contrasts

The Club House is a colonial-era building with a wooden balcony and a turret. It stands on Mutare's main Herbert Chitepo Street where -- for a very short time in the early 1900s - a tram ran. The road is still wide enough for a wagon with horses to turn round in.

A friend has invited me for a "Ladies' lunch." In theory, only members can dine here. There are thick dove-grey carpets inside, tables set with starched white cloths, roses in vases. Gilt letters on a board record the names of past Club chairmen. On the menu are grilled pork chops and baked apples with custard.

"My father was a chief in the police force," says one dining companion. She means Rhodesian police force. "Female recruits had to have a cat and the cat had to sleep on each woman's bed."

"If an intruder broke in, you were supposed to throw the cat at it. They put out their claws instinctively."

"My father said it was the best form of security there was. "
....

"Mwana wako," the vendor shouts. For your child.

The stalls are built of rough wooden poles. It's best not to go shopping when it rains: the water collects in the tarpaulin and runs down shoppers necks as you stumble through the mud.

"Dollar, dollar, dollar."

Sakubva flea market in downtown Mutare was smashed up during the infamous slum clearances in 2005. But the stalls are back now. You have to pick your way through a pile of discarded rubbish to get to them.

"Dollar for two, dollar for two."

Vendors sit on the floor, piles of clothes heaped on to sheets of plastic. A few choice pieces hang on ancient wire hangers, ironed and washed. You pay more for those. The clothes are charity donations, smuggled in by the bale from neighbouring Mozambique.

Mimi, a stylish enterprising middle-aged black woman, has made a profitable business picking through Sakubva flea market. She selects pieces she knows will appeal to Borrowdale madams, washes them, irons them, affixes her own Mimi name tag, sets up a designer-style stall behind Sam Levy's village -- and sells them to clients who'd never dream of venturing to the flea market. Average cost of a blouse at Sakubva: 50 cents. Average cost of a blouse chez Mimi: 10 US.

That's called making a plan, Zimbabwe-style.