a good wedding

"Was it a good wedding?" I ask. I've staggered out of the bedroom, baby in hand, to greet our guest. We were supposed to go to his daughter's wedding in December, but were out of the country. Secretly, we weren't quite sure we'd be able to afford to attend anyway. Guests have to dig deep in this place.

"Very good," he says. He ticks off on his fingers. "Two fridges, a stove, a deep freeze. Six microwaves."

"And lots of dinner services. The biggest one had 65 pieces. Oh -- and they got about 6,000 dollars."

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...."

there for each other

"Are you shopping?" I say. I saw her standing on the side of the road next to OK. She wears a flowered skirt I've seen many times before and a smart blazer. "Only for medicines," she says. "I was thinking," she adds. She fumbles in her pocket, thrusts a note into my hands. "Take this to buy a drink." I look down. It's 10 dollars. "It's too much," I say. (Her husband earns 200 US a month, maximum). "No," she says. "You are my daughter. I know you have always helped me. So, so much. We must be there for each other." She has stood beside me, this 60-something Shona woman, during a miscarriage, my father-in-law's cataract-op-gone-wrong, my son starting school. I take the note, afraid to offend. And then find that the international VISA system is down - it still is, six days later and I still can't withdraw any money -- and actually my purse has only another 12 US or so in it. That 10 dollars makes a dinner's difference.

sadness of a seven-dollar toothbrush

The outrage ripples down the line of shoppers. Seven dollars for a single toothbrush? I had been idly watching the man, standing three ahead of me at the till, for some time. He is well-dressed, in a suit. He chatted politely to the man behind him, whose small daughter clutched a bottle of orange juice. She said something to her father -- the way children do about people they think they recognise -- and he waited a second before turning to glance at me. We look furtively in each other's shopping baskets. Do people do this in other countries, I wonder? Or is it a reflex born of the days when there was so little to buy that you didn't even need a basket, when you could walk to the till clutching your "leaves" (bundle of rape) and your soya mince? My basket -- for the record -- has nothing special in it: pilchards, cucumber, some biltong. No more, no less than most of the people standing in this lower-end supermarket, enjoying the buzz of payday. This city has its rhythms and the the 23/24/25 of each month are the 'high' days, when crowds sit in the banking halls to wait for the government to pay its civil servants. Then they flock to the supermarket. Earlier, I watched a boy a bit older than mine check a shopping receipt excitedly for his mother, who was wearing the turquoise blue uniform of a senior nurse. She watched him fondly for a second, in the private way that mothers do. What supper was she cooking for him tonight, I wondered? The suited man is only buying a toothbrush. I hear him talking to the cashier -- quietly first. She calls a supervisor. The supervisor confirms. Yes, the toothbrush costs seven dollars. It is a plain toothbrush, the sort that gets sent to me in parcels. Worth about 90 pence, I reckon. "No," he says and he looks at the rest of us for confirmation. "I just paid my rent." "You can keep your toothbrush!" he says and he stalks off. At the opposite end of the spectrum: a friend of the family who's charging monied expats -- and locals -- in Harare 30 dollars per flower-arranging lesson. That's without the flowers: she goes to the 'student's' house to give a guided tour of the garden to show which flowers said student can pick. So many people want to sign up that she has a waiting list.

misunderstanding

"Mai S --," she says. I stop in my tracks with dread. I know what is coming: my housekeeper wants more money. As do all the state utilities, my son's school, the council...

"Am I not working nicely for you?" she says. "I am working since end of 2005 for you, is it not true?"

"Yes," I say. She never steals, which most madams would count a huge plus. But it's more than that: I know she makes my life easy.

She takes a breath. "It's just...You give me no present and Mr B: he gives Ruth candles and mealie-meal. If he does not have time to go to shops, he gives Ruth and Farai some dollars extra. Every month."

Mr B is a top local official. He has -- or had -- a farm and a plot (not two farms, lest any man should wonder), a chicken-packing business, several houses and a generous millionaire (yes, really) brother in South Africa (who comes complete with 'plane)

"Mr B has more money than we do," I say. "We don't have much at the moment. That's why we couldn't have Tommy (the gardener) work for us any more, remember?"

"It's not a problem," she says (what, really?). "It's just I need to know if I am working nicely. The money is not a problem, Mai Sammy. It is not a problem."

Suddenly I realise just how wrong I was. She isn't actually asking for a raise (though I'm sure one would come in handy): she wants the simple satisfaction of knowing I like her, and like the job she does for me.

itchy fingers

"I knew I was going to get a gift today," Mai D. says, clapping her hands. "I was doing my sweeping and my fingers were itching and I said: 'Someone's going to give me something.'"

It's not much: a pot of jam, a bar of chocolate saved from Christmas. But in Zimbabwe, I learnt early on, anything makes a present.

When I was married here, about 10 days after I arrived, I was solemnly presented with a single bar of bath soap.

struggles

There are bush monitor lizards for sale in the pet shop at Golden Stairs' Nursery in Harare.

"600 US each," says the woman behind the counter. "You have to buy the tank too. It's got underfloor heating."

The monitors -- from Australia, I learn -- are like giant white chameleons with ruffled white collars. They're nosy things, sniffing at the glass walls.

"It's the latest craze in (plush Jo'burg suburb) Sandton," says the petshop owner. "The women walk round with these things round their necks."

....

"Auntie, I need to talk to you," Mai Brendan says. I look up from my laptop. I'm struggling to meet a deadline. I push out a chair for her.

"Please, if your maid doesn't come back, I need her job." She's stammering now. "Where I stay, I get paid 20 US for the month."

She works six days a week, 6.30 am till 6 at night, plus two hours on Sunday mornings.

"Yesterday I was ill and the owner said I could lie down. But then she came to find me after a few hours. And I am breathless, like this" -- she mimics a struggle for breath.

Her husband works as a gardener for the same people. Salary: 30 US. "And we have to send money to my young sister in Dangamvura. She has to eat too."

poison II

"It was to get the money," says Mai C, when I ask her who on earth would want to do a thing like that.

"They poisoned him to get the money. If he had enough to buy maize seed and drink beer, then they thought there was probably more. No-one has money for seed these days."

I check the price of a bag of Pannar maize seed: 23 US in the local TM supermarket. In the rural areas, where few are formally employed, just one Obama (slang for US dollar) is hard to come by. Twenty-three must represent a fortune.

one year on

"Miss - " The girl comes running towards me in the deepening dusk. For a moment I think it is H., the girl across the road who's studying in England but back for the holidays. Trucks come to her family's house and unload things at night, never in the daytime.

When the girl gets closer, I see it's not H. This one is younger, 19 or 20 maybe, with straightened hair (which costs money).

"We are selling clothes," she says. "Shorts, tops. Come and see."

How do I explain that though I'm white, we're struggling like so many others here in the middle-class, wondering where to get school fees from, whether the 'phone will be cut off over unpaid bills, hitching a lift to Mozambique with family, eating spinach-from-the-garden-stuffed pancakes from mix sent from the UK, making tea from 'leaves' in the garden?

As we near the house -- it's the big tiled house on the corner, a double-storey building that looks as if it's been transplanted from Coventry rather than built for the tropics -- another girl emerges. She's wearing hipsters, a strapless top. I can make out the plastic -- they're supposed to be invisible -- straps holding up her Chinese underwear. Zhing-zhong bras, we all wear them.

The clothes are in a sports bag. The girls pull them out: shorts (favoured by masalads but certainly not traditional Zimbabwean wear: Girls La Musica dance group causes a furore each time they don skimpy shorts), tops ("8 dollars each," the girl says. "But we can negotiate"). Some still have the Top Shop price tags. Others are clearly second-hand. Has someone left a bag behind and the girls are disposing of the contents? Or has one of them just come out from England and she's selling off her stuff to raise some cash?

"I don't have cash at the moment," I say (which is true). "I'll have to ask my husband."

In Zimbabwe, that's a perfectly good get-out clause.

....

"My mother's sister has gone," she says. "Last week. They tried to 'phone but there was no-one there." She looks at me reproachfully. There was no-one in the house last week. I imagine the 'phone ringing unanswered.

"Was she old?"

"Not so old," she says. "She had problems - there." She points to her chest.

"Heart problems?" "No, BP. Her younger daughter was working in Harare so they took her to that hospital there. Sakubva Hospital. No, Mabvuku." She names a township to the north of the city.

"If I had money, I would go to Nyanga." The aunt must be buried by now, but I know the ritual: the sitting with the bereaved family through the night, the food gifts that will be expected. "All my money is gone."

"Gone?"

"I send money to Nyanga for my father," she says (her English is a thousand times better than my Shona). "40 dollars. Then my brother's wife wants money for thatching grass, 1 dollar for a bundle. I buy them 25. Then there is no money for my sister's child to buy school books. So I buy books for Khumbulani, 1 dollar 70 a book."

"They are all taking money from you," I observe.

"They say I am their mother, now that our mother has died," she says with a sniff. I am not sure if she is cross with me -- a not-wealthy employer she has the misfortune of working for, a Madam who does not even have enough money to get her hair done each week (or month, or six months) or buy a DVD player or a plasma TV or drive a car that doesn't belong to her in-laws -- or with her desperately-poor family who have fastened onto her as the only one with an above-average income in US dollars. Both, I guess.

.......

"How is school?" I ask A, a teacher.

There was a teachers' strike before we left, 10 days ago. Something has shifted though, because yesterday pupils were streaming out of St Dominics, a government secondary school.

"Some of them are back," she says. "At the junior school, they held a meeting. The parents must pay 50 dollars a term. With the 'incentives' -- localspeak for parent topups -- the teachers will get 330 USA." She uses the local slang: you-sah.

Happy told me about the junior school arrangement. She has a daughter there. "Honestly, we're so fed up," she says. "We want to put M in private school next year. Some of the parents were complaining, they say they can't afford 50 US." Happy can afford it. But many of the parents are civil servants, earning less than 150 a month. They can't.

"At the teachers' college, they are having a sit-in," A says.

It's one year exactly since the unity deal was signed. Some things haven't changed.

gigi

There are two sides to every central bank chief.

One side: Gideon Gono, the man behind the relentless printing of Zimbabwe dollar notes for more than five years. Zimbabwe's hyperinflation is now the second worst in history, according to Washington's Cato Institute. Dr Gono also stands accused of dishing out freebie tractors, ploughs, combines and fuel in a bid to up ZANU-PF's chances of winning last year's poll; paying youth militias; diverting donor cash to government projects etc, etc. The former opposition MDC would like to see Gono gone.

Another side: the son of a friend (white) was involved in a car accident at the weekend, in Harare's plush Borrowdale Brooke suburb. Dr Gono stopped at the scene and asked if he was alright. When he heard an ambulance had been called, he pulled out his wallet -- and a 50 US note. "Those ambulances are expensive," he said. "That's all I've got on me. Put it towards the ambulance.."

coming home to roost

No money = no wife.

A. has three sons, all in their mid- to late-20s, all with university or poly degrees. One has a job with Customs and Immigration, another's been working at the Blair Research Station near Marondera as he completes his Masters, the third is waiting for his poly results (a paper he wrote has mysteriously disappeared, meaning he might have to sit -- and pay for -- it again). There are no fiancees or wives, not even a girlfriend. How can there be, when prospective in-laws expect lobola (bride price), lots of it and payable in foreign currency?

The sons are home again this weekend. Unaccompanied, of course.

"Other people complain about an empty nest," she says. "In my case, they're coming home to roost."

lean times

We've had another taste of managing on not-a-cent. When you can't get money out of the hole-in-the-wall (or the bank) in Zimbabwe, you have to rely on a complicated network of suppliers and transfers once or twice monthly. This week our regular supplier told us he had had to provide a lot of cash for his lawyers and was flat broke. "Try again next week," he advised cheerfully. In desperation, we contacted a second supplier, only to be told he too couldn't help: he's away until next week. Because of Zimbabwe's horrendous prices (on average two to five times what they are in neighbouring South Africa), few people can afford to have a well-stocked larder to fall back on. So here's how we manage on next-to-nothing:

-- two spoonfuls of peanut butter for breakfast (and nothing else).
-- pancakes five days in a row (thanks Mum and UK supermarket Sainsbury's: she sends us packets)
..stuffed with Soyameat Spaghetti Bolognaise (ditto)
-- baby spinach leaves (not because they're trendy but because they're the only vegetables growing in the garden in winter and I can't wait for the leaves to get any bigger)
-- grapefruits from the orchard next door for fruit/Vitamin C (try getting that down a five-year old's throat..)
-- stale, oversized dog biscuits for the cats (the dog died two weeks ago)
-- Surf washing powder to wash the dishes/floor/toilet/bath (when the shampoo ran out)
-- diced newspaper for the loo (which presents a disposal problem: there's been no rubbish collection for two months despite our 95 US rates bill)
-- ancient body lotion in place of washing soap (that too is finished).
-- black tea/no tea/tea made from the mint leaves that grow round the garden tap

Last time this happened, A, a Shona friend and mother of three grown boys, handed me a tin of tomato paste and some dry spaghetti. "Take it," she said. "We're used to having little. You lot aren't."

the rats ate it

C. thought she was being clever.

Zimbabwe's sudden switch to US dollars early this year led to a sudden surge in armed robberies. Supermarkets are being raided, there are now regular bank heists and security companies are finding they've got a new niche. Businesswoman Jane Mutasa lost 20,000 to carjackers. The reason? When the inflation-weakened Zimbabwe dollar was in circulation, it simply wasn't worth any would-be robber going to the trouble of staging a hold-up. It was far more lucrative to "money-burn" - conduct parallel market deals online -- in a downtown Internet cafe.

All that's changed now. So when C. heard an armed gang was operating in her area, she put her savings up in the roof. Intruders always check the safe and under the mattress. "Every time I got a bit of change, I added to it," she said. "20 rand here, 50 rand there." She'd managed to amass 7,000 rand (around 700 US). She lifted her stash down this week, or what was left of it. The rats had got there first.

fake

What's got everyone worried is faked notes. Faked forex notes, that is, now that the Zimbabwean economy is almost totally dollarised.

Jeannette* has a shop in the Tselentis building. She left her workers on duty for an hour or two last week, (which was the first week of the new year. This year Zimbabweans aren't saying: Compliments of the season, they're saying: Complaints of the season.)

"In that time," she told a friend, "my workers had taken in three photocopied 100 rand notes and one fake 100 US note."

"It's the Nigerians and the Chinese. They're the ones faking things," complains Joyce, an 87-year old who wants us to examine her 50 US note "because the colour doesn't change when you tilt it to the light."

Traders are refusing -- for a reason known only to themselves -- US dollar notes issued in 1996. Our local Spar store refuses to accept my 50 US note because it has a 5 mm-high purple 15 stamped on it (and it's come straight out from England and is most certainly not fake). Having fought for 1) a shopping basket 2) a place in a long long queue at the checkout, I'm left speechless with fury.

And I have to leave half my goods behind, unpaid for.