birthday

On the bumpy mud track leading to the homestead, blue plastic bags hide each bunch of bananas so that each tree is dotted with huge gaudy baubles.

"I took my grandchildren up the hill the other weekend for a birthday party," says a farmer. "Seven kids, all under the age of 10."

We're sitting in a shade-dappled garden, sprinkler going and that chill in the air you get - despite the sun -- when the Zimbabwean winter's about to set in. I look at the wine and the curry and the perfect rice and dhal and poppadums and Greek cakes and good books and a huge floppy dog. Not for the first time, I get that trapped-in-time feeling I often get on still-white-owned farms.

"When we came back down again, the army trucks were waiting." He takes a sip of wine. "Wanted to know what political meeting we'd been holding up there."

The authorities -- or rather those loyal to the president -- have been clamping down on all gatherings, revving up, no doubt, for elections Mr Mugabe is determined to hold before the end of the year, despite widespread fears of violence. A History Society meeting was recently broken up in Harare: too many whites in one place made the gathering "suspect" (read: likely pro-opposition MDC).

"I said to them: Why would I take kids to a political meeting? If I wanted to hold a meeting, why wouldn't I just hold it in my house?" He sighs.

"And I'm going to have the same problem next month, when the Tree Society of Zimbabwe come."

poll talk

"My brother Sam called," Mai A says. "He is saying there will be elections next year."

"We are worried about our father."

President Robert Mugabe has decided that a referendum must be held by March and elections by June next year. Election-talk has already begun in state media: the lead piece in the Herald today is: Gearing for Post-GPA Zim. No matter that there's not enough money to hold the elections, that the voters' roll is in a shambles and that most Zimbabweans are appalled by the thought of fresh polls, with the violence that's sure to go with them.

Mai A's elderly father was badly beaten by the militias in the 2008 elections. They said he had two children who worked for whites.

"He goes to Nyanga hospital for a checkup every month still," she says. "It is his back, it is still giving him pain."

Of course I say yes.

But later, I wonder: will the rural areas be empty during the elections as villagers flee the threat of violence? Is that part of the master-plan?

but what kind of pancake, mr president?

President Robert Mugabe has been speaking about his new, improved (?) relationship with former opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai. When the pair started working together, Mr Tsvangirai barely dared accept an invitation to eat with him at Harare's plush Rainbow Towers hotel, Mr Mugabe said. He told Mr Tsvangirai: "Don't worry, eat what I eat." Mr Mugabe as beefeater: now that's a new one.

A year into a power-sharing deal, the pair meet for tea and pancakes on Monday afternoons, Mr Mugabe says. What I want to know is: what kind of pancakes? Does Mr Mugabe mean the South African ones, the small bun-size patties you spread with butter and jam? They're also known as flapjacks, which -- in English cookbooks -- are something totally different: they're made with oats and syrup. Or does His Excellency mean English pancakes, the thin frying-pan size ones you toss in the air and would probably need to eat with a knife and fork? Mr Mugabe has a secret fondness for anything redolent of the British upper classes: surely he favours English pancakes. But then South African President Jacob Zuma is a good friend, more loyal -- at least on the anti-sanctions front -- that Mr Mugabe could have dared hope. Mightn't he be supporting Proudly South African pancakes?

elections

Horns blaring, the motorcade sweeps past us near Manica, twenty miles from Mozambique's border with Zimbabwe. An outrider on a motorcycle forces our vehicle off the road in this desolate countryside, flanked by the Amatonga hills. Youths hang out of open lorries: some wear election posters for Mozambique's ruling FRELIMO party on their backs and their chests, like paper ponchos. Black SUVs carry smartly-dressed women in elaborate turbans. Official campaigning for Mozambique's October 28 general elections kicked off this weekend. After eight years watching elections in crisis-riddled Zimbabwe, the torn election posters lying in a marshy township in the seaside port of Beira look fairly familiar. Political analysts say President Armando Guebuza is almost certain to be returned to power. His FRELIMO party has been in power here since independence in 1975: Zimbabwe's ZANU-PF has been in power since 1980. Despite the grey landscape -- the rumour is that if you paint your outside, you have to pay more tax -- there is an optimistic vibe. Villages are dotted with the bright yellow and blue shacks of rival mobile 'phone companies. "Tudobom", one advertisement reads: "Everything's fine." Part of the centre of the market town of Chimoio have been cordoned off. Policemen in white shirts stand at the side of the square, I'm immediately cautious. In Zimbabwe, policemen at ruling party rallies do not like white Western journalists. Neither do party officials: just before one poll, I ran into a glaring (now former) agriculture minister Joseph Made at a thatched tea-room near Headlands, near where he'd been addressing a rally. "Hey, camarado," one officer shouts, waving. "Good morning."

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.

name and shame

It's a hard thing for us murungus (whites). We tell people to call us by our first names as soon as we strike up a friendship. In Zimbabwe, once you become a parent, you lose your first name. You become mai (mother of) and then your child's name or baba (father) and your child's name. After a few years here, I see now how Zimbabweans wince before using a white person's first name. It's such a foreign concept. Even the shop assistant down the road, an unmarried youth in his early 20s, isn't plain Harry to his co-workers. He's Mukoma (brother or cousin) Harry.

"Imagine calling an old lady by her first name," E. said to me once in horror. We were talking about an 80-year-old mutual acquaintance, a white woman who I know as Bet. E's in his 50s. "I just can't do it."

It's only occasionally that you see black Zimbabweans referred to by their first names. Like in the election campaigns. Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai's running his campaign under the slogan Morgan is more ("You deserve more for your life"). Former finance minister Simba Makoni is using sunflowers and the shout: Simba KaOne (Simba is the one). Only Mugabe's campaigners never ever talk of Bob. Now that would be disrespectful.

sweeteners

"Did you see those buses in town?" H, a young Shona school teacher and mother-of-two, asks. "The new ones with the Zimbabwe flags on the side? They're coming in from Beira."

Mr Mugabe handed out 300 buses at the weekend. Last week he was pretty prolific in his gift giving, doling out hundreds of computers (to schools without power and teachers who are on strike), 500 tractors, a drum of diesel per traditional chief, generators, an indigenisation law that'll mean locals will get a 51 percent in foreign and white-owned businesses, ox-drawn ploughs and lots of ruling party regalia.

"C's dad works for Red Star (Holdings, a major local wholesaler). He says there's no sugar. They (and we all know who They are) have taken it to the rural areas." Deputy Minister of Information Bright Matonga this week accused the opposition of vote-buying with money and food. Vote-buying's an offence punishable by a fine and/or up to 2 years in jail, according to Zimbabwe's Electoral Act. Obviously the rules don't apply to everyone.

"They've lost it," H says. "Totally lost it. They don't know what they're doing." She fans herself. It'll be 33 degrees today, the radio says. It was hot in the car on March 11 last year, I remember. That was when police were beating opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and his supporters for trying to attend a prayer rally.

"We just want someone new who'll bring change," H says.

and the winner is

Zimbabwean writer Olley Maruma is a ruling party diehard. In Coming Home, a book he published last year, he speaks scornfully of whites' "wishful thinking" ahead of the landslide victory of the Patriotic Front in the country's first independent elections in 1980. It was a traumatic experience for whites, he says. "For them, the victory was made all the more stunning by the fact that both the local and the foreign press had predicted that the Patriotic Front (PF-ZANU, led by Mugabe and PF-ZAPU, led by Joshua Nkomo) would win no more than 50 percent of the seats." He quotes an Australian reporter: "How could a sane people do this to themselves?"

Twenty-eight years on, and everyone's talking about what's going to happen in two and a half weeks' time. "Surely," my mother-in-law's white friends say. "Surely, this time?" and they recount conversations with domestic workers, the man behind the till at Halsteds, anyone who'll bolster their hope that change is finally on the horizon.

At a party at the weekend, I watch an animated American NGO worker. She is telling a black Zimbabwean -- his kids are somewhere in the garden -- that she just can't understand "these people." "These people" are the ones you see on TV on ZBC News Hour (one agency reporter calls it News Horror) every night -- waving, toyi-toying and chanting at ruling party rallies. You can drive people to rallies. But you can't make them dance with smiles on their faces. That comes from the heart, surely. "I mean, you tell me why," she says, exasperated. In the local Shona culture, women do not look men in the eye. They do not wear short skirts (Agonita, 58, once told me off for wearing a "mean" skirt). Some men even object to unrelated women smiling at them. Traditionally, a woman smiles for her husband only.

The man shifts uncomfortably on his seat, looks away from her. "The war, you know," he says. "People remember that war."

The war for independence is only half a lifetime away for people like Ellias, a college lecturer. He remembers when he and his wife weren't allowed to buy a house in the "good" suburbs. They quietly saved up their cash and bought as soon as independence was declared in 1980: a bungalow with parquet floors, a well in the garden, maid's quarters round the back. There were atrocities during that war, atrocities that state TV is making sure no-one forgets, showing grainy footage of white soldiers manhandling a black during News Hour advert breaks. Defence chief Paradzayi Zimondi has warned there'll be war again if Mugabe doesn't win. "We don't want to go back to that," Ellias says. He explained a Shona proverb to me recently. "If you're ploughing a field and there's a tree-stump in the middle," he said, "you don't stop what you're doing and try to pull the stump out. You plough round it." You make a plan. You don't necessarily have to uproot the problem.

"People are really fired up," a local cafe-owner tells me. "They're fed up. They say, this time we're going to win. Things are going to change." Yes, but they said that before elections in 2000, 2002 and 2005, didn't they?

The opposition's in a bad way. Not only is Tsvangirai's MDC split in two but there's been a fair amount of dirty linen-washing that's had the ruling party rubbing its hands in glee. News Hour showed a press conference last night with an MDC candidate defecting from the Tsvangirai-MDC to the Arthur Mutambara-led side. He says some in Tsvangirai's party are "dictators". There's friction too between Tsvangirai and new-man-on-the-block Makoni. Tendai Biti, the Tsvangirai-faction secretary general described Makoni as "zhing-zhong", slang for a cheap, Chinese imported good that won't last. But a sitting MP from the Tsvangirai faction says - privately, of course - that though he'd "love" Tsvangirai to win, he thinks Makoni would make a better transition.

Outside Nolan's Electronics, I watch three men. One of them's jabbing his finger at a newspaper and they too are talking animatedly. "Better the devil you know," he says in English. There's only one campaign poster near our house and it's for Mugabe.

I may be wrong, but...

power to the people

We stand in a roped-off queue inside the state power utility ZESA banking hall. Patiently, or sort of. A man considers pushing in in front of me, decides not to. "I was going to," he says. "But I see you have the kid, madam. It is hard for kids to queue."

They joke that Zimbabweans have the highest IQ in the world. I queue, therefore I am in Zimbabwe. Zimbabweans queue for sugar, for bread, for milk, in queues that snake round the back of supermarkets and in sanitary lanes, queues patrolled by police and Alsatians. They queue for passports (my mother-in-law's just got hers after 10 months of waiting), they queue for milk round the blue Dairibord milk cart. Come March 29, they'll be queueing again.

My son spies the ZESA security guard, with what looks like a pistol in his holster.

"Kids always want to be policemen," the would-be queue jumper says. "But here" -- he checks to see who's listening -- "you only become a policeman if you're desperate."

There are rumours of growing discontent in the police service and the army, despite threats never to salute an opposition victory from two top defence chiefs, Paradzayi Zimondi of the prison service and army commander General Constantine Chiwenga. A report in the UK-based Zimbabwean newspaper quoted pamphlets allegedly circulating within army headquarters urging members to "vote with your consciences" and "remember your kids and your parents are dying of hunger."

"Is he at school?" the queue-jumper-who-didn't asks. He's a burly guy in a suit. A businessman of some kind, I'd guess.

"Nursery," I say.

"How much was the top-up?"

Where I come from, top-ups used to be something pleasant, something you got in a cafe when your coffee cup was empty. Here they're a demand you get handed when you go to pick up your child. You pay your school fee for the term and then you have to top it up regularly because of inflation (100,580.2 percent at the last count in January). "We reserve the right to turn your child away from school if the top-up is not paid by March 10," the letter I got last week says.

"500 million," I tell him.

"Not too bad," he offers. "I've just written out a cheque for 6.6 billion for my kids' top-up."

"How much?" the woman behind him nudges him in horror. She shakes her head. "Zvakaoma," she mutters. Things are bad. I heard the assistant at the zhing-zhong clothes shop say the same thing earlier as she leaned on a pile of gaudy flip-flops. Flip-flops, by the way, that cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars.

"I saw this South African film," the man tells us. "The guy in it was saying: I feel like a million bucks. Zimbabwean bucks."

I read the vision statement on the wall next to me. ZESA (or its parent ZEDC Holdings) vision is, apparently, "to be the best and the most dynamic electricity and energy services provider" in the country. Today we have no power at home. Down the road at the bakery, there's no power either. "No power, no bread," the woman behind the till sings out when I poke my head through the door. There are bills to pay and top-ups to find, a phone line that keeps going down, a radio signal that keeps disappearing and cellphone networks that keep dissolving. Zvakaoma, yes.

primary colours

In the dark grocery shop at Halfway House, the assistant weighs my pears and rings in my wild blueberries on a calculator. There's no power to get the till working. Everything's normal. Or nearly.

"We saw people back there," I say quietly. "Walking along the road. Where were they going?"

Until Headlands, there'd been no sign to suggest elections were on this month. No campaign posters, no trucks full of noisy activists (singing's been banned in the eastern city of Mutare in the run-up to the polls, the Manica Post says). Just miles and miles of straight empty road. The road (unpotholed here because there's less traffic) stretches like a white-grey ribbon, bordered by shimmering rust-tipped grass and pine and bottle-brush trees so green they're speckled with black. After a few years here, I know now that these are Zimbabwe's primary colours: roadline grey, black-green, rust. And blue, the well-washed and faded blue of the sky without a cloud the size of a man's hand.

The women walk slowly but purposefully, in groups of two or three. Doeks on their heads, babies on their backs. It's mid-morning. The sun is already high and hot. There are several dozen of them, probably somewhere around 80. Very few men. A church service perhaps? Men aren't so keen on church-going here, not traditionally. But the faces that turn to look at our car are closed, not like the ones we drove past a fortnight ago flocking to an outdoor service in eastern Honde Valley, where the tea grows.

"It's a rally," the shop assistant says. There's a pile of gooey koeksusters next to the till. "It's Didymus Mutasa. He is having a rally in the location." He gives an apologetic half-smile.

I know why. Mutasa is Mugabe's state security minister and - despite the koeksusters (an Afrikaans delicacy) and the colonial style Cape Dutch gables at Halfway House -- Headlands is a ruling party stronghold. Like Macheke, a few miles further on. These are bad places to be opposition supporters or white farmers. Ouma and her late husband used to live somewhere near here. He was Polish. They took his farm even though Ouma is black. "He had a heart attack," Ouma says. "It killed him." Mutasa's the one who said back in 2002 that Zimbabwe would be better off with only six million people (ie half the population) as long as they were supporters of the ruling party.

We climb back into the car, shaking the sand from the car park off our feet. So often Zimbabwe looks as stunning as a picture postcard. Scratch the surface though, and the fear, the politics and the old hatreds are never far away.

strike

"The bad news," Kimmy says, "is that the teachers are on strike."

"Yes," Mai X says. "The bad teachers. The hungry teachers." (She was one herself before she took an extended "sabbatical").

I scan the kids' faces. Five-year-old Joe is in the front row. His mother's a state teacher too, out in the rural areas in the east of the country. She came back home Wednesday this week because of the strike. ZIMTA, the main teachers' union is fed up because soldiers got massive cash injections -- more than one billion dollars, though it's not clear if that's a pay-hike or just a one-off cash injection -- ahead of the polls next month. Teachers weren't so lucky. "I'm going to be calling round your place," Joe's mum whispers. "I've got lots of free time this week."

"There are no lessons," Kimmy says. She's bright like her mother, who was once a government school teacher but got out a couple of years ago to work for the central bank. "There are just two students left."

"Ah," says Mai X. "The student teachers. They are not allowed to strike. Their lecturers say so. But the lecturers are also on strike, so..."

Nicola puts up her hand. She has a new orange T-shirt today, with straps criss-crossed over her back and a rich auburn weave in her hair. She makes scrunchies to boost her pocket money. "Our teachers are not on strike," she says proudly.

"Ah," says Mai X. "That is because it is a private school. You pay your teachers nicely. But you, you others, what do you do at school then?

Amos puts up his hand. "We play," he says. I picked Amos up Thursday on his way home from school. He was wearing an immaculately-ironed uniform even at 3 in the afternoon: big floppy-brimmed margarine yellow hat, a brown pullover. Amos is always worried about his mother.

"What, the children are on strike too?" Mai X says in mock horror. "No, no, that is not good. You must take your books and study. See, the teachers will be on strike all this week too. So you must not use bus fare to go to school because it is wasted. You must see if there is a girl or boy next door and study with them."

"And," she says, warming to her theme, "because ZESA (the state power utility) is also on strike, you must study while there is light. Have you seen how much moonlight there is these days? You can even use the moon to read your books."

shoo fly

"Keep your voice down." She edges her chair closer. We are metres from her garden hedge. I can't see anyone but there may or may not be rustling. Four weeks to an election and we're all a bit paranoid.

"The guy next door is ZANU-PF. He's something to do with food distribution," she mouths. There's an unfamiliar stink from the bottom of the garden: ah yes, the hanging flycatcher. No rubbish collection for nearly three months means we all have to devise ways of getting rid of flies. You might burn your rubbish every morning, but there's no saying your neighbour will. In the towns, there are huge mounds of festering banana skins and cabbage leaves under the posters urging us to vote for our land and RGM. A popular local flycatcher is a bottle filled with a mixture made from dried kapenta fish, tiny papery minnow-like things with eyes. They sold by the packet in the grocers, next to the dried caterpillars. Kapenta is poor man's food in Zimbabwe, the sort ZANU-PF bigwigs have been heard to scorn. Not flies though. They swarm to the smell and stick to the bottle. Disgusting but effective.

"There was something going on last night, lots of unmarked BMWs and big cars," she says. She wraps her arms round herself protectively.

snippets

Things are never as black and white as they seem.

"Where's Mai X?" I ask. I'm in a sitting room again, barefoot. I have handed over my basket at the door as you do, inquired after everyone's day, assured all present that my husband and my child are fine. I like these slow unhurried rituals. Speed begets tardiness, the Shona say.

"She has gone to a funeral. It is her aunt. In fact, the aunt was like her mother. Mai X's mother passed away so the aunt, who had no children, brought her and some other children up."

I like Mai X. She is careful, funny, gentle and she treats me like a daughter, buying me a huge box of soap powder for Christmas. When I injured my head last year and had to have a cyst lanced at a local hospital, it was Mai X I turned to.

"The burial was supposed to be Sunday. But then her cousin-brother said, no, it could not be Sunday because he had business to do. He's that boxing man, you know? Stalin Mau-Mau. Well, Stalin Mau-Mau said there were relatives who wanted to come from England...

I've stopped listening, trying to digest what I just heard. Stalin Mau-Mau was a ruling party bigwig back in 2000, before he turned into a UK-based businessman. White farmers say that he -- backed up by war vets -- played a part in the early wave of land invasions in Harare (though he claims he was merely "negotiating" with farmers to help alleviate a housing shortage).

Mai X was brought up with Stalin Mau-Mau?

********************************

Illegal gold panners are an increasing problem.

"They wreck all the greenery," says a friend whose parents -- by hook or by crook and most probably because the powers that be have realised Zimbabweans need minimal amounts of milk -- have managed to hold onto their dairy farm. Gold panners are panning in the stream that runs through their farm in eastern Zimbabwe and there's absolutely nothing her parents can do.

"My mother never used to have any problems in her garden," she says. We're sitting round a sparkling pool, eight or nine mums, munching coffee cake and watching our horribly-privileged preschoolers splash around with rubber bazookas imported from South Africa. There is no power but no-one notices that anymore. "Now she's got monkeys and pythons. They come because it's the only bit of greenery left. She lost the whole of her lychee crop and then last week a python took her dog.

She takes a breath. "My little boy (aged three, approximately goat-size, just right for a python) was playing with the dog three minutes earlier."

There's silence, white coffee mugs stopped staccato in the air. We do live in Africa, girls.

***********************************

In the morning, I drive past the Anglican cathedral with the huge red AIDS ribbon painted above the entrance, under the flamboyant trees, past a nursery school. Through my open window -- it's going to be a sweltering 30 degrees today, the radio says -- I hear the sweet sound of childrens' voices, one adult voice leading the song: "...everybody here, in His hands/He's got everybody here in His hands." Nothing could ever happen here, surely?

The police chief appears on the eight o'clock TV news bulletin. His officers are empowered to use "full force, including firearms," against protesters before, during or after next month's polls, he says.

mrs mugabe, I presume

The first time it happened I was shocked.

"Hello, Mrs Mugabe." I'm walking down the street and a passer-by shouts out a greeting.

Mrs Mugabe? Surely not. Mrs Mugabe is older than me by a few years (she has a teenager who's taking her A-levels), she's glamourous and she has a penchant for shoe-shopping in luxury boutiques around the world. Judging by the battered flip-flops I wear every day (my mother's cast-offs), we're not in the same league. Oh yes, and I'm blonde and not married to a president.

It happens again. I'm reversing out of a parking spot and a woman taps on my side window.

"Mrs Mugabe? Have you had the baby yet?"

The baby? I haven't had a baby for ages and neither has Grace, as far as I know. And I do tend to keep my eye on these things. She had at least one baby before she and His Excellency were married while Mr Mugabe's first wife Sally was dying from a kidney complaint. There were a few raised eyebrows though the First Couple still held a lavish wedding in a Catholic church.

"I'm not Mrs Mugabe,' I say carefully.

The woman looks at me. "Now I see that you aren't," she says with more than a hint of disappointment.

Grace, the president's junior by around 40 years, is an object of national fascination. She was the president's secretary when she became his "small house", Zimbabwean slang for mistress. (A wife is known as a man's "main house.") Grace was on the front of this weekend's Sunday Mail, sporting a filmy green turban and wraparound sunglasses. She was cutting an enormous cake for her husband's 84th birthday. A cake, I notice from the red and blue logo, which was kindly baked by Lobels Bakeries. Lobels has been having a few problems keeping the nation supplied with bread for the past few years. Price controls and critical grain shortages following the land invasions can make bread baking a wee bit tricky. Cakes are still available but their prices push them way out of the reach of most: a small round party cake cost 35 million Zimbabwe dollars in Spar supermarket last week, more than what a low-grade employee with the national ZINWA water company earned in January.

Grace looked fairly happy at her husband's 3-trillion dollar party in Beitbridge on Saturday. It's not clear if she'd seen the banners on the South African side of the border, hoisted by exiled former opposition MP Roy Bennett and other party supporters. "Happy Bye-Bye Bob," the banners read. "No half-baked elections in Zimbabwe." That might have wiped the smile from her face.

I met the real Mrs Mugabe in a cafe a few days ago. She's tall and blonde-ish and she's married to a Mr Mugabe who isn't the president. He's a plumber.

my friend the inventor

Will's full of great ideas. He thinks that soon we'll be able to pop a tablet that'll mean we don't have to waste time sleeping. Will's big thing is saving time. Ten years ago he launched the gwatamatic, a machine that makes your sadza for you. Sadza-making is hard work, lots of stirring and sweating. With the gwatamatic, you put in your mealie-meal and water and the machine does it for you. He gave us a couple of freeze-wrapped packs of his sadza to try at home, large slabs of what looks like dense creamy-white mashed potato. What you do is you dunk the packet (do NOT pierce the bag, whatever you do) into a saucepan of boiling water and you simmer for 20 minutes, maybe a bit longer. What you get is great-tasting, no-lump sadza, no stirring involved. My mother-in-law loved it.

Will's gwatamatics are used in universities and factories here. The thing about his sadza, he says, is that it will always have the same taste.

"You've immortalised your mum's recipe, Will", I told him over boerewors sausage one lunchtime. He looked pleased. His mother hosts orphan parties in the town of Marondera, an hour's drive from Harare. She sounds like a good person to immortalise, even if only in mealie-meal.

Will stood for president last week, or tried to. Last month he launched the Christian Democratic Party at the Jameson Hotel (third poshest in town, after Meikles and the Monomatapa). The men in dark suits were there, complete with ancient video cameras. Will says he filed his nomination papers at a Harare court last Friday "for the kicks of confronting the dangerous." Not surprisingly, he was disqualified. His papers were not in order, the Herald said: Will blames poor quality nominators and a suspect voters' roll. A couple of days later the authorities said they'd soon seek constitutional amendments to bar "presidential chancers" in future. In the end the inventor of no-stir sadza caused quite a stir.

And he did get to register as a parliamentary candidate.

green jackets

There's a knock at the gate and a flurry of barking. The limegreen jackets beat a hasty retreat. "Those are big dogs," the two women say when I reach them.

They have luminous waistcoats on with the words Zimbabwe Electoral Commission in black capital letters. ZEC is the government elections body. The independent one is ZESN, the Zimbabwe Election Support Network.

"I'm Alice and this is Rumbi. We are doing voter education," one of them says. She's middle-aged with a pleasant smile and a big tent dress. A teacher, I'd guess. M. -- one of my teacher friends -- is manning the voter registration desk at the local convent school today. Many teachers are on strike anyway this week over abysmal pay (recently hiked to somewhere around 140 million Zimbabwe dollars = £14 a month or seven if you use the Fair Value Hard Boiled Egg exchange rate), so it makes sense to earn a bit extra. Whichever side you're getting it from.

"You mustn't be frightened," Alice says, eyeing a rotter's muzzle poking through the gap between the wall and the hedge. For locals, black dogs can represent bad things in your past, things that come back to haunt you. "You must vote. You must make your voice heard. You mustn't just talk about it round the dinner table. Your workers too, they must take their IDs and their proof of residence."

It sounds so easy but it's not. The authorities have changed the boundaries, changed the wards. How do you get proof of residence when even your landlord's renting, subletting his rooms out one by one? This weekend the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (the country's longest serving rights body) says the March 29 vote is very unlikely to be free and fair. "Cumbersome" procedures mean many people haven't been able to register, the commission says. A few countries up, more than 1,000 people have died over disputed election results. There are prayers and pleas every week -- some printed in the official government newspaper -- for there to be no Kenya here.

"No-one will get killed," Rumbi offers. She taps her wrist. "We have different colour skin but we are all the same." One of her front teeth is brown. Last year, the authorities found fake toothpaste in the shops: it caused mouth infections rather than lessening the risk of them. Rumbi looks like someone's grandma. For a moment, I'm placated. If the elections were really in the hands of people like these, it'd be OK.