alert

Living in a time of cholera forces you to be familiar with details you'd normally rather not know.

When Tommy (who helps with the gardening and odd jobs) turns up at the gate and announces he's got a runny stomach, I'm immediately on my guard.

"When did it start?" I say. Bad cases of cholera can kill within six hours.

"Is it white?" Cholera can land you with watery white discharge, like rice water. I didn't know that a month or two ago.

'It' started yesterday and 'it' is not white, so I judge that Tommy's probably not got cholera. Still, I hand over six of the precious Intetrix tablets I've been saving.

When I was first sent to Zimbabwe seven years ago, a Paris doctor handed me a tube of muscle rub, a vaccination for yellow fever and tetanus, Lariam tablets for malaria (which gave me sweat-soaked hallucinations in the plush Meikles Hotel and were totally unnecessary: there's no malaria in Harare in June) and a packet of red and white Intetrix capsules. I lost the box but kept the capsules. Ten days or so ago I googled Intetrix to find the drug can be used against cholera.

They might be seven years old but this Christmas in Zimbabwe, those Intetrix capsules are worth their weight in gold.

sandwiches

"What would you like in your sandwich Audrey?" my son asks. Audrey, 6, is the granddaughter of Mai Agnes, our cleaner. She's come to stay for a couple of weeks. My four-year-old adores her.

There's a short silence.

"Rice and chicken and polony," says Audrey hopefully. Rice and chicken are once-a-year delicacies, traditionally enjoyed at Christmas by the Shona.

"We don't have those," says my son. You bet we don't. At 50 million new dollars a loaf (and rising) bread is a delicacy in this household, like most in Zimbabwe. The half-loaf on offer today is a day old at least.

Pacified with apricot jam, the pair of them are soon drawing and sticking imported gold stars at the table (on torn-out pages of old reporters' notebooks. I'm banking on Audrey not being able to decipher my very scribbled notes).

"Look, Mummy," he says happily. "Audrey and me have got exactly the same fingerprints."

fine

"Your mother's name?" the policeman asks my husband.

We're being fined. Mozambican traffic police have a terrible reputation for jumping out from behind the mango trees on lonely roads. This time though, they didn't even jump. They were waiting on the wide exit road from Beira, stopping every car in turn.

The officer checks my husband's driving licence. He checks our Temporary Import Permit. He checks the piece of paper that says my husband has permission to drive the car outside Zimbabwe. He checks his passport. In the end he runs out of papers to check so he tries the windscreen wipers. He moves to the back of the car and orders my husband to flash the indicators. The brakelights. Triumphantly the policeman returns to the driver's window: "Back brake does not work," he says.

"Bet it does," I say grimly. I'm flat on the backseat, panting in the midday sun. My son is stuffing raisins -- a rare treat -- into his mouth. "What's the policeman saying, Mummy?"

Living in Zimbabwe, it's been difficult to convince my son that policemen are the nice helpful Mr Plod-types I was brought up to believe in. I have tried. When he is older, I'll tell him (or maybe I won't) that he played with Lego on the backseat of our Toyota as riot police let off teargas near Zimbabwe's ruling party headquarters. "Keep looking at me," Mummy said cheerily as she caught a glimpse of someone being beaten yards from the passenger seat window. "Next time we leave him with Granny," I hissed at my husband.

Now in Mozambique, a policeman is fining us 1,000 metacais (about 40 US) and he wants to know Granny's name?

Come to think of it, Granny does have a theory about traffic cops and Christmas...

ps

Rhodes paid his Oxford bedder in uncut diamonds. That's what it looks like, anyway. Cecil John Rhodes (who the Tabex Encyclopedia Zimbabwe 1987 diplomatically refers to as a "businessman and politician" though any mention of his name in Zimbabwe today provokes a hiss of horror from the authorities) went up to Oriel in 1873 after he'd made his fortune in Kimberley, South Africa. According to a paper by G.N. Clark*, a former provost of Oriel, Rhodes' college bedder (scout) William Hodge claimed Rhodes used no cheque book. Instead, he financed himself by selling uncut diamonds "which he carried, after the manner of diamond traders, in screws of paper distributed among his various pockets." Apparently Hodge begged him to stop, worried that he'd be blamed if one of the diamonds went missing. "He begged in vain," wrote Clark.

*Cecil Rhodes and His College, G.N.Clark, Heritage Publication No.2, 1982, History Society of Zimbabwe.

language lessons

"I don't know how you say this in English," the doctor says. "But you must say it in Portuguese: trinta e três. And again. And again."

I have a degree in French and Italian. I did a short Spanish course during my lower-sixth year. I joined a Russian evening class for a few ambitious weeks in Boulogne-Billancourt, during a dreary winter teaching businessmen English. During my seven years in Zimbabwe, I've picked up some Shona (not nearly as much as I'd like). I know a few words of Ndebele. But Portuguese? This is my first lesson.

I'm sitting behind a screen on a doctor's couch in Beira on the Mozambican coast, stripped to my waist. The doctor is impossibly young. It strikes me that I have reached an age (mid-30s, mind you, no older) when a doctor can look impossibly young. He's from upcoast, the city of Nampula, he tells us proudly.

"You should go there, for your next holiday," he says as he taps my chest. "Maputo is the biggest city, then Beira, then Nampula."

"Trinta e três, trinta e três, trinta e três," I answer, feeling slightly ridiculous.

Apparently tickbite fever needs no translation.

implosion

We saw the wedding procession as we turned up our road. A stream of ribbon-bedecked BMWs, Pajeros, bakkies with guests crammed into the backs. Pink and white balloons floated on the bonnets. Through a passenger window, I caught a glimpse of the groom and his attendants, smiling in black suits. DJ and dance music boomed through our suburb all afternoon, shattering a quiet Saturday. Zimbabwe implodes?

crisis

Brown water = no clean clothes. "I've run out of underwear," he says. I look up guiltily. I raided his pile last time.

"Look," I say, rummaging. This is a crisis, after all. "Have my last one. At least it's clean though it is a bit - "

Bitty. And flowery. We start to laugh.

"No ways," he says. "And if I ever did, it would be just my luck: I'd get arrested with J and A and the police'll make us strip down to our underwear and J and A will say they always suspected..."

Only in Zimbabwe do you have to worry about things like that.

last bath

The black dustbin outside our Harare flat has disappeared. Caretaker George apologises. "I'm using it to keep water in," he says. It's a cheap option: taking advantage of this week's citywide water-cut, some vendors are selling small chigubus (containers) for 30 US -- a fortune for most Harare residents. The water was trickling back into our pipes Wednesday morning. It's ominously brown. Since then the pipes have wheezed and whistled as the pressure drops and mounts. In the Zimbabwean capital these days, you're never quite sure if this bath is going to be your last.

blood diamonds

These are bad blood diamonds, Mutare's Manica Post newspaper says.

An abnormally high number of gwejas (dealers) and gwejarine (female dealers) have been killed in car crashes. When a gweja died (this was before Operation No Return) the whole of Mutare came to a standstill as the surviving gwejas plus the odd ruling ZANU-PF party official drove slowly round the city centre in their Pajeros and Hummers, tail-lights flashing in a final ghoulish lap of honour.

The Manica Post says the stones are cursed.

Of course, it might just be that the gwejas (most of whom were previously economically-marginalised) simply bought their driving licences and never actually learnt how to drive.

definitions

When is a beating not a beating?

A beating, he says as we drive round the corner by the National Gallery (which is promoting a nice line in bottle-top art this week) has to be several strokes. If you just get whacked once on the back with a baton, you can't call that a beating in copy.

He's probably right. But then, if I got whacked at all by a riot policeman (even if it was just once), I think I'd feel I'd been beaten.

purple shirt

The shirt was pinkish-purple. Bright. Something a too-eager girlfriend might have bought for her man on Valentine's Day. Expensive possibly, but not a shirt my father would ever consent to wear.

He didn't have a tie. I'm pretty certain the shirt was untucked, hanging over a pair of black trousers.

Purple Shirt was clearly in charge of the beatings.

Yards from my car window, he swung his black baton at members of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). They were protesting cash withdrawal limits of just 500,000 dollars (20p).

A woman in a black leather jacket with a braided ponytail ran across the road to the truck and tried to grab hold of a male protester already sitting meekly inside, guarded by blue-uniformed riot police.

Purple Shirt turned on her, sending her sprawling onto the pavement.

Did his girlfriend watch him put that shirt on this morning?

lunch

There's enough dry bread for two slices of toast for lunch. Two between three of us. In traditional Shona culture, Tadiwa told me, Baba (father) gets served first, then Amai (mother). She was embarrassed when she came for supper and saw we serve guests first. Children are last in line, getting whatever's left.

I'm English though. My child gets the first slice. That leaves just one slice.

"I'll go without."

"No, you have it. I don't mind mouldy bread."

If there is some, that is.

choir

"Tension sets in." I catch the headline as a vendor holds up the Financial Gazette at the robot (southern African-speak for traffic lights). (No-one has the cash to actually buy the pink paper these days. No-one has the cash to buy anything or pay any bills these days. But that's another story).

In the small hours, I lie awake. The mosquitoes are bad this season. It's all that uncollected rubbish. Round the corner, the women from the Salvation Army sing. It's one of their many all-night vigils. I have been lulled to sleep so many times in Zimbabwe by outdoor choirs.

This time though I think there is something frenzied about the clapping.

cake

"Black tea," he says. "No milk, no sugar. And yes I will have a piece of cake."

He hands me the photos in silence. Purple, bruised buttocks, a red gash from a whip just below his shoulder. There were four people holding him down and two lashing him.

"They're very precise," he says. "There are people monitoring. They say, no you mustn't hit there, lower down." After 20 lashes you don't feel the pain anymore.

I have seen photos like this so many times this year. But they still have the power to make me feel sick. I should be at the christening of my university friend's first baby. Instead I am in this room with the curtains tight shut against the daylight. "I just want justice," he says.

clear and present danger

If you are charged by an elephant*, ex-farmer A. says, you must run. As you run, you must strip off your clothes. The elephant will stop and trample each bit of clothing, giving you desperately-needed seconds.

(*Elephant Oliver aka the Father of Mana Pools had his leg repaired after an extensive operation involving an overseas appeal for funds, an aborted flight, a successful flight, probably imported antibiotics and lots of pushing, the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force reports this week)

mrs haddow

I fear I will turn into Mrs Haddow.

A couple of years ago, Haddow House was a flourishing little eatery just opposite the Trauma Centre in Harare's Avondale suburb. Besides the cafe, there was a scrapbooking outlet (yes - in Zimbabwe), a curios place, a tiny secondhand store and a cage full of petting rabbits (you could buy carrot tops).

Haddow House has closed down now but the legend of Mrs Haddow (c. 1920s) lives on. She had 80-something cats (according to Dusty Miller of The Standard newspaper)

We have five now. This time last year we had two. We did the responsible thing and had the male neutered. We decided to wait for a couple of months before getting the female done because she was "so little and fragile". Now, three kittens later, it's almost impossible to get her fixed. The local government vet managed to kill seven cats in a row who'd gone for spaying. The private vet who replaced T. (now firmly in the diaspora, like the family doctor) managed to do away with Susie, the dog from down the road (also in for spaying).

For now, our female is still suckling her kits. But a Heat Problem will loom soon. What can we get? Contraceptives? An acquaintance recommends using human ones, but for dogs only. A large cat cage? Where do I get that kind of a thing from in Zimbabwe?

A bucket, says my mother-in-law who is made of sterner stuff.

diamond snapshots 4

Plainclothes police officers are pulling people out of Spar supermarket, S says.

"They're watching who's paying with large amounts of forex."

"Then when you've got all your groceries, they stop you and ask where you got the money from. They're taking some people straight from the store to Chiadzwa (diamond fields) to fill in holes."