homecoming

We get back home to darkness. "The power is bad now," Mai Agnes says. "They cut it yesterday, and Monday." Our 'phone line has been cut (as has half the town's, we learn later. C's outstanding bill is for 3,000 US, three times ours). We can receive calls but we can't make them. Those in the know inform us that you get a grace period and then the line goes totally dead. I see the money I brought back for schoolfees will have to be diverted. My cellphone has been cut: I've gone too long without "rejuicing", apparently. I find to my horror that supermarket prices have gone up (S, a local retailer, explains that it's because of the strengthening rand: most goods are imported from SA but once here, they're priced in US). "Give us more time," the headline on the local Manica Post newspaper reads. Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai is trying to stave off strikes by civil servants. More hopeful still (NOT), former High Court judge George Smith is warning of 'anarchy' within a year. My son and I struggle to wash ourselves by candlelight in a baby-bath half-full of warm water. "South Africa is a delicious country, isn't it Mum?" he says.