waiting

"Talking of the General Hospital..." she says. - "One of the hotel clerks went there two days ago." The baby had gastric 'flu. It's been spreading fast round the town: the suspicion is -- as always -- that it's linked to water quality. When the clerk got to the hospital she paid for her admission card (7 rand). Then she sat down to wait. She quickly realised there were lots of other mothers like her with similarly-stricken babies. They waited. And waited. The babies got sicker and smellier. "No-one came until the baby two in front of hers died. In the queue," she says. "The nurses sent the parents straight to the mortuary." "Mucha said to me in wonder: "The father was crying like a woman." We're silent, a group of youngish white mothers chewing through cheap plates of chicken curry.

no claims for cholera

A local cellphone company has just launched a life insurance policy that you pay for by topping up on your airtime. Sounds great but then this is Zimbabwe, where hope is at best uncertain.* There are some very country-specific policy exclusions, as listed at the end and in small print of a glossy promotional booklet distributed with the Sunday papers:

"Any one of the following conditions will result in the Underwriter being absolved from any liability to make payment:

- if death is as a result of epidemics as defined and declared by the World Health Organisation (no claims for cholera, then)
- if death is caused by an aviation accident (roll on Air Zimbabwe)
- if death is a consequence of judicial sentence of death penalty (best not to be convicted of treason)
- if death is a consequence of illegal actions as may be defined in terms of Zimbabwean law (if you're practising as a reporter, presumably)
- if death is a consequence of war, invasion, act of foreign enemy (the West?), hostilities or war like operations (whether war has been declared or not -- what does this say about what they're expecting during the next elections?), riots, mutiny, civil commotion, civil war, rebellion, insurrections, conspiracy or siege.

It all reads horribly like a prophecy. Especially in the light of Morgan Tsvangirai's comments today that he sees "nothing wrong" with a Tunisia/Egypt style uprising...

* Valerie Tagwira The Uncertainty of Hope, novel, 2008

typhoid

Third day without water. The whole town is affected. Thankfully we have a swimming pool. Nicely-chlorinated water is being used for just about everything: flushing the loo, bathing (we heat buckets full of the gas ring when there's no power), hair-washing, clothes-washing, washing cholera off the vegetables.

Our clothes have been washed by hand in the bath for ages now. But this week, even in the plush suburbs, maids will be bending over baths and slapping the soap-suds out. We keep a couple of centimetres of water in the bottom of the basin to wash our hands in. By the end of the day, it's grimy-grey.

The cats are thirsty: one nearly fell into the bucket this morning trying to sip a drop of chlorine. We can't waste precious drinking water on them -- who knows how long the municipality will take to fix the pipe from the Pungwe -- but milk is expensive.

My husband spends an hour or so morning and night fetching buckets of water from the pool to fill the baby bath (which we squeeze into, one by one). "If you were a good Shona wife, you'd be doing this on your own," he warns me darkly.

Oh, and typhoid's broken out in Harare's northern suburb of Mabvuku. Five dead so far and 40 infected. Mabvuku was the epicentre of the cholera epidemic in 2008: typhoid, like cholera, spreads fastest where there's poor sanitation. Not-so-happy times ahead, I fear.

flipside

It seems impossible but cholera has a good side. So says T, who's back from Budiriro (the epicentre of the epidemic) for the new term at Africa University (which she won't be starting because they've upped fees from somewhere around 400 US a year to 1,750 US plus an obligatory 900 US top-up for last term).

"Jobs," she says. "Cholera's created jobs."

Apparently UNICEF is paying up to 400 US to locals who agree to work in their cholera clinic. It's hard and dangerous work: bathing, feeding cholera patients.

"And if they die, you have to put the sheet over them," T says, with a shudder. Her sister got cholera -- or something like it -- over the Christmas holidays but she got treatment and she's fine.

"And then you get sprayed by all these chemicals before you can leave the clinic. But the money's good."

Four hundred US is way above average salaries for almost all Zimbabweans. Plus, she says, they pay a 200 US transport allowance but because almost all the workers come from the township they don't have to take any buses. That makes a take-home pay of 600 US. A farm tractor driver wants (but won't get) -- so state media says -- 50 US a month.

alert

Living in a time of cholera forces you to be familiar with details you'd normally rather not know.

When Tommy (who helps with the gardening and odd jobs) turns up at the gate and announces he's got a runny stomach, I'm immediately on my guard.

"When did it start?" I say. Bad cases of cholera can kill within six hours.

"Is it white?" Cholera can land you with watery white discharge, like rice water. I didn't know that a month or two ago.

'It' started yesterday and 'it' is not white, so I judge that Tommy's probably not got cholera. Still, I hand over six of the precious Intetrix tablets I've been saving.

When I was first sent to Zimbabwe seven years ago, a Paris doctor handed me a tube of muscle rub, a vaccination for yellow fever and tetanus, Lariam tablets for malaria (which gave me sweat-soaked hallucinations in the plush Meikles Hotel and were totally unnecessary: there's no malaria in Harare in June) and a packet of red and white Intetrix capsules. I lost the box but kept the capsules. Ten days or so ago I googled Intetrix to find the drug can be used against cholera.

They might be seven years old but this Christmas in Zimbabwe, those Intetrix capsules are worth their weight in gold.

crisis

Brown water = no clean clothes. "I've run out of underwear," he says. I look up guiltily. I raided his pile last time.

"Look," I say, rummaging. This is a crisis, after all. "Have my last one. At least it's clean though it is a bit - "

Bitty. And flowery. We start to laugh.

"No ways," he says. "And if I ever did, it would be just my luck: I'd get arrested with J and A and the police'll make us strip down to our underwear and J and A will say they always suspected..."

Only in Zimbabwe do you have to worry about things like that.

decisions

When do you stop sending your child to school? When cholera has reached the next town (which it has)? When it's reached the high-density township of Chikanga near the school? If I pull him out now, he will miss the Nativity Play they've been rehearsing for all term. ("We three kings of GLORY AND TAR", he chants).

There is likely no treatment for cholera in the local private clinic. A classmate's father was supposed to be bringing in cholera treatment from Mozambique but not till this weekend. Cholera kills in a few hours. You need a simple rehydration solution to treat it. I should stock up on Coca-Cola. But where do I find it? I went to the forex shop two days ago, but there was little for sale. The truck with provisions on wasn't due from South Africa till the end of the week.

Cholera needs no transport, it has no passport, the head of the Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights Douglas Gwatidzo said today.

Better safe than sorry?

into the jaws

She's a student at Africa University. It's the end of the semester and she's desperate to go back to see her family in Harare for the Christmas holidays. There's just one problem: the family live in Budiriro township, the epicentre of Zimbabwe's cholera epidemic.

"Don't go," I say immediately as I hand her a cup of soup (Super Chicken Noodle sent by mum -- should it be this watery?)

It'll be fine, she says ("and this soup is great"). There have only been two cholera cases in her area (Two? Isn't that two too many?)

Her part of Budiriro is the part near Glen View, the old part. They haven't had running water for a matter of years now: her father brings containers of water from the office every day at lunchtime and in the evening. Paradoxically, the lack of piped water makes the cholera risk a tiny bit lower. "There's no sewage," she says delicately. Residents have long found their own "solutions" to human waste disposal -- pit latrines etc. The real problem comes in the parts of the township where there is occasionally running water. Then people flush the loos but the sewerage pipes are overloaded so they burst and flood. Mix that with no rubbish collection, no schools (kids playing outside in the flooded streets), poor immune systems and what do you get? Cholera.

"You know in our area now you're not even allowed to hold funerals now," she says. "You have to tell the police when someone's died, their officials come, they wrap the body in a blanket and then in plastic and the body is buried straight away.

"In our culture funerals should take three or four days. Everyone comes to your house. You eat and drink together. But the officials are saying that's how the cholera will spread."

Africa University is organising a bus on Friday to take Harare students back home, she says. "I can't wait."

in a time of cholera

The man on the verge is mouthing something as I close the gate.

"Some sugar," he croaks. "Please."

We're staying in a cheap boarding house in Harare's Avondale suburb: the flat we normally rent has no running water. There are piles of rotting rubbish outside the shed where my son plays with his friends Tino and Tino. Terrified of cholera -- I regularly receive cholera alerts on my cellphone -- we've temporarily relocated. This is not a licensed guesthouse: in a sign of the times, an impoverished bachelor is renting out a wing of his home and a converted garage to bring in some extra income for himself and his ageing parents.

I run inside. This is not my house: what do I put the sugar in? I find the top of a Nescafe jar, pour in some spoonfuls of South African Selati I was given a week ago. I hear the gate rattle with impatience.

By the time I get outside again, the man's collapsed on the verge. Already a small crowd has gathered. Three men have taken charge.

"Can you dilute the sugar?" one asks and I run inside again. I fumble around to try to find something to put a drink in, measure out precious pre-boiled water from the plastic water containers that go everywhere with me. I must look as if I'm taking my time, uncaring, an irritable white madam.

Out on the grass -- the owner keeps his verge lush green, using precious water from his well -- the man is now conscious. He wants milk. There is almost no milk in Harare. The state-owned Dairibord is barely selling a drop now. Any milk you get is from private sources: a few brave dairy farmers taking a risk by "side-marketing" their supplies. I have milk in the guest house fridge. But there's less than a cup-full left. My son will also need milk when he's dropped off by a friend any minute now. I don't know when I will be able to get more. Feeling guilty, I split the milk: half for the man, half for my child.

The crowd thins. The man gets up. He will survive, this time. He is in bad shape, diabetic probably, poorly-fed like most Harare residents. Except for the very rich, we have all lost weight.