I heard you are going to Victoria Falls on Valentine's Day?" he asks with a sly grin. Last month he told me his wife was "causing me trouble". She's pregnant, a first-time mother and she's grumbling, he says. He wants to send her back to her rural-based parents, as husbands can here. "Vic Falls I wish," I say in the most matronly manner I can manage. Oops, forgot the wedding ring this morning.

This week it's Valentine's Day and not the Makoni factor (the unexpected electoral challenge to RGM from his former finance minister whose first name Simbarashe means -- scarily for his opponents -- power from God) that's on everyone's lips I meet, though some foreign press reports say otherwise. Zimbabweans are obsessed with Valentine's Day. Bare shops are suddenly stocked with red things: there are zhing-zhong red knickers in Husseins clothing store and red diaphanous nighties that wouldn't last a nail-rip on sale in the new boutique. In the newsagents opposite, plastic heart boxes lie next to the furry mini-Santas left over from the last holiday. "Are you ready for Valentine's Day?" the shop assistant giggles in Biggie Best furnishings (I'm not: she is). The pavements are dotted with people wearing red. Elections might be next month but Valentines' Day is one of the main items on today's morning news bulletins, with the reporter praising the "lovely" Valentine's Day outfits he's seen (Zimbabwe state media breaks most journalism school rules). One of the presenters reads out a selection of love poems and there's even a list of videos we should be watching today.

The bad news is that the annual inflation rate's reached a staggering 66,000+ percent, but today no-one's taking any notice. Hang economic crises and elections, just watch Casablanca

million-dollar tomato

Bata used to be Zimbabwe's main shoe chain. Until the price slash in August, that is. Now, in the store in the arcade, there's not a shoe to be seen. There are banners saying: "Latest arrivals" but the display shelves are white and bare, matching the mopped floor. A worker sits on one of the benchers examining his own -- highly polished, I have to say -- black pair of loafers. In the window there's a badly-typed sign: "We buy second-hand gum boots."

Next door, in OK supermarket -- "where the nation shops and saves" -- there's not much shopping to be done. No milk, cheese, cooking oil, mealie-meal, baked beans, sugar, yoghurt, loo rolls or flour. There are -- now let me see -- some bottles of pink and yellow Propose Hand and Body Lotion and there's mixed spice and a couple of lurid green rakes and some loose ginger and chicory coffee. And -- glory, glory hallelujah -- there are about 20 chickens in a freezer, which everyone's steering clear of because they're 30 million dollars apiece. The lowest-paid worker for the national water authority (ZINWA -- aka Zimbabwe No Water Available) gets 34 million a month, the main trade unions body complained yesterday. (When our neighbour phoned the ZINWA office about a municipal pipe burst he'd spotted last week, he was told the workers wouldn't come to fix it "because they are hungry." Our neighbour took his gardener and his tools and they fixed it themselves). I buy a chicken (we got money yesterday, before that our cupboard was bare) and squash it quickly into my shopping basket. I realise now that the advice the aunties gave at the kitchen tea I went to last month was spot on: "a woman must have a basket with a lid on," one of the Shona women said while instructing the bride-to-be in front of us assembled guests. "You don't want everyone to see what you've been buying." (The bride was under a frilly table-cloth with just her magenta-varnished toenails poking out, but that's another story). These days people look at you sideways if you've got more than a handful of tomatoes in your bag. After all, a tomato costs one million dollars.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that petrol stations in Zimbabwe do not usually have petrol in them. There may be cars parked by the pumps, but that's only so their drivers can sit in the shade. But when I get to the garage at the bottom of the road this morning -- they sell bread at the illegal price of 2.5 million a loaf -- I think I see a pump pumping petrol into a car. This is so strange that I challenge the man behind the counter. He admits there is petrol in the pumps. How much? He looks around him. A dollar, he says quietly. A US dollar, you mean? It's illegal to charge in foreign currency in Zimbabwe (although a ruling party MP's sons were picked up a few weeks ago in Chitungwiza for doing just that, selling fuel for forex). You have to go to our office in town and get one of these, the attendant says reaching into his top pocket for a fuel voucher. I see the company selling the fuel is called Praise Petroleum. As in Praise the Lord there's petrol, I guess.

green jackets

There's a knock at the gate and a flurry of barking. The limegreen jackets beat a hasty retreat. "Those are big dogs," the two women say when I reach them.

They have luminous waistcoats on with the words Zimbabwe Electoral Commission in black capital letters. ZEC is the government elections body. The independent one is ZESN, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network.

"I'm Alice and this is Rumbi. We are doing voter education," one of them says. She's middle-aged with a pleasant smile and a big tent dress. A teacher, I'd guess. M. -- one of my teacher friends -- is manning the voter registration desk at the local convent school today. Many teachers are on strike anyway this week over abysmal pay (recently hiked to somewhere around 140 million Zimbabwe dollars = £14 a month or seven if you use the Fair Value Hard Boiled Egg exchange rate), so it makes sense to earn a bit extra. Whichever side you're getting it from.

"You mustn't be frightened," Alice says, eyeing a rotter's muzzle poking through the gap between the wall and the hedge. For locals, black dogs can represent bad things in your past, things that come back to haunt you. "You must vote. You must make your voice heard. You mustn't just talk about it round the dinner table. Your workers too, they must take their IDs and their proof of residence."

It sounds so easy but it's not. The authorities have changed the boundaries, changed the wards. How do you get proof of residence when even your landlord's renting, subletting his rooms out one by one? This weekend the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (the country's longest serving rights body) says the March 29 vote is very unlikely to be free and fair. "Cumbersome" procedures mean many people haven't been able to register, the commission says. A few countries up, more than 1,000 people have died over disputed election results. There are prayers and pleas every week -- some printed in the official government newspaper -- for there to be no Kenya here.

"No-one will get killed," Rumbi offers. She taps her wrist. "We have different colour skin but we are all the same." One of her front teeth is brown. Last year, the authorities found fake toothpaste in the shops: it caused mouth infections rather than lessening the risk of them. Rumbi looks like someone's grandma. For a moment, I'm placated. If the elections were really in the hands of people like these, it'd be OK.

inspection

At first sight the inspector looks imposing. He's wearing a dark blue uniform and a clipboard. He's from the city council, he says and he has come to check that we are cutting our grass properly.

There are all sorts of things I should say. Like: what about the verges that the city council doesn't cut, the ones just down the road from here? What about those letters of complaint about the unslashed grass on the sides of the road in the state-controlled press last month? Residents say snakes are lurking in those long weeds, that burglars use the grasses to hide their loot in.

Instead I gulp and let him in.

"I'll just roam around," he says. I think of the tottering compost heap, the gooseberry shrubs I'm letting straggle because we need the free vitamins (these are wild Cape gooseberries, spherical, sweet and orange, nothing like the tart green rugby balls Dad used to grow). The inspector must be kept strictly on the straight and narrow: the bit of lawn in front of the vegetable plot.

"I'll come too," I say cheerily.

When he starts making a beeline for the rape -- unweeded, a metre high, stalks broken by the rains -- and the bits of rotting banana branch that will earn us a black mark and follow-up visits, I try a bit of distraction.

"We have a problem. There's been no rubbish collection. The city council bills us for it but there's been no collection for more than two months."

"You are right," he says. "It is a problem. The council says there is no money. We have no vehicle now."

He looks at the old tyre swinging from the custard apple tree, my spinach bed (struggling --spinach doesn't grow with excess rain) and I feel the familiar stab of guilt. My mum sends food packets: custard, marmite, contact lens solution, dental floss, Bachelor's Bean Feast, dried fruit, milk powder, all the things I can't get here. But in this man's eyes, I'm a wealthy foreigner.

"You're alright here," he says. "You should see in the high-density areas, where we live. There is rubbish in piles and lots of flies."

I know.

I see now how his uniform is old, how it has been washed and rewashed so many times that the double stitching on his shoulders is nearly white. He has two children, little girls. One in creche, one in Grade 2.

"It's the food that's the problem. Trying to feed them. There is no money. But we are hoping things will change in the next month or two," he says.

I see how tired he looks. Once, change -- chinja -- was a slogan bandied around with such optimism. These days, the energy's gone.

britney

The kids are talking about places they've visited. They count off on their fingers. Harare, Bulawayo, Gweru...Only one of them, 12-year-old Dumi, has ever been out of the country: "I've been to USA, Canada, England and Mozambique. And Durban," he says proudly. Dumi's mum, a widow, drives a gold-coloured Peugeot, I've noticed. The rest of the kids walk, like their parents do. They may have cars but they're moored by the side of their houses, have been for months. No money for petrol, let alone parts.

"Why did you come back?" Tatenda is horrified.

Tatenda, 14, has an exit plan and it involves People magazine. You can buy People on the pavement here, along with a few other (fairly recent) South African glossies: Women and Home, Garden and Home, the parenting magazine Living and Loving. We might be two months late about it but at least we know that this season we shouldn't be upholstering with straight and narrow stripes (if there were any to be had). Glamour magazine is popular (May's free plastic polka-dot make-up bags got sliced out of the cellophane wrapping and resold). So is People. Zimbabwe might be struggling, but the masalads -- the trendy, urban, post-independence generation who were the first to adopt Western dishes like salad -- still want to read about Britney. Inside People, Tatenda's found a list of people seeking penpals. She brandishes a handwritten letter she's already received from her unsuspecting host-to-be, black ink on thick lined exercise book paper. "My favourite foods are pineapple (and something else I didn't catch). Do you have breaks at school? We have lots of breaks." The other kids listen in awe.

"If I had a passport, I'd go and never come back, " Tatenda says. Her mother has finally consented to take her out of mission school and let her go to the government school just down the road. The pupils do gardening. Regularly, instead of A-level classes. There's no money for groundsmen. "I've never been anywhere. Can you imagine, it's 14 years since I was born and I've never been out of this place?"

"When I grow up I want to be a mermaid," Tanyaradzwa, 8, says. "And then I'll swim away."

hellos and goodbyes

We stumble down the road in the dark, a lone beer bottle zipped inside a National Trust bag. At the last minute, we've been invited to a leaving party. It's at an old house built in 1948. Parquet floors, pressed steel ceilings. Through an unkempt hedge, there's a glimpse of a swimming pool, all greened over. Years ago, there were three kids splashing about in that pool. The owners -- retired teachers, private sector, the husband was once a schools inspector -- are emigrating to Worcester to be near one of their sons.

"We just can't survive here anymore," the woman says. On the floor two little girls play snap, hairslides in their fringes. She leans closer. "You know, to live here you've got to have a cushion."

Cushion is code for a secret source of foreign currency. No point having one declared to the government as then it has to be surrendered at the official rate of exchange, less than 100 times its street value. You're doomed if you've got only Zimbabwe dollars. A single egg -- they sell them singly here -- costs 1.5 million dollars this week. At the official rate of exchange that's £25.

The table in the dining room is piled high, despite the shortages. There's smoked salmon smuggled from Norway on sliced ciabatta-style bread. There are fritters, fried in scarce cooking oil. Crisps and a prawn cocktail dip, definitely imported. Chicken drumsticks in breadcrumbs. They've been planning this spread for weeks.

"People say: aren't you excited about going?" the hostess says. "Well, I'm not. I've been in this place for 28 years and I've got to start all over again."

My husband's old typing teacher is there, still elegantly-coiffed and delicately-fingered. She lives in the Vumba, the eastern mountainous area that borders Mozambique. There are still minefields on the hill slopes, left from the 1970s bush war. This woman's had no power at her home since December 17. She cooks on a woodstove. She's just been "caring" in Derbyshire -- looking after an elderly Lady (a real one) in return for food, lodging and a few precious pounds to keep her going back in Zimbabwe. "I don't think shorthand's very useful, actually," she says.

Some days it seems like everyone's off. The next-door neighbours are leaving for Zambia, taking the cats but not the boerbull. The twins' mum -- a tall, Laetetia-Casta lookalike -- is off to Australia next month. "I just can't do this anymore," she said to me when I bumped into her outside the supermarket a few weeks ago. We'd both been wandering aimlessly along the empty aisles, looking for something to buy. Her shopping trolley had nothing but gin bottles in. "My husband," she said with a half-giggle. "He's going crazy with no booze." My friend Sibo left in August for her in-law's home in Zambia. She came back briefly for Christmas, wafting in and out of my life in a royal blue halter-neck satin dress. Her in-laws are rural folk, with no power and no gas. Sibo and her husband had to spend all their savings on the mother-in-law's cataract operation. "My son wants to come back. He misses his grandmother," she said. "But at least there we can put food on our table."

Down the road, there are people still arriving, unfolding deck chairs in the shadows. People shaking hands, the pinprick of a cigarette. "I haven't seen you for years. How's your son -- he's in Cyprus now, isn't he?" We pick up our son and slip away. In the sky I can see the belt of Orion, three sharp studs against the black. Diamonds over a diamond-rich country where few can afford to live.

bathtime

I give my son an orange bath. It's the water that's orange, not the tub. The mains water started to dry up last night. The taps spit angrily when I try to fill the kettle. What little water I get is the colour of weak Nescafe. Late at night my husband takes a torch, mutters something about lurking puff adders (front-fanged, can bite through leather, 50-60 babies per litter) and goes outside to switch on our (probably poo-tainted) borehole. Zimbabwe had more rainfall in December than any other year since records began around 120 years ago, and we're running dry. The state-run water company ZINWA (aka Zimbabwe No Water Available company) has admitted it doesn't have the chemicals to treat the water.

When I first got to Harare, I took the colour of the tap water as an ominous sign. The company paid to have me put up in a serviced villa complex, just off Greenwood Park. The quilts were lumpy, the cupboards empty and a grizzled colleague a few doors down the corridor who I think expected me to cook for him sneered when I brought back some pasta shells from the OK store in First Street. There were reports of buses being torched in the townships. The moss-scented bath water was definitely the straw that breaks the camel's back (and yes, once someone did try to introduce camels to Zimbabwe. He was called Colonel Flint and he thought camels would be a brilliant way of overcoming the transport difficulties faced by the BSAP. Flint had two baggage camels and 10 riding ones shipped out here in 1903. A year later -- and after at least one public camel race -- only one was still alive).

These days I know brown water is vastly better than no water. "But mummy," my boy says, languishing in the tub with sandy grit below his tummy, "I won't get clean and shiny in this water."

"A bit of dirt never hurt anyone," I say (Mary Poppins, anyone?). "Your father says he used to bath in brown water when he was a boy with yellow hair just like you and he came out absolutely fine". Actually, his hair mysteriously turned brown a few years later.