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."