and if the baby doesn't breastfeed...

A five-month old baby exposed his mother's affair, a local paper reported -- because he refused to breastfeed. When the baby refused to feed for three days, the parents went to ask why at a local church. "The wife was told to confess her transgressions," according to the Manica Post. When 17-year-old Laiza Makufa revealed she'd had an affair with a married neighbour since the baby was born and begged for her husband's forgiveness, the baby started to feed again. The three -- and the baby -- were photographed in the paper: the neighbour in his blue city council trousers, Makufa in a red top holding her baby. "I just felt like I loved him," she said.

the colic remedy

"She's a screamer, your daughter," says S.

"Have you tried putting her on your back?" asks S's mother.

I haven't, not yet. Not that I wouldn't, but I worry that I wouldn't tie the blankets right and she'd come crashing down. We talk -- in the flickering light of a candle, this late Sunday afternoon -- of babies, their babies, my new one, nappies and nappy rash cream and colic... Colic. My mother Fedexed two bottles of Infacol, the UK remedy, when the baby's colic was at its worst. The local remedy is:

"Half a cup of cooking oil. You boil it, then leave it to cool. Then you give her a spoonful. It's an old remedy, but it works," says S's mother.

visiting

"But where is the blanket?" Mai D asks me. Blanket? It's 30 degrees at least this afternoon. The baby doesn't need a blanket, surely? Mai D tut-tuts. "I have never held a baby without a blanket," she tells her husband, who is sitting dutifully in the living-room next to her, summoned no doubt, to welcome The Baby. He nods awkwardly.

I've always been fascinated by different approaches to child-rearing. And now I'm getting a Zimbabwean lesson first-hand. Mai D asks me about nappy rash, tells me she washed her babies (and she had four, and she raised a grand-daughter, who, aged 12, has finally left for mission school) in Sunlight washing-up liquid (same as green Fairy), used Vaseline on their bottoms (Blue Seal is the best, she told me firmly), and always, always used a blanket. She watches me breastfeed critically. "Are you sure you're not suffocating her?" I shift position as I'm told. "Did you come on your own?" she asks. "But who held her?" Mai D is envisaging my daughter bumping around in the backseat, unrestrained. "I have a seat," I tell her, and think of all the mothers I've seen clutching their babies in the backseats, wrapped up thickly like sausage rolls. No-one checks you have a baby seat when you leave a Zimbabwean maternity ward.

Every time the baby opens her mouth, Mai D tells me to feed. (The baby, unused to being offered milk every few seconds, licks hesitantly, to cries of horror from Mai D). She plies me with Coke. I already know -- because my doctor told me - that locals think this increases milk supply. Ditto for peanuts. Once, visiting a friend in a maternity ward, I watched her aunt ululate when she saw the baby -- and promptly hand over a bag full of peanuts.

Mai D rummages in her freezer. "You must have this chicken," she says, handing me a huge lump of frozen bird. "It'll help you make good milk."

gifts

"My father sent you some things," she says.
"He went into his fields, got you some pumpkin. The big white pumpkins. And cucumbers."
"He said to me: Take them to Mai S - because she has given me food."
I put my hand to my chest to say thankyou, I'm touched. Gently, the way I've been taught. In Zimbabwe, I've learnt to receive. I think hungrily of big white pumpkins, of the chopping they'll necessitate but of the roasts too, they'll make.
"But he put them in the hut," she says. "And then I got up at 3 o'clock and it was dark and I forgot them."