things I still can't understand

It is a smallish bird, bigger than a canary, smaller than a thrush. A bulbul, I think. And somehow it's on the floor of the doctor's surgery, on its back, and people are laughing.

I'm trying to work this out. I think that the bird "belongs" to the maid of the woman who's wearing stilettos and a cordoroy suit and studying a file on "International Best Practice in Labour Relations" (I read it over her shoulder). The maid took the bird out of her handbag, and gave it to the toddler ("Chichi", the pair keep calling her). The toddler is fed up -- I am too, I've been waiting for two hours -- and the bird is hurt in some way. To begin with, I think it may be some kind of a pet. But as I reassess the sitation, horrified, not knowing what to do, I think that what's more likely is that the maid has found/trapped the bird and plans to eat it tonight.

The child squeezes the bird. The receptionist comes out from behind her desk to see what the squawking is, joins in the laughter.

Chichi runs outside with the bird and when she comes back, it's nowhere to be seen. Then the maid zips up her handbag. There are tiny little downy feathers on the waiting room floor.

I give the wailing child a plastic pink pocket mirror I got as change in a zhing-zhong shop (Better she plays with that, why on earth didn't I give it her before?) and stare out of the window. There are things here I still can't understand.

peculiar state

"That's another one in there," the pharmacy assistant says, pointing to my bump. I nod. She laughs, delighted. Her colleague looks at me over the nail polish, bends her head to one side quizzically: "Am I seeing right?" she says.

In OK stores, I hear someone calling my name. It's Mai Silitshena with B. "You are growing BIG," she says with relish. Her son, a teenager now, smiles embarrassed.

Actually, I'm not that big, not for seven months and a bit. But here in Zimbabwe, the expectant mamas contest appears to be among who can get the biggest, plumpest and roundest, fastest. Not, as in the West, who can claim the enviable: "Your bump's looking so neat." Not having seen me pregnant before, Tadiwa told me -- what, six weeks ago?: "You're as big as a house, Mai S", before telling me of her pregnancy diet (2 doughnuts per day, eaten on the trot). I had to swallow a plaintive: "Surely not. Aren't I quite little?"

Mai Silitshena fumbles in her handbag, pulls out a 5 US dollar note. "Here," she says triumphantly. "Buy something for the baby."

"No," I start to say, and then I hug her.

"It comes from the bottom of my heart," she adds.

I've been thinking about a phrase I found in an expat's account of her pregnancy in France: "that peculiar state of grace that pregnancy brings." That's what I've known here, half a world away for the tarte tatin of Normandy. While the anti-white rhetoric mounts due to the indigenisation drive and neighbours whisper of yet another armed attack and how so-and-so was abused at a traffic block (because he was white) and how somebody has hastened to Harare to finally get himself a gun, I think of the people I see each day and the friendship on their faces as they look at me. Of Sekai, whose name means laughter -- and no, she "doesn't have children yet" -- who rushes to push my trolley for me in the supermarket and urges me to consider Tawananyasha (We have found Grace) as a first name. Of the newspaper vendor whose name I do not know, who calls out from above the muffled bundle of her own baby (on the streets all day): "But are you pregnant?" and smiles indulgently.

I feel...privileged.

wedding blues

"We can understand where she's coming from," Mai N says.

She lives in the the dale-dailies, the plush leafy suburbs of Zimbabwe's towns and cities. Her oldest son, a research engineer just got married. That's married in the true Zimbabwean sense: he paid lobola, or bride price. That's no mean feat these days: the official Herald reports that the going rate is around 18,000 US these days.

Have a daughter, make some money. Nothing like being innovative.

New daughter-in-law is well-liked. She's degreed, has agricultural experience in China. She sends Mai N text messages while she drinks tea on my verandah. Mai N worried about this son-who-would-not-marry. The groom is 31, the bride 29. Western ages for marriage, I'd say. Or maybe just modern ages.

But now the bride wants a white wedding too.

"The whole thing," sighs Mai N. "We said to N.: keep it simple. Don't use all your money. He wants to buy a car."

"But she wants the 200-guests-at-Mutare-Hall, the triumphal parade through Main Street (Saturday: bakkies blaring: beribboned bridesmaids hanging out the windows, that sort of thing). Oh yes, and the dress."

What does N say, I wonder? "He says, you've got to see why she wants this. She's a ghetto girl."

N grew up firmly esconced in the middle classes. His parents moved into the plush suburbs in 1980. They have a nice house, a large garden. Roses in the beds. Vines trailing over the walls. The car might have have been in the garage for the last five years -- but that's because of Zimbabwe's crisis.

But as for the bride: she grew up in Damgamvura, an eastern township. "She wants to show she's finally Got There," says Mai N ruefully.

heist

Scraping together the money for T's fees for her social sciences degree at the University of Zimbabwe is always something of a challenge. She's in her last year now. First she comes to visit, bearing baby and a raft of exam results. Problem is: I haven't got the fee money together yet. My father is still trying to raise it, and I've been crafting desperate bios of T to send to my former English teacher who edits a parish magazine in the town I grew up in, in the hope somebody, somewhere will dig deep. Visit over, Dad texts. He's raised some -- but not all -- of the required (desired?) sum. Shall he send it? Yes, I say. Something, surely, is better than nothing. T does not have a bank account. Her husband (it's official, note: he's paid lobola), mired in the depths of rural Gokwe for 20 days per month carrying out a pre-Census mapping project, does not have a bank account either. Neither do her parents (this may not be true: I think it's rather that T knows she wouldn't see the money if it went to them). We settle on Western Union. Text messages bat to and fro between England, Harare and other locations, setting up secret questions, reference numbers, Union offices where she'll go to collect the cash. Then I wait. And wonder. For 24 hours. Were those sms-es intercepted? Has somebody withdrawn the money without our knowledge? Was it her brother's cellphone I was using (I have a whole handful of cellphone numbers to use for her, most of them belonging to other members of the family)? Late at night, my 'phone pings. "sorry 4 th late reply my 4n was off the whole of yesterday we only got power @ 1 this morning thank u 4 the money & ve a blessed day." Phew...Except, this morning. Last-but-one item on the ZBC news bulletin. "Police are investigating the theft of 83,000 US dollars from the University of Zimbabwe." Apparently an official was walking the 100 metre distance between the accountant's office and CBZ bank's campus branch when an armed gang of six pounced on him. "The money was part of what students have paid for this term's fees...."