dish

The man's shirt is threadbare but he's worried about more important things."Where's my dish?" he asks. "I'm sorry, Mr M.," the girl behind the desk says. Mr M is obviously a frequent visitor. "It's still not arrived." "How am I supposed to eat then?" Mr M chortles. The dish Mr M wants isn't actually a flat enamel one. He wants Dish, the TV guide for DSTV, the satellite TV service for much of Africa. I've been thinking that Dish is an apt name. Because in times of scarcity, crisis and economic hardship, people here still want stories almost as much as they want food. New stories aren't easy to come by: the shelves of the government-owned Kingston's bookstore are as empty as the shelves in TM supermarket were last year. The local library is "seasonal": it closes for much of the 8-month-long rainy season because the tin roof leaks, so the books (what's left of them) have to be packed away. Friends beg me for used magazines. An official from the Education Ministry sends in a letter to the local paper: "I am appealing to anyone out there to give me a book or books for distribution...We welcome any book or magazine" (When I trek up several flights of stairs to the dingy government offices with my meagre pile of ancient Woman and Homes, the official's wife looks up from her typewriter. "We don't even have paper," she says.) While I've learnt to substitute where food's concerned -- to make my own tea from the rosemary bush outside the door, to fry the stalks of the spinach leaves, to use donated pancake mix to make spongecakes (they turn out doughnutty) -- I still battle with story-hunger. Which is why my mother-in-law tries to deliver a couple of loaves of bread and a fresh DSTV video twice a week.

karate

My son's karate teacher sizes me up. We have all done this in the past 8 years: which side is he on? Will I be taking a risk if I say..? I think she's pro-MDC but she looks remarkably like Vice President Joyce Mujuru -- could they be related?

After three lessons, he tells me about taking karate to Kenyan townships. He has a friend who has done this, empowering women to fight back. I ask him if there's anything similar in Zimbabwe.

He looks at me for a second. "I've just been approached by the Revolutionary Youth Movement," he says. "You know, it's linked to the MDC." There, he's put his cards on the table. I nod. "They want me to take this programme to the high-density suburbs," he says. "For self-defence."

After President Robert Mugabe lost the first round of presidential elections last year, countless MDC supporters were raped, assaulted and killed (when Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara tried to point this out at a ministerial retreat this weekend, Mr Mugabe's ministers walked out in protest). Would it have made a difference if they had had basic self-defence training, I wonder? If former opposition supporters are gearing themselves up to fight back, that obviously means they fear there'll be a next time. Which doesn't say much about their confidence in ZANU-PF's commitment to the power-sharing agreement.

change

"Where's Morgan?" "Morgan? There is no Morgan," the official replies crossly. We're in a dusty carpark, waiting for the man.

"But...Morgan is More, remember?" the first guy protests. That was the slogan the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader very nearly swept to power on in 2008. Mr Tsvangirai's face beamed out from a thousand red and white posters.

"No," the official insists. "There is no Morgan." Now we must say the Prime Minister, the Honourable Prime Minister, Mr Prime Minister, or something along those lines. Mr Prime Minister arrives, relaxed in a traditional style white collarless shirt. His aides cluster round in dark suits. When we eventually get to speak to him, the former trade union leader is affable, interested. Tired too, perhaps. A metre or so away, the official waits. He has been reluctant to let this go-ahead. After five minutes, he claps his hands. We are dismissed.

how not to do your job

"He says he's got me an interview with the Mozambique opposition leader." He looks at me panic-stricken. "Alfonso Dhlakama, do you think?" I say. "Don't know." Help. It's 7 o'clock at night, we were due at a secret MDC gathering five minutes ago (we only found out about it in the last half hour), we don't really need an interview with a Mozambican politician but we do need to stay on the right side of our contacts. Who might be offended if we brush away our chance to interview a Big Man..."Google it," I say, shovelling scrambled egg down the infant's throat. He'll have to come with us: we have no babysitter tonight. So we google, in between locking the house, turfing a tidal wave of cats out, tying the laces on a pair of holey trainers ("Why can't I wear my flip-flops?") etc, etc. It turns out there is not one Mozambican opposition leader but two, the second is the mayor of Beira, and -- wouldn't you believe it -- he's just survived an assassination attempt. Oh, and there are elections next month. ("I could have told you that," says a friend the next day. "They're painting all the government buildings in Chimoio.") We formulate questions in the car, bumping over potholes: If it's Dhlakama, ask this and if it's Simango, well, at least you can ask about the assassination. We tumble into the dark and cold of a winter's garden. My son heads for the Cokes, thoughtfully provided at ground level. Simango is in the red baseball cap. And yes, he does want an interview...

tension

I last heard from Tension when we moved house three years ago. He arrived early one morning, complete with truck. We had to get rid of some of our bigger pieces of furniture. Tension offered to auction them for us. He and I moved round the rondavel (thatched round hut), setting a reserve price for the railway teak teak sideboard, the writing bureau I kept my books in and The Desk.

The Desk had a bloody history. Leopold Smith was one of Rhodesia's most infamous murderers. On June 17 1963 he shot 11 people, killing four of them. The attacks took place at the Premier Citrus Estate, near what was then Umtali. Smith was employed as accountant and paymaster at the farm. He and his wife Joan had a turbulent marriage -- he beat her with a sjambok - and on June 14, she got a court order for the removal of her children from Premier Estate. She arrived at the farm on June 17, accompanied by a policeman and a welfare officer. When Joan started to take her clothes from the house, Smith opened fire, first killing the welfare officer. He made for the Premier Estate office where he killed a Mr Hein, also an employee. Joan and Mrs Hein barricaded themselves into the office, so Smith shot through the window, killing Mrs Hein. A gardener was also killed. Smith gave himself up after two days spent hiding in the bush. At his trial the defense argued (unsuccessfully) that Smith had his first ever epileptic attack and was unable to control his actions. Smith was hanged in 1964.

Smith wrote to his wife after the attack: "Recalling the event, I hope you did not get hurt as it was a small room and lots of objects to make the bullets glance off." He was right there -- The Desk had a bullet hole.

Tension took it to be auctioned. It was a huge heavy thing, and we didn't have the means to move it ourselves. He took full advantage of Zimbabwe's accelerating inflation, only paying us back for the furniture he sold a couple of months later, by which time the amount was worthless.

A few days ago, I got a text message: HIE. STILL IN BUSINESS OF SELLING ALL HOUSEHOLD GOODS AND ALL TYPES OF MOTOR VEHICLES TENSION GOD BLESS. I thought of The Desk, and wondered where it is now.

road safety

Baba waDanai pulls out his Blackberry. On the screen, the red 4 x 4 is crumpled.

"It rolled three times," he says. "I have to keep pinching myself to see if I'm alive."

He was with four colleagues on a business trip, he says. They were on the road to Chimanimani. It was 8 at night, a bad time to travel. These days there are cattle on the roads, cars without lights, broken-down tractors. At the 24-kilometre peg Baba waDanai had only time to scream: "Watch out." The driver saw the dark shape of the stationary lorry, swerved, clipped the side....

"If he hadn't, we'd have gone under it," he says.

Zimbabwe's roads are deadly. This week alone there have been three kombi crashes, leaving more than 60 dead. At the agency, we used to report on road tolls when the number of victims was more than 10: in Zimbabwe, less than 20 and it's no longer news. President Robert Mugabe's health advisor Timothy Stamps told the Herald last month that you're 50 times more likely to die in a road accident in this part of Africa than in the West. Potholes, alcohol, clapped-out vehicles and the simple fact that you can buy your licence (and your way through police roadblocks if you haven't bothered to take even that simple step) might have something to do with it. Poor pay kills too: a kombi driver gets just 180 US per month. The quicker he gets back to base, the sooner he can load more passengers and the bigger his commission.

The video on Baba waDanai's Blackberry rolls on. He shows us a tiny scratch on his wrist. "I got out and thought I must have internal injuries. I thought I was going to die." His wife stands hugely pregnant next to him. "Did he call you?" I ask.

"At 1 in the morning," she says. "From the clinic. You can imagine how I felt."