drought

"It's too hot," he says angrily. "It's never going to rain."

Every year it seems as if the dry heat will never break. The rainy season is supposed to start in October. Like last year and the year before, we're into December and there's been precious little rain.

Everyone's ill: stress colds, mumps, temperatures, tickbite. My son's friend fainted in the Christmas Play but the doctor (who's moneyed now he treats political violence victims) is in the US. Cholera is spreading its spiderweb across Harare: already it's reached the better-heeled Westgate suburb, where the cinemas are. The health minister has banned Zimbabwe's three-stage (thumb in front, behind, in front) handshake. Tempers fray. At night we toss and turn, too hot to sleep, scratching at bites from mosquitoes that have weeviled their way inside our net.

"The desert's going to creep up from Buhera," he says.