"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.
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