visiting

"But where is the blanket?" Mai D asks me. Blanket? It's 30 degrees at least this afternoon. The baby doesn't need a blanket, surely? Mai D tut-tuts. "I have never held a baby without a blanket," she tells her husband, who is sitting dutifully in the living-room next to her, summoned no doubt, to welcome The Baby. He nods awkwardly.

I've always been fascinated by different approaches to child-rearing. And now I'm getting a Zimbabwean lesson first-hand. Mai D asks me about nappy rash, tells me she washed her babies (and she had four, and she raised a grand-daughter, who, aged 12, has finally left for mission school) in Sunlight washing-up liquid (same as green Fairy), used Vaseline on their bottoms (Blue Seal is the best, she told me firmly), and always, always used a blanket. She watches me breastfeed critically. "Are you sure you're not suffocating her?" I shift position as I'm told. "Did you come on your own?" she asks. "But who held her?" Mai D is envisaging my daughter bumping around in the backseat, unrestrained. "I have a seat," I tell her, and think of all the mothers I've seen clutching their babies in the backseats, wrapped up thickly like sausage rolls. No-one checks you have a baby seat when you leave a Zimbabwean maternity ward.

Every time the baby opens her mouth, Mai D tells me to feed. (The baby, unused to being offered milk every few seconds, licks hesitantly, to cries of horror from Mai D). She plies me with Coke. I already know -- because my doctor told me - that locals think this increases milk supply. Ditto for peanuts. Once, visiting a friend in a maternity ward, I watched her aunt ululate when she saw the baby -- and promptly hand over a bag full of peanuts.

Mai D rummages in her freezer. "You must have this chicken," she says, handing me a huge lump of frozen bird. "It'll help you make good milk."

why not to eat French fries in Zimbabwe

Vandals are stealing oil from state-ZESA power authority transformers and selling it on to -- wait for it - fast-food outlets in the capital. The official Herald says the oil "is being used by unscrupulous businesspeople operating fast-food outlets mainly in Harare as cooking oil for frying chips and other food items." Not too good for one's health, especially in a country with such a compromised health system (Harare's in the grip of a rotavirus diarrhoea outbreak at the moment, apart from all the rest).

Apparently transformer oil is stable at high temperatures which makes it great for frying. Crippling power cuts have been the order of the day for most of the last 10 years: partly they're blamed on Zimbabwe's broken-down generation equipment, which means the country can't meet demand. But the cuts are also blamed on vandalism. The authorities have recently introduced very stiff prison sentences for anyone caught stealing ZESA cables or siphoning off transformer oil (you get a lot more years in jail for doing this than for murder).

Not surprisingly, the oil-for-chips story has upset a few parents. "I am a father of three; it disheartens me to think that each time my kids get into town they seek those chips. Imagine how many litres of transformer oil my kids have swallowed through these fast foods," wrote one man in today's paper.

hallucinating

It's some kind of outdoor function. I think I can see a marquee. I know I have heels on: I feel unsteady as I walk. He -- the Father of the Nation, His Excellency -- is guest of honour.

We're in a crowd. Somehow my child gets pushed to the front and, too far away for me to do anything about it, he's being introduced. "What's your name?" I manage to lipread. I see my boy answering in his clear voice. H.E is smiling paternally. G is in florals next to him. She bends down to catch my son's words.

I manage to push my way -- politely -- through the crowd. H. E and The First Lady are chatting happily. Then I realise G. is talking in Italian.

I ask her (since I'm right next to her and it would be impolite not to): "Dov'e ha (slight hesitation: do I use the formal Lei rather than tu and if I do, what's the verb ending? ) imparato l'italiano?" Where did you learn Italian?

"You speak it too?" G is delighted. She turns her back on the rest of the crowd. We walk off together chatting, our heels sinking into the grass in time with each other. She's cool, I think. I was so wrong about her. Why, I could actually be friends with this woman.

"Oh," she says nonchalantly. "I learnt it when I was cleaning toilets in --" I don't catch the name of the Italian city but I'm too embarrassed to ask, especially as I have to confess I learnt my Italian at university. Poor G, I think. I'm being sincere. She only got a chance to go to secretarial college. Parents didn't send her to university. So typical of Zimbabwean parents' attitudes to girls a few years back, whether they were black or white.

"What does your husband do?" G asks. In a friendly manner. I gulp. "Just...you know, bits of NGO work," I say. One shouldn't lie to a New Best Friend. G doesn't seem 'phased. I can't really ask her what her husband does. We chat a bit more. Croissants are handed round.

And then I wake up. It's Saturday morning. A cold cup of Tanganda tea sits by the bed. The power's on. Nothing has changed.

It was a good dream, while it lasted.