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.