Grief

"Khumbulani has phoned," she says. "The police know who the tsotsis are."

When I first saw her after Christmas, her face was hollow, her cheeks sunken. Grief has aged her: grief, and horror too. Her sister Sekai, an energetic mother-of-two was murdered.

Sekai was managing a general store well off the beaten track in Nyanga, eastern Zimbabwe. I have not seen the store but I imagine what it is like: the long wooden counter, and behind it, bottles of cooking oil, bars of soap, bags of kapenta. Not a lot of choice but the basics, enough to keep a family that grows its own maize and vegetables going.

Sekai slept at her workplace in a room off the back the store. The tsotsis came at 10 pm on the Saturday night after New Year. Sekai heard them truck arrive. She tried to lock herself in. The tsotsis blocked the door. "Do not close it," they told her (the male worker at the bottle store heard this conversation and recounted it to police). "We want the money." "There is no money," Sekai said. But the tsotsis, their heads tied in plastic shopping bags so that she couldn't identify them, had been watching. The owner of the store had not collected the money that night. "Give us the money." Sekai tried to pull out her cellphone. That's when they stabbed her in the chest. She staggered away, screaming. "You've killed me, you've killed me." One of them pulled out a pistol.

Her sons found her by the step just outside the store.

Now what Sekai's sister is telling me is this: that the tsotsis may have disguised their heads with OK bags but Sekai's male co-worker recognised the pair of trousers that one of them was wearing. In the village, clothes are not a commodity endlessly renewed as they might be in the towns which have a market. Here, clothes have to last several seasons, if not years. A pair of trousers is as recognisable in some cases as a person's face.

"The police beat that man. He said: Do you want to kill me? And the police officer said: Yes, I will kill you because you killed Mai Khumbulani. So then the tsotsi cried: OK. I will talk."

There is no relish on her face as she says this. Only pain.

The attacker is from the village. He says it was not him who stabbed Sekai. That was his friend from Rusape, a two hour-drive away. The one who owned the truck. The police have gone to find him.

security

The officer follows me beyond the battered wire fence of the station. "Do you know anyone who is interested in machines?"

Machines?

"I am only a policeman because of security," he says. His black boots are well-shined, unlike (I noticed earlier) his superior's. He is 24, he says. I imagine his mother ironed his grey shirt that morning. "There were white people coming to my place to look at my machines. They said I was an MDC supporter. It was better for me to join.

"But really, it is not what I want to do."

His eyes light up when he talks about his inventions. Machines for grinding nuts, machines for irrigation. What he wants to do is make something big. Like Daniel Shumba's helicopter in Harare (which hasn't taken off -- yet).

I feel old standing next to him and his eagerness -- old and aware people are watching. How many other kids, brimming with potential, joined the force "because of security"?

a second time

It happens a second time.
This time we have been stopped at a police roadblock, one of many on the main highway between the capital Harare and Mutare.
A policeman, rotund in his winter fluorescents, peers in through the driver's window. "Where is the Daddy?" he asks my husband.
"The Daddy?" This time it's my husband who is stumped. "My father is back at home."
The officer considers us. The thought of a fine keeps my lips clamped together like wheel locks.
"Well, look after the Mother," he says, before waving us on.
"He thought you were my son!" I explode, as soon as the driver's window is safely sealed. I round on my husband. "Can't you stop looking 16?"
"I don't look 16," says he. A trifle too innocently for my liking.
I study his side profile. Not the hint of a wrinkle. I suspect he may have been secretly smoothing on my imported-at-great-expense sun cream. Which clearly works better on him than it ever has on me.
"You do," I say crossly. "17, max."
"Oh." Is that all he can say? When his longsuffering wife -- who he dragged across continents from a carefree existence in Paris to Africa 10 years ago -- gets mistaken for his mother?
My husband ponders for a minute or two.
"Maybe you should dye your hair red," he says finally as pyramids of tomatoes piled high in Kango dishes flash past us near the town of Rusape. "You know you’ve always wanted to."
I choose to remain silent.

wedding fever

-- The (white) Zimbabwean version: 120 guests (OK, so not 2,000). Booked into Mana Pools, a rapidly-regaining-in-popularity tourist resort in western Zimbabwe for the only free weekend in weeks. Camping for three nights. The bride's parents must provide food -- and loo-roll -- for all of them during that time. Wedding at sunrise (so coffee and rusks first) on the river (Zambezi) banks. ( Slight possible problem: last time crocodiles were feasting on a just-dead hippo. Do you really want that as background for your vows?). Ablution blocks seriously not up to scratch: no plugs, no toilet seats, no shower roses (Bride's father has had to redo the lot at his own expense, but National Parks and Wildlife Authority who run the place won't give him a discount). Another problem: the monkeys. They've been fed by ignorant tourists so now they're unafraid and vicious. The bride's mother is currently working on a huge gauze creation, not -- as you might imagine -- for her daughter's veil, but to slip over the thatched gazebo that's housing the food to keep the monkeys out (a kind of giant black see-through four-poster thing). Caterers -- for caterers there are a plenty -- want 1,000 US just to get themselves from Harare to Mana Pools. Another possible problem: water levels. Lake Kariba is spilling. If they open the floodgates (as they did in Jan/Feb), the bit of Mana the wedding's being held at will be.. wait for it... underwater. "I'd have put my foot down," sniffs my mother-in-law.

-- A prospective groom legged it from the wedding ceremony late last month when he spied his current wife in the congregation. Wife Mercy Ncube had come to watch Inspector Resistant Ncube wed his lover Sergeant Faith Kaseke in Kuwadzana township in April. When Resistant spotted Mercy he pushed aside his best man, "panicked and bolted out of the venue." She'd been tipped off by -- amazingly -- his relatives. Resistant Ncube is the editor of the police magazine The Outpost.

text message

SIMPLY TO THANK U FOR OUR FRIENDSHIP. I CAN ONLY CHERISH TH HOPE THAT WE'LL BOTH ENJOY OUR UNION AND'LL GROW STRONGER WITH TIME. MAY GOD BLESS U.

It's Fish's choice of the word union that I'm a tiny bit worried about. I'm also aware that he may be misusing it, flowering up his language to impress me. I got an email today - in fact it came through on the email address I share with my husband -- from a younger man I've helped on the odd occasion with article-writing skills: "I thought you'd dumped me", he said.

Fortunately my husband is an understanding man....

big fish

The prison officer greets me as he walks past. Stops. "I've seen you before," he says. "Last year. I work at the remand prison."

Does he mean when B was being held there? I'm cautious. "I want to be your friend," the says. He's in his -- what -- late 30s? Early 40s? "If it's convenient."

There are several things this could mean:

1) he -- his name is Fish -- is CIO, has recognised me, wants to watch me.
2) he is interested in not just friendship, eager to find out whether some of the things they say about white women (more accessible, let's put it) are true
3) he wants to show he is friendly to whites. Often when the vitriol's at its worst, people in the streets go out of their way to appear genuinely friendly, I've noticed. Like they're trying to prove they don't think like the president says they should.

"Come into the shade to swap phone numbers," he says. We stand by the telephone offices. I keep him talking for a few minutes, stressing the words "in-laws" and "child" in case it's number 2.

.

not the marrying kind

"Talking about not being married --" he says. "I've got a story to tell you."

We're sitting on our oil-lamp lit verandah, crickets chirping in the blackness. He is a Zimbabwean academic, now living in the diaspora. He's come back for the Christmas holidays to visit his frail mother, 83, who -- all credit to her -- is just finishing her third book.

"I've got this colleague" -- he says. The colleague's interested in things military. When our friend sees a pair of rusted small cannon sitting in the long grass outside an apparently deserted storeroom he pulls out his camera.

A few minutes later a soldier taps him on the shoulder. "My boss would like to see you."

A six-hour ordeal begins. He's taken to the police station, then to the back offices. Why did he take a picture? How did he know that building he photographed was a disused barracks? (He didn't. My husband did. He can remember being taken there in the back of the family station wagon during the war days when his parents dined in the officers' mess. There was a waiter -- Goodson, was it? or Warrior? -- who brought cold drinks out to the boys in the night) How do the CIO (because it's CIO interviewing him now) know he wasn't trying to make a map? A map to be used for espionage purposes?

They confiscate the camera, want a print-out of the photos. Just one problem: the police (of course) have no printer. So officers accompany our friend to the market square where the outdoor photographers roam, cameras in hand. Yes, one of them can print out what the police need. The photographer disappears with the precious memory card. He returns later with the photos. It's only when the police examine the prints that they realise these are not the right ones . A Shona couple beam, resplendent in wedding attire, at the officers from Kodak paper.

We sip our coffee.

"You forget there are eyes everywhere," I murmur. I wonder again about that white car that I've seen parked outside our drive the last few nights, lights off. Roadside lovers? Probably. But in Zimbabwe, the fear is never far. The car is there tonight.

"But what I wanted to say -- " He's remarkably calm about this. That's even though the military police called at his mother's cottage earlier in the day "for fellowship purposes. To check you are alright" (ie where you said you'd be and not reporting to your colonial masters) -- "The reason why it took so long with those eight people questioning me, is that they couldn't believe I wasn't married."

He's in his 50s, our friend, a steady girlfriend (plus cat) waiting for him back home.
.
"What, not married? But why?" they kept saying. "No children?" It's unthinkable, a disgrace, for a Shona male to die childless. In the past, you could be buried with a rat on your back if you had no kids.

"What about children outside?" the CIO persisted. "Ok, so not inside marriage, but outside then?"

greenshirts

"There are nine roadblocks on the way to Harare," my mother-in-law warns. "Drive slowly."

The police are on a fund-raising spree, it seems. Spot fines for speeding (and a host of other infractions). That would be good if it curbed Zimbabwe's road chaos. Road accidents are -- state media says -- the second main cause of death here.

We drive carefully, marvelling at the number of flashy, non-number plated cars happily steaming past us. If we're going at just under 120 km per hour -- the legal limit -- what speed must they be going at? There are suspicions (who knows whether they're justified?) that the drivers being targeted are mainly from one racial group.

We watch for police round every bend, every kopje, our hearts leaping every time we see a flash of green. The police wear luminous lime green tank-tops. And then we realise that that particular shade of green is obviously this year's hot colour. Women are wearing it: stretchy T-shirts, lime-green jumpers. Men sport tailored lime-green shirts (possibly Van Heusen, but probably Mbare flea market).

The thing is, you don't know for sure the lime green-wearers are not police until you get near them.

The journey takes us half an hour longer than normal.

new neighbour

The house across the road has been empty for a couple of weeks. We thought we saw the owners moving mattresses and a stove out on a flat-bed truck. They did not come to say goodbye.

"I heard shouting late last night," our housekeeper says, wiping down the kitchen cupboards. "It was midnight. Screaming and screaming, like somebody had caught a tsotsi." Tsotsi means thief or criminal in the local Shona language.

I saw a small white sign on the gate opposite as I drove out this morning. ZRP, it says: Zimbabwe Republic Police.

poundnote farm

The policemen flag us down not far from Penhalonga. There are three of them

"Tell them to go in the back," I hiss. Because while I'm not averse to giving lifts -- and policemen can be a very good source of quotes -- this is a quiet Sunday afternoon, the men are very obviously armed and my child is in the back seat.

He ushers them into the back of the truck. Two women jump in too. Both elderly, doeks on, struggling with suitcases. They want to go to Muchena communal lands. Fine.

On our right is what was Pound Note farm. It was where the tallest tree in Rhodesia stood, a eucalyptus. The tree was depicted on a pound note, hence the name of the farm. I think about farms as we drive along and about the gently-spoken woman with the quavery voice I spoke to this week. She and her husband have already given away 92 percent of their farm. The last 8 percent is threatened by a US citizen somehow linked to the prime minister. The "niece's" sister came to the farm in April, a handbag over one arm, a badza (hoe) in the other. She started digging daintily through the already-planted tomatoes. "Did your husband really call that woman a cold, stupid kaffir?" I have to ask the farmer's wife. Later she sends me a text message. "Thank you. These days justice seems so elusive."

There's a voice from the back seat. Someone's reading my thoughts. "Mum, how do you get a farm?" "Why?""I want one."

"You have to work very hard and then you can buy one," I say. "But best not to buy one in Zimbabwe."

"Why?" Careful now. "Because you can't always keep it."

My five-year old never saw his grandfather's farm. We were married on it, but the farm was taken over eight months later. My father-in-law went back there once. There was human excrement in some of the rooms. Someone had scooped out my sister-in-law's face cream from the bathroom cabinet, which made her very indignant.

"Why can't you keep it?" "Because sometimes the government wants it," I say. "But how has Z's papa still got his farm?" Some questions don't have answers.

We're in Muchena communal lands. The women want to get out. The policemen don't. We turn off the main road. There's not another car in sight, nor a pedestrian. I start to get edgy. There are too many stories of fake - or corrupted -- policemen in the Herald and on our daily email. Two policemen are currently on trial for bank robbery. In court last week, they complained they were being victimised for being in possession of 120,000 US. They were merely "enterprising," the cops maintained. Their monthly salary is 100 US. It wasn't clear from the Herald report if the magistrate had actually got round to asking them how they got the 120,000 if they didn't get it from Kingdom Bank. (He may not have done. Last month the Herald carried an obit for a 35-year-old Harare magistrate who was still studying for his law degree at the University of Zimbabwe)

"Just turn the car round," I say. "Let's get back onto the main road."

There's a tap on the back window. They want us to stop. "I'll get into the driving seat, shall I?" I say, boots at the ready. In the event, the police get out, grasping their guns. They back away. I slide, relieved, over to the passenger seat. Later, on our way back from the dam we see them, lolling in the long grass near the Rhodesian ginger.

"Mum, does the government take houses as well?"

on the road

At a roadblock near Macheke: (we have quickly hidden our one remaining apple and ginger biscuit in the glove compartment as police v. likely to ask for "Christmas box")

Policeman (absurdly young, 19? 20?)"Where are you coming from?"
Us: "Harare."
Policeman (smirking): "Oh, the City of Sewerage."

At a roadblock near Rusape:
Policeman (to me): So how is my mother?
Me (bristling even though I know it's the respectful Shona way of addressing any older woman/woman with a child's seat in the back): OK, thankyou.

It's not the my that bothers me. Not at all. It's the mother. Somehow, in a skip and a jump from white-iced Sacre Coeur, I have turned from a mademoiselle to a middle-aged matron with possible heart problems.