on the verandah

"Can you believe what we lived through?" he asks. "It doesn't seem possible, not now there's everything in the shops..."

R is a local bank manager. At the height of inflation last year, his monthly salary came to trillions of Zimbabwe dollars. Converted into US, it came to somewhere between 5 and 7.

"We had a bottlestore," he says. "At the bank, I could arrange transfers (most people weren't allowed to make them anymore). I'd buy from Delta, sell for cash -- and change every cent into Zimbabwe dollars."

We're sitting on the verandah in the dusk, a plate of shortbread on the table. The smell of the yesterday-today-and-tomorrow bush floats from the side.

"Remember the money burning?" he says. Enterprising youths would arrange transfers as the Zimbabwe dollar lost value by the hour. "You'd see your money dissolve before your eyes."

We talk about the diamond craze. (Which isn't over: a dealer died this month when he jumped off a moving truck to avoid a police roadblock. Nurses found 1,100 US in his clothes, photocopied the notes with the connivance of a police officer and tried to pass them off as real). He tells a story I haven't heard. "You know that bus-stop near the ZESA offices, the ones by Jairos Jiri?" It's where everyone waits for inter-city transport. "A bus came up, empty apart from a soldier. He was sitting at the front. His gun was under his seat. Everyone was pleased to get transport, they crowded in. But when the doors were shut, the soldier got up."

"Now we're all going to Chiadzwa to fill up the holes you dug," he announced, gun at the ready.

"Most of those people, they'd never been near Chiadzwa. They were businesspeople, people going back to their families in Harare. But they drove to Chiadzwa and they had to work there for two days, filling up pits."

One of the kids empties a whole tin of marbles on the stone floor. From inside, I can hear the soft murmur of National Geographic. We have power tonight, supper waiting. Good things, normal things.

"You know what, though?" he says slowly. "It made us resilient. It made me realise what I could do. It made me more of a man."

ENDS