bits from the braai

Sheena was arrested for overcharging on...roses.

"The supplier had put them up. I wasn't going to make a loss, was I? But the inspectors came round and said I shouldn't have put my prices up."

"They put me in cells. It was filthy. You couldn't even put your head back: the walls were covered in black slime."

She spent half a day there before her husband came to bail her out.

"The police said to him: Take her, take her. She's a cheeky madam, that one."

....

Elias' birth certificate gives his D.O.B as 1948. In fact, this Classics professor was born in 1942. He went to school six years late, aged 12.

He spent most of his childhood herding cows and goats near the Runde River.

"We were coming back late, one day. I was with Edwin, my small cousin-brother. This snake appeared, a python, big as an anaconda. It took the goat before Edwin."

The villagers turned out en masse -- including Edwin's mother -- and beat it to a pulp.

Elias' parents had never registered his birth, and he needed a birth certificate to get into school. So he took himself to the District Office -- and knocked six years off his age.

...

C. T, in his early 20s, is due for a finger amputation today or tomorrow. Dr Cut-Cut (that's how most people refer to the local surgeon) warned last week he'd lose his whole arm.

He put his finger into the grill of the swimming pool at home and got bitten by a Biberon burrowing adder.

"It was probably looking for frogs," says my MIL with a shudder. The Snakes of Rhodesia book says burrowing adders -- which look deceptively like harmless brown house snakes -- are most often seen in the rainy season when chasing their prey. "Inquisitive children" are frequent victims.

"His flesh has gone all rotten," she says. "And his poor mother is off caring in England."

waiting

"They can't get their money," the security guard whispers. "It's a big problem."

Crouched on the kerb, lying on the verges, sitting on the steps of the Tel-One building next to the People's Own Savings Bank in the midday sun, people wait. It's civil servants' payday. There are hundreds of them, here and at Agribank one block down. The police are out in force but this time they appear to be waiting for their own payouts, not manning queues. In the few banks that actually have cash, there are whispers of withdrawal limits: 40 US, customers say.

Zimbabweans had hoped the new coalition government would mean the end of cash shortages and bank queues. Apparently not.

said the colonel to the farmer

S, a farmer's wife, delivers 20 litres of milk to our house on Friday mornings: 10 for us and 5 each for two friends (which is why power cuts are fine on Thursday nights when our milk has nearly run out. Cuts are most definitely not fine on Fridays, when a whole week's supply of milk will go sour). Strictly speaking, "side-marketing" is illegal: all milk has to be sold to the state Dairibord milk company. But Dairibord is collecting tankfuls of milk every other day and not paying for it.

Last Friday, S looked worried. An army colonel turned up at the farm earlier in the week. "I know you're busy," he said. "And I don't want to disturb you.

"We just need to fix a meeting to discuss me taking over the farm."

He had an offer letter (they all do). He showed it to S's husband. The date the letter was signed -- the letter giving the beneficiary authorisation to take over the white farm -- is Feb 12. That was the day before Zimbabwe's new unity government was sworn in.

The colonel's residential address was at the top of the letter. He lives on our road, three doors down.

the governor has gone

And with him our power.

For the last two years, we've had more electricity than most. "You've got a VIP living up the road," Mai C told me. In the evenings, she could see our lighted street from her backyard up on the hill as she cooked her family's supper on an open fire. "It was in the paper." At first, I was sceptical. Weren't we on a better line because we were near the Infectious Diseases Hospital? Or the radio mast? Mai C said not. The provincial governor lived just up our road, she said, and he had insisted he have full-time ZESA. OK, so it wasn't full-time but we didn't have the 19 hour cuts every day that other people were having.

We joked about it. When we had long cuts, it was because the governor was away. When the power flicked off and then on again three minutes later, it was because some unknowing ZESA official switched off the governor and then got an angry 'phone call. When the power came back on just before 5 o'clock, we reckoned the governor must be getting ready for his sadza.

Just before Christmas, I took my son to a six-year-old's birthday party on the other side of town. The child's family were celebrating in more ways than one. "The governor's moving into our suburb," announced mum Daphne as she dispensed soggy chocolate lollipops from Mozambique. (She'd made a special shopping trip) No, she didn't know when.

It must have been 10 days ago. Because since then our power has been...well let's say very shaky. Much like the New Zimbabwe.

change, please

"How would you like your change, Madam? In bubblegum or salt?" asks the cashier.

Zimbabwe's recent switchover from its worthless local dollar to the US has been far from smooth. Not only is everything hideously expensive (£3 for a tin of tuna, anyone?), there's never any change. Shoppers are forced to choose between cubes of bubblegum, small packs of biscuits or 40 cent bags of salt as change.

Central bank governor Gideon Gono has spent years printing Zimbabwe dollars, fuelling inflation estimated last month at 89.7 sextillion percent. These days, he can't print US, though he does try. Teachers and civil servants are being paid partly in locally-printed foreign currency "vouchers", supposedly to a total of 100 US. Shops and banks are meant to accept them as legal tender. Not surprisingly, many of them won't. Exasperated locals are calling the coupons "goupons" after their inventor.

At a hotel in the mountainous Vumba district, we want to pay for a couple of coffees and a coke. The bill is 3 US. Because every other outlet that day has insisted on the exact change, we realize that we have nothing smaller than a 20 US note. "It's a problem, Madam," sighs the waiter when we hand over the money. He goes to consult the manager. In the end we're forced to buy a hotel cap -- price 15 US -- to make up the bill.

quotes

Getting quotes isn't always easy. Not because people don't want to talk, but because they don't want to talk about what you want them to talk about. I stride into the stadium, suede heels slipping on the rocks. I haven't had time to change from the funeral. Trevor stops me at the gate while I'm bodysearched. "Are you married?" "Yes." I flash my left hand. Best not to be too standoffish in these cases, you want people to be loquacious. "I've seen you before," he says. I've got my eye on the heaving mass of people, a good 200 metres away. I need to get there before Biti starts talking. "Have you got a sister then?" asks Trevor hopefully. "Yes but she's in Sweden." I throw over my shoulder (At least it's not Britain: then I really would be identified as a colonial relic). I make it to the stadium. There are old men in ties and braces, women with MDC fabric wrapped round them as zambias (skirts), youths with red rags tied round their heads as a sign of mourning. Calvin flops down beside me, plus friends. "Hi Madam," he says. "Are you married?" "Yes," I say. "Isn't this a sad occasion?" "Do you have a friend?" he persists. "A husband," I say. "What's that guy on the podium saying?" No quotes coming from that source, I can see that. I edge away from Calvin. Lawrence, in a shabby yellow T-shirt, pats my arm. "The thing is Madam, we're doing a film. About marriage. About the difference between Western ideas and our local ideas. Would you like to be in the film?" "I'll ask my husband," I say. "Don't you think it's so terrible what's happened?" "Prudence Katomeni is on the board of directors," Lawrence says. "Wouldn't you like to help correct the script? Trapped, I put on my sunglasses, a gift from the sister in Sweden. As I run out of the stadium after Biti's speech, Trevor catches up with me. "When will we see you again?"

no questions asked

"I'll need a knife," T. says. "For protection."

Living in Zimbabwe, we've got used to watching our backs. Nothing valuable or sensitive is ever stored on the hard-drive of our main computer. Everything is on the flash-stick. Two flash-sticks in fact. His n' hers, only his has a lot of hers stuff on it. Four days ago, his flash-stick was stolen. Along with some digital equipment, a phone book containing several years worth of contacts and some household bills that nicely display our address. All in a brown leather bag, which might have looked as if it was stuffed with US dollar bills.

After the initial gut-twisting panic, we tried to make a plan. My father-in-law printed posters, offering a reward for the return of the flash-stick. His office help trawled computer dealers in town, begging them not to sell on any secondhand flashsticks that came into their possession. We alerted everyone we could think of. T. too, volunteers to help. "They'll sell it on. Obviously," he says.

T has a neighbour who managed to recover money stolen from his wife last week. T's neighbour wants to team up with T. on the understanding they'll split the reward money. We have to provide transport for T and Co. to get to the place where the stuff was stolen. Co. reckons he should be able to identify which tsotsis operate from there. The pair of them plan to raid the tsotsis' hideout.

"But T," I say (I mean, I do desperately want this flashstick back) - "Won't you get into trouble with the police if they find you with a knife?"

"Only if I'm using it," he says.

In the end we give him a catapult. For protection.

budiriro

The Revellers NiteClub is on the left and we are not anywhere near Tadiwa's place.

"Where are you?" Tadiwa's father says on the 'phone. His English is heavily-accented, as mine must sound to him. "Is that in Budiriro 1 or 3?" Budiriro township has several sections and we are not, it seems, in the right one. Meet you by the cholera clinic, that's what she'd said. We have a map. A very ancient map. On the map, Budiriro has one red cross so that's what we're aiming for. Thing is, roads have appeared and disappeared since the map was made. There are potholes and piles of rubbish and vendors and buses and chickens and no street signs. The sight of our car -- with us in it -- causes a major stir.

"I'll give you directions," calls one man. Too sensitive, not wanting to rub the cholera bit in (nor make them think we're aid workers or nosy journalists) we settle for asking for directions to the community centre, which the map says should be just round the corner. Two sullen security guards direct us to a community centre, but it's definitely not the one we want.

On our right, there's the Apostolic Faith Mission. Now there's another landmark we were looking for. We follow the road round. The cholera clinic should be here surely...

A few kilometres on, as we meander through a maze of tiny streets, we have to concede that there must be several Apostolic Faith Missions in Budiriro.

"We'll have to turn round," he says desperately. It's getting dark. We want to be out of the township before night falls.

Past a new borehole, a UNICEF bowser. There are vegetable vendors in the mud, near the rubbish. Suddenly, the clinic looms, mostly hidden from sight behind sheets of plastic. We can see someone moving around inside. It is quiet tonight. Cholera has moved from the city mostly now, into the hard-to-reach rural areas.

Tadiwa appears in the long grass at the side of the car, a plump, shy sister in tow. "Did you get lost?"

abigail

The coffin costs 12 US. A small coffin, for a child.

Abigail was standing by my gate this morning. Her 10 month-old died last night. The body was down at the mortuary at the provincial hospital.

She was sorry to trouble me again, she said. But she had no money. And she needed a sheet to wrap the body in.

I look at Abigail, her tattered boots, the woolly hat she always wears jammed down on her head. This time, she has no tears.

Her 2 year-old son, Tapiwa, died 18 months ago. A couple of months later, Violet, the exuberant 6-year-old who stayed with her, set Abigail's hut on fire, playing with plastic. Violet died too.

There were children before, two or three of them. "They all died," she told me once. "And my husband chased me away."

When Violet died, the villagers out past Zimunya chased Abigail away, tired of her demands (it didn't help that Violet had managed to burn down the neighbour's grain store when she set Abigail's hut on fire). Over the months we helped out when we could, under the disapproving eye of both my housekeeper and the gardener ("we Shonas, we do not help people like that"), handing out secondhand clothes, soap to sell, jamjars of rice, tomatoes, paying for the cart to take Violet's body to the mortuary. I parcelled up these things with a certain sense of anger, as well as guilt. How far can you blame someone when things go so terribly wrong in her life?

When Abigail got chased away from her hut, she slept at the msika market under a couple of royal blue BA blankets (they're in her bag today, along with a school exercise book that has the baby's hospital records in: "I can't wrap the body in them," she says. "Then I will have nothing."). She got raped "by the men who cook sadza there". When she went to the hospital, they wouldn't perform an abortion, even though the local surgeon had warned her never to get pregnant again. The baby was born last year, when -- by my calculations -- Abigail was nearly 10 months gone. The baby weighed more than 5 kilogrammes.

Abigail brought her to my gate when they were discharged. I found a white babygro in amongst my child's old things. "You name her," she said. Her face was weary. We settled on the name Nyasha. It means grace.

I find a sheet trimmed with white broderie anglaise and ribbons and hand it over silently. There is so much and so little to say.