poison

I count out malaria tablets quickly. She wants to take a kombi to Nyanga straight away.

When the 'phone call came, Mai Agnes dissolved into tears. I got the story little by little.

It's the youngest brother, Didymus. Twenty-nine years old, separated from his wife. He has three children. The eldest, Alice stays with him and the grandfather in the mountainous Nyanga district. One of the children had just sent them money to buy maize seed. The rains have started: there was no time to lose. Didymus went to the dealers in Ruchera. He bought the maize. There was a small amount of change. He decided he'd buy a scud of beer. A scud is the local measure, a carton-ful. He bought the beer, drank a bit, placed it on the bar. He went to the toilet.

When he came back, he took up his scud. The beer had a strange taste.

"Barman" -- this is Mai Agnes speaking and she's echoing what her sister Letizia told her who's echoing what her father's friend who was drinking at the same bar told her -- "barman, did somebody put something in this scud while I went outside?"

"I saw nothing," said the barman.

Didymus took another drink, started to complain of stomach pains. A few seconds later he collapsed on the floor. His father's friend took him to Ruchera clinic, and from there to Nyanga hospital.

A doctor there told them he'd been poisoned with temic. You die if you drop a few grains of temic -- sold here with a purple label as rat poison -- into your boot: it enters your body through your pores. Didymus had swallowed it. "There's nothing I can do," the doctor said.