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."