tracking down the 30-something lady

"It's you, isn't it?" I can't hide the triumph in my voice. "You are the 30-something Lady!"

I've been looking for this writer for months. She writes a column in the local paper called Diary of a 30-something Lady. I know I'm not the only one who looks eagerly for the tell-tale red heart on the leisure pages: other readers text in advice and comments to Zimbabwe's Bridget Jones. ("Diary of a 30-something needs more sugar in it:" someone suggested last month).

Through the last years of Zimbabwe's crisis, she's written faithfully about what it means to survive as a professional 30-something singleton when your salary doesn't arrive in the bank at the end of the month and when the power keeps getting cut (but the bills keep going up). She writes about dress dilemmas, her love of shopping, the problems of styling her hair, weekends away in the Vumba mountains, about watching her married friends with kids ("I would just like to have lunch one day with my friend without the kids or the maid or relatives tagging along. Now every conversation is interrupted by small voices,") She writes about her men dilemmas -- Mr Gorgeous, Mr IT, Mr Old Mutare, Stan: which should she marry -- and dealing with prospective mothers-in-law who are intensely suspicious of her (why isn't she married and yet she's past 30?). She observes friends who've got into relationship messes: her Small House friend (who's dating a married man), her friend who's HIV-positive -- and talks about the refuge of church on Sundays. Her column's a refreshing lively look at life in Zimbabwe's vibrant, never-cowed middle-classes, struggling to better themselves instead of crumbling in despair.

And it's that struggle that helped me to find her. She writes anonymously --"90 percent of it is true," she tells me now, standing on the steps of the church-building. "Ten percent isn't. I don't want to get sued."

I've had my suspicions for a while. I'd noticed that a column on dress sense that appears in the paper was similarly well-written (though prescriptive rather than descriptive). I'd wondered if it was the same woman, Ann R. But how to prove it? Then the author of the dress column was interviewed by an English lit. teacher who publishes study guide-pieces on Animal Farm in the paper. In that piece, Ann R revealed she was "setting up a coffee shop." I cut out the interview, and asked around for new coffee shops in town. No-one seemed to know anything. There were still three cafes"up-town" -- and goodness knows the ladies-who-lunch would have surely have heard of a new one. Meantime, the 30-something Lady had spoken of her new coffee shop, and her plans to take time off from work to get the business off the ground. Curiouser and curiouser...or maybe closer and closer. I put a book I thought she'd like into my car: The Dress Doctor, by Bessie Head (an autobiography of a dresser-to-the-(film)-stars) and drove around with its plastic cover glinting at me on the passenger seat for a few days. Then I took my child to his sports club, organised by enthusiastic 20-somethings at a local church on Wednesday afternoons. Normally I drop him at the door but today, I had to pay. I walked inside... and found a new coffee shop, the inside draped in vibrant blue. And there, inside, was a girl (30-something, definitely) wearing bouncy orange tear-drop ear-rings and the kind of wedge shoes that befit a fashion critic. I felt like I was meeting a friend.

"You're not supposed to know it's me," she laughs. "But people are guessing."

Monday morning

"Do you read the Herald?" the man shouts at me as I unlock my car door.

I've staggered back in the heat -- it's only 9.30 but it's already unbearable -- with a shopping basket from OK supermarket (OK is the best performing counter on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, says the Herald when I read it later), plus the newspapers tucked under my arm.

The Herald is the only paper visible.

"Yes," I shoot back. "Well - sometimes." Slight lie (white lie) but if I admitted I had to buy the Herald everyday for work reasons, there'd be more raised eyebrows. As it is, it's just the why-on-earth-would-a-white-housewife-read-the-government-paper-that-costs-a-whole-dollar question.

"What about NewsDay?" NewsDay is South Africa-based media mogul Trevor Ncube's baby (welcomed, I see today also in the Herald, by info minister Webster Shamu).

"That - " I laugh. I know what the required answer is. "Yes, I read it everyday."

dog's life

"Can I ask you something?" The security guard in Hussein's Clothing (and flashsticks and DVD players and blankets) waits politely for an answer.

"Yes?" I brace myself. Usually it's a request for work.

"What project do you work on?" I look at him blankly for a second.

"I mean, I know you work on a project somewhere. What is it?"

Oh. He has mistaken me for an NGO worker. No wonder: some locals think whites fall into two stereotyped categories: a) wicked white farmers (or to be pitied, depending on which side you're on) or b) rich NGO workers.

"I don't have a project," I say.

He waits. And then I say: "Actually, I'm writing a book." Which is true, though I do do other things.

"A storybook," I quickly add, just in case he thinks I'm writing about Zimbabwe. Not so long ago, that was a crime punishable not quite by death, but certainly by imprisonment.

"What's it called?" I'm stumped. I've written 180 pages for the latest version, but I still don't have a title. Or rather, the title changes by the week. I need to tell him something though, to bolster my story.

"A Dog's Life," I say, thinking fast. (There is a dog in it) The guard nods, satisfied.

I just hope I haven't jinxed my plot now.

the (forty)seven virgins

There are only 47 surgeons left in Zimbabwe, a newspaper reports, quoting the local college of surgeons.

I decide to put a quick 'phone call through to a local specialist to see if he'll comment.

"Only 47 what left in Zimbabwe?" queries Dr G.

"47 surgeons, so they're saying. Isn't this evidence of how bad things have got here?" My voice tails off. Maybe 47 isn't such a bad number after all. Maybe there were only 49 to start off with. Maybe I don't have the slightest clue what I'm talking about.

"47 what?" he repeats. 'Phone connectivity is notoriously bad in Zimbabwe: today's it's even worse than normal.

"Oh, surgeons." He sounds relieved. "I thought you were asking me to confirm there were only 47 virgins left in the country."

exhibition

There are muddied (or are they bloodied?) toothpaste tubes, suspended on pieces of cotton against a swirling river scene.

"What do you think of this picture?" a gallery-goer asks.

"Erm....well, the colours are strong," I say. Actually, the picture -- titled Flesh and Souls -- is disturbing in a Dantean kind of way (which it's probably meant to be). The toothpaste tubes are suicides, I think. Is this supposed to be a reflection of Zimbabwe's plight?

I'm at the opening of an exhibition at the National Gallery (and no, it's not one of two exhibitions shut down by police in Harare and Bulawayo last week). Over samoosas, I meet the provincial director of Zimbabwe's National Arts Council.

"You see, the reason why I'm so pleased with this exhibition is that we went out to the people to get these exhibits," he says.

"It's not like HIFA," the annual Harare International Festival of the Arts. HIFA is a glitzy well-run show with international artistes, musicians, actors and -- so disgruntled locals say -- not many Zimbabweans.

"Our artists actually have to apply to be in HIFA," says the NAC man. "But WE go out to find the artists. Some of them are from really remote places."

It sounds like a reasonable argument, albeit one I've heard before from government people. The thing is though, the gallery's directors have just admitted privately that they couldn't find any new paintings for this exhibition. No-one in the rural areas "has money for paint," I've been told.

So the director -- young, dynamic Elizabeth -- had to 'phone Harare and get paintings hurriedly couriered up to Mutare. So much for fostering local talent.

mother TV

A blank TV face can reveal all sorts of things.

Back in the farm days, my father-in-law had just invested in a sewing machine to stitch together the tobacco bags. It saved a good deal of time and work so he was pleased with his purchase. It'd only been used for a day when it disappeared. The farm manager hit on a plan: he'd go to consult Mai TV (Television's mother) in the Nyanga mountains. Mai TV could recover stolen goods, so the rumour went -- without moving a step from her door. True to her name, Mai TV had a TV in her shack, a turned-off TV with a blank face. The manager explained the problem. Mai TV looked into the dark face of the TV for a while. "You'll get it back tomorrow," she said. She gave the manager strict instructions on which route to take from Nyanga to go home if they wanted to get the machine back: definitely not the way they'd come but via Rusape. The manager did as he was told. Hey presto, the next morning the machine turned up, lying on the sandy path between the workers' compound and the tobacco shed.

"That's nothing," said my father-in-law's friend, now also an ex-farmer. He called in a n'anga (witchdoctor) when some of his property went missing. He had his suspicions among his workers but couldn't pin them on anybody. The n'anga lined all the employees up by the farm security fence and asked for a chicken. A chicken was brought. "You pass the chicken along the line," he ordered. "When the chicken gets to the guilty one, it will die." The chicken was solemnly passed from worker to worker. When it got to the cook, it died in his hands. "He was the one I thought was guilty," the friend said. The n'anga appeared to have proved it.

truth (or as near to it as you can get)

"But," he asks earnestly. "What happens when you can't say what you want to say? Take sanctions, for example."

"We have to say that we cannot get these things (car parts, electrical components, books) because of the sanctions."

I gulp. This wasn't the question I was expecting to get asked here. I'm leading a media training workshop at an NGO in a Mutare township. The group's leaders have been told the local paper would be willing to take articles they've written on their projects (saves the paper sending out a reporter). They want to know how to write better.

I've come with a few hastily-crafted flip-sheets, emphasising things like clarity, short sentences, how important it is to know the point of your article before you sit down and write it, and how to use colour. Political niceties, though: that wasn't part of my brief.

"Well," I say. "Maybe in countries like Zimbabwe, there are things you can't say. But you can still stick to your truth." Truth, after all, is what we're all striving for: unless you write for the state, of course -- and that's who these poor guys will be selling to.

Another participant jumps in: "We can say there is no foreign currency to buy these things."

"Exactly. And you leave it at that." You hope you get intelligent readers (which, in a country with the second highest literacy rate in Africa, should be possible) who fill in the gaps themselves.

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.

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...

diary of a 30-something

Zimbabwe has its own Bridget Jones. She writes in the Manica Post newpaper every Friday. Unlike Helen Fielding, she doesn't sign her column. But this chocolate-loving 30-something's dilemmas are just as pressing.

Ms 30-something, a top-level executive who comes complete with secretary, is torn between two men: Mr IT, who works in the IT section of her company and Mr Old Mutare, who comes from Old Mutare*, is from an apparently politically-powerful family (government, possibly though it's never spelled out) and has money (and a farm). Lots of money. When he and Ms 30-something quarrel, he sends her a "roomful" of flowers. The memory of that has her a weeny-bit scornful when Mr IT -- to whom she finally succumbed a couple of weeks ago -- sends her a bouquet of flowers by dint of an apology. An apology what for, you may ask, only a fortnight into a relationship? Mr IT has made the mistake of refusing to eat chez Ms 30-something (he prefers restaurants every night, which she concedes could be a problem if she married him: how would they save?). He says it's because she might put mupfahwira (love potions) in his supper so he'll never leave.

Ms 30-something has her fair share of drama. She was in a car crash earlier this year, was horrified when taken to a rural hospital (where she was left groaning on a stretcher) and relieved when her church in Harare (Ms 30-something goes to one of the trendy new monied churches the well-connected love to be seen at) sends money for her to be transferred to the capital. She has a lesbian friend who's recently given up on women and is engaged to a man old enough to be her father, and she has a Small House friend. Small House is the mistress of a man with several wives already, but he pays her rent and hairdressing bill and gives her money for groceries. Small House -- who recently lost one of the twins she was carrying -- tells Ms 30-something the secret to keeping someone else's husband: "She tries her level best not to behave like a wife. She plays her cards right, depending on the situation. If he needs a listener, she listens: if he needs an encourager, she encourages, if he needs a nurse, a massage, a bath...whatever it is, she gives it freely, without complaining..."

*the eastern city of Mutare was "moved" over Christmas Pass at the turn of the last century. According to old accounts, houses were dismantled and transported by wagon across the mountain range. Hence Old Mutare (where there's a mission, a school and a university) and Mutare proper, today's diamond-riddled city.

radio ga ga

Our four year old has been brought up to the sound of the ZBC news jingle ("news on the hour, every hour"). Now he's getting tired of it.

"Switch that radio off," he says when we sit down for whatever it is I've mustered up for lunch (toast but no spread yesterday). "All they say is Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe. It's so boring."

"I want to eat my lunch peacefully."

So do we, boy, so do we.