soapy flour

The food parcel flour is soapy. So are the Jungle oats and -- unbelievably -- the rice (The rice is in a sealed plastic bag. How did it get tainted?)

As pensioners and dispossessed white farmers, my in-laws get food parcels. Once a month, my mother-in-law gets a call to go to the local old peoples' home, where she picks up her fertiliser sack full of South African groceries: porridge oats, tinned tuna, cheese spread, peanut butter, tea, candles, Johnson's Baby Shampoo, pasta, the sort of things that are total luxuries here (prices are now estimated to be 15 times what they are in South Africa).

The parcels are what's kept them going, she says.

My father-in-law remembers his adopted mother Edith Mabel packing up food parcels in then then Rhodesia to send to relatives in England in the 40s, after the war. (He remembers D-day, when he and his brother and Edith Mabel were holidaying on Lake Malawi. Edith Mabel made them stand to attention when the band played God Save the Queen.)

These parcels are donated by a South African businessman who wishes to remain anonymous. But there is one big disappointment. The packers pack the bars of green soap unsealed in the bag with everything else. Which means the flour and any other foodstuff wrapped in porous packaging gets ruined. This distresses my mother-in-law a great deal.

The opposition finally agreed to the unity deal on Friday. My mother-in-law wants to believe there's hope. She needs to: when she went to the bank Friday morning to withdraw cash pay her 4.6 trillion dollar phone bill, there was no cash to withdraw. "I ordered it from the central bank," the bank manager assured her. "But they haven't sent any." (What: are they not printing any more?) He pulled out a 10 trillion note from his own back pocket. "Here," he said, "Pay your 'phone bill, pay mine and keep the change."

"Gono (central bank chief Gideon, author and maker of "Zimbabwe's Casino Economy", price 40 US in local bookshops) is out, isn't he?I heard there's two going to the Hague straightaway," my mother-in-law says as she stirs her tea. "Shiri and what's that other guy -- Chi-something? You know, for the Matabeleland thing. "

"Who'd you hear that from?"

My mother-in-law believes in looking on the positive side. She does not like the traditional proverb that's been bandied about by sceptics this weekend in Zimbabwe (You don't lie down with lions. Which seems to me to be pretty apt).

"Anyway," she says, tossing her head and looking at the mountains. They're green and lush at this time of year because of the rains. "There's one thing they can't take away from us and that's the weather."

"Just give the rice to the dog."