rootless

"The thing is," she says, "we just don't belong."

Eastern Zimbabwe in the winter. It's drizzled all day. The mountains at the top of the road are covered in mist. We could be in England. "But I don't have the right to live in England. We're fourth generation pioneers."

To prove it, there's a framed pioneers certificate on the wall, along with the china plates and the black-and-white photo of her grandmother with bouffant hair and a ruffled full-length white dress. "She came up in the 1890s. She and her father stayed at Khama's kraal. He missed the slaughter at Fort Vic by a whisker: his wagon wheel broke loose or something. She didn't see another white man until she was 6."

What do you do when you've lived all your life in a country -- and your parents and their parents before you -- but you're told you don't belong? When your race is regularly vilified in the state media? "We're made to feel not welcome here, aren't we?" What are roots and does it matter if yours have been cut from underneath you?

She looks round the tiny two-roomed cottage, stuffed with heavy old mahoghany and teak furniture from the farmhouse and, after that, the Spanish-style villa with pool in a good suburb. "This is where I'll end my days, I suppose."