Market

Sakubva, four o'clock.
The very best time of day. The worst of the heat is past. There's a slight breeze. You can finally breathe.
Down the street beyond the stalls and the sea of secondhand shoes that lie in front of them, the purple jacaranda trees sway.
I am looking for a bag for my 11-year-old son. A sports' bag, the sort he can fill with things for a weekend.
People brush past me. There are French fries for sale, wrapped in cellophane. Over there in a bucket, dried fish, startlingly yellow on one side.
I stop to consider some shorts in a soft khaki material. Nice quality. Probably too small for him though.
I come to the used clothes market here often enough for some vendors to know me by the name of my first child. They greet me now: Mai Given, Mai Brighton.
A woman swings her toddler off her back and stands next to me. The child stares at me, wide-eyed. I greet him in Shona. His mother smiles.
I hold up a green-patterned blouse against myself, wondering what other things in my wardrobe it will go with.
She does the same. We catch each other's eyes and laugh.
At the end of this line of market stalls, an elderly storeholder and his friend tuck into an afternoon snack: a cake and tea.

"Come, join us," he jokes. "Do you drink tea like this?"

"Of course."

There is something in his eyes that makes me think suddenly of my father, half a world away.
He urges me to look through his T-shirts, 2 US for the ones on coat-hangers, one if they're at ground-level, unfolded. I find a light brown T-shirt, hardly worn, for my son.
I pack it into my already-bulging bag and promise to come back soon.
I am a foreigner in Zimbabwe. I was not born here. I may never have the right to call this place home.

And yet...so often I am happy. Just to be here.

Back to school

I have left school shopping to the very last minute, as usual. I dive into a stationery shop. Ten minutes, that's all I've got. Pens, rulers (those brittle plastic ones that will shatter in days), rubbers (There are no rubbers. Sold out. Help. Will have to raid his father's pen tin), gluesticks (ditto). Three other customers are picking up stacks of exercise books and rolls of plastic book covering. They're together, I realise. Teachers, I think. "Are you shopping for your school?" I ask one of them at the counter. The man who is overseeing the purchases, checking items against a list, replies: "Our children are going to be educated. Very educated." He smiles, but in a grim way. "But there are no jobs in Zimbabwe. We are teaching these children for what?"

community

"Amai Tinashe?" The shelf-stacker (milk section) positively runs across the store. "It's your baby?" She stretches out her arms to hug me.

'The baby' is swaddled slug-like in fluffy blankets, Shona-style. She's not yet strapped on my back, though I haven't ruled out doing that completely. It's just I don't want to have to bounce her on my back in the middle of the night when she won't sleep.

"What did you call her?" And I tell her, slightly embarrassed we didn't use a Shona name again.

The vegetable weigh-er -- not my favourite one, who has a battered Old Testament that he reads between polishing tomatoes and parcelling out lychees -- breaks into a smile.

"It's a girl? I will be your son-in-law one day."

It rained this morning. I wondered whether it was wise to take the baby out. But it's five weeks since I set foot in a shop, and we only needed to go to two. Now, under the glaring fluorescent lights, I'm beginning to understand what community means. And how, half a world away from the community I grew up in, I have somehow tumbled into another one, just as warm, just as familiar.

"Like me," approves the till-supervisor. She has strolled over in her stilettos to take a look. "I have one girl, one boy. Now I am finished."

I am 'finished' too. At least that's what my husband says.

will you wash my socks (or worse)?

The test of real love in Zimbabwe is...whether you'll wash his underwear. The recent case of a 30-something man who left his young wife for a 55 year old in Zimbabwe has got tongues wagging. Apparently the drawcard was that the 55 year old shebeen queen knew how to treat her man AND she washed his underwear. (By hand, it's understood). Which the liberated 20-something lady refused to. It's an absolute no-no to let your maid wash your underwear (or your husband's): in fact, press reports have speculated on the number of career women who've lost their husbands to their maids simply because the maids washed the man's underwear. Quite how this works in post-shortage Zimbabwe -- where you can buy washing machines in OK supermarkets (power to the people) -- is unclear. Though, come to think of it, the number of people I know who actually own a machine (a snip at 700 US..not if you're earning <200 per month) is tiny.

older than you look

This is to keep me humble.

Supermarket scene. Have dragged husband so we can do a whole-week shop for once, instead of me trawling the store every morning with my basket. The shop assistants - who know me well - watch quizzically as I take a big red trolley and he pushes.

I arrive late to the till after foraging for raisins. My husband is already unpacking. This is always the worst part. We shop in OK (Where Everyone's a Winner). Traditionally whites don't, preferring the more upmarket Spar or - at the very least -- TM. A shopping trolley total of 50 US raises eyebrows here and lots of silent studying from the rest of the till queue (and requests for us to pay for their tea-leaves/bread/sugar too). Even though we are far from the only shoppers in the store with a trolley.

The security guard smiles at me as I pack.

"Amai," he says. "Is that your boy? Your son?"

"Son?!" I manage to keep my voice down. "He's my husband."

Now what does that mean?

pillow talk

It's the very last pillow in the shop. At US 4, I think it is a real bargain. I stand in line at this shabby zhing-zhong shop, near the fuchsia-pink dustpans and the plastic towel hooks, waiting to pay. I've been looking for pillows for ages. These days my son uses a cushion sheathed in a cotton case, his head dangerously wobbling off the corner when I check him late at night. "You're only taking one?" the cashier wants to know. This isn't a shop many (any?) whites patronise, cue all sorts of attention since I walked in. "There aren't any others," I say innocently. "It doesn't matter: I'll bring my own," he says. He looks at me slyly to see how I'll take it. After 10 years in Zimbabwe and four in libertine Paris, I'm still pathetic when it comes to being provoked. "I don't think my husband will be too happy," I squeak -- and remember all the times I vowed never to hide behind a man.

sadness of a seven-dollar toothbrush

The outrage ripples down the line of shoppers. Seven dollars for a single toothbrush? I had been idly watching the man, standing three ahead of me at the till, for some time. He is well-dressed, in a suit. He chatted politely to the man behind him, whose small daughter clutched a bottle of orange juice. She said something to her father -- the way children do about people they think they recognise -- and he waited a second before turning to glance at me. We look furtively in each other's shopping baskets. Do people do this in other countries, I wonder? Or is it a reflex born of the days when there was so little to buy that you didn't even need a basket, when you could walk to the till clutching your "leaves" (bundle of rape) and your soya mince? My basket -- for the record -- has nothing special in it: pilchards, cucumber, some biltong. No more, no less than most of the people standing in this lower-end supermarket, enjoying the buzz of payday. This city has its rhythms and the the 23/24/25 of each month are the 'high' days, when crowds sit in the banking halls to wait for the government to pay its civil servants. Then they flock to the supermarket. Earlier, I watched a boy a bit older than mine check a shopping receipt excitedly for his mother, who was wearing the turquoise blue uniform of a senior nurse. She watched him fondly for a second, in the private way that mothers do. What supper was she cooking for him tonight, I wondered? The suited man is only buying a toothbrush. I hear him talking to the cashier -- quietly first. She calls a supervisor. The supervisor confirms. Yes, the toothbrush costs seven dollars. It is a plain toothbrush, the sort that gets sent to me in parcels. Worth about 90 pence, I reckon. "No," he says and he looks at the rest of us for confirmation. "I just paid my rent." "You can keep your toothbrush!" he says and he stalks off. At the opposite end of the spectrum: a friend of the family who's charging monied expats -- and locals -- in Harare 30 dollars per flower-arranging lesson. That's without the flowers: she goes to the 'student's' house to give a guided tour of the garden to show which flowers said student can pick. So many people want to sign up that she has a waiting list.

leaving sale

"I think this year's going to be bad," she says as her children play on the rug. End of the afternoon. The sun dapples on the freshly-cut grass. Kids swing on the home climbing frame to the chink of wine glasses. Idyllic, non? "You know, that man you told to clear out of the playground M?" She turns to a friend. He was selling pirated DVDs inside the walls of a local playgroup. M, a mother of two, had asked him to move. "He said, you're racist. He said he's a war veteran - " "Rubbish --" says M, who's hosting a leaving sale (crockery, tired baby towels, crocheted blankets, braziers: how many of these sales have I attended willingly or unwillingly in the last 10 years?) -- "He's not old enough." "But that's what he said," she insists. "And he said: just wait for the elections. We're going to sort you whites out." It's there so often on both sides, that hatred, so near the surface, waiting for the trigger.

splodge

I linger by a shop window filled with fluorescent Smartie-coloured shoes, sandals, flip-flop things with satin roses on. Sometimes I'm brought by a standstill by visions of plenty here. The memory of --well, nothing -- is still fresh.

The woman leans against me conspiratorially."You've got a mark on the back of your skirt."

I whip round. It's true, some sort of a damp-looking splodge. "Thanks for telling me," I say but I'm mortified: how many other passers-by have seen it? I grasp my basket and -- with my free hand -- try to manoevre a box of Cornflakes round my behind. It's a fair walk back to the car (past the parked black Mercedes with the Zimbabwe flag flying and the armed riot policeman in the back and the two businessmen in black suits who may or may not be visiting white businesses today as the indigenisation drive hots up: that's what they've been doing for the past week in this town) and the Cornflakes box is bulky and yellow and I'm not sure if I'm actually drawing attention to myself but what else am I supposed to do? How do other people manage or do they never get splodges? Will I be known forever more as the white-woman-with-the-splodge-on-the-back-of-her-dress?

Back in the car, I examine my skirt. The splodge I trace to the inside of my dress. And yes, it is my son's glow putty - the remnants of -- that didn't come off in the wash. You buy eggs of the plasticine-like stuff in OK supermarkets. It looks worse than it actually is.

But I'm glad that she stretched across the gap and told me.

Ngaa and the hamster

Ngaa screams when he sees the hamster.

My son misunderstands, tries to put the scrabbling thing on the child's leg. Which only leads to more terror. Sid is two months old, a grey teddy-bear hamster. It's a measure of the improvement in Zimbabwe's economic situation that you can buy teddy-bear hamsters (and toy remote-controlled helicopters and Greek yoghurt and imported Vanish soap powder) in this small eastern border city. There was a time -- was it really just two years ago? -- when the shop shelves were filled with nothing but lone loo-rolls.

Ngaa, 3, writhes in my arms. "He doesn't like it," sister Fadzie says. She's not that enamoured either, but is sufficiently used to Auntie and her family's strange white foibles to remain quiet.

"It was a culture clash," I explain later to Mai C. "I don't think Shona kids have hamsters." (Strictly speaking, that's not true. The posh woman who owns the baby shop and imports Twister wax crayons told me at great length about her 6 year-old son's hamster last month).

"No - " Mai C laughs (and she's the one who read Famous Five to her boys).

"If we see a mouse in the house, we will get a broom to kill it. Just the thought of touching it -"

She shudders.

abducted

My husband's face is white when he finds me, somewhere near the second-hand shoe stall. "Where've you been? You said you'd be back in half an hour," he says.

To be honest, I'd lost track of time. The vendors at the flea market have been opening new bales, tipping out mountains of used clothes onto huge tarpaulins.

"New order," they sing (actually, it's a kind of rap). "New order. Dollar - dollar." US, they add, just in case anyone thought they might get away with using now Zimbabwe dollars.

There's a technique to clothes-hunting on new order days. You pick a corner of the tarpaulin, check your handbag's tucked securely under your arm and you shovel through the fabric nearest to you. Then you fling what you're discarded into the centre of the pile and dig deeper. Another kind of mining, I guess, in diamond country. A tailor has set up shop with an ancient black Singer under an adjacent tarpaulin.

Women sit on the dust beyond the edge of the pile, munching what smells like chicken.

I find a black top with a teardrop back to it and a fitted black jacket from Australia, both for US 1. For 2 US, pyjama bottoms, almost new and a weeny bit too long, for my child, in a pile still flecked with washing powder. The skeleton-printed swimming trunks I've been eyeing I discard, after the vendor suddenly hikes his price to US 3 when he spies a murungu showing interest.

I'm just thinking of shoes when I spy my husband.

"Abducted? Don't be paranoid," I say. "This isn't South Africa." My brother-in-law is terrified to see me walking on my own in the smallish market-town they live in in the Orange Free State. "It happens," he insists.

But then, this morning, I open Zimbabwe's state daily. A women has been abducted in broad daylight from a busy market in Machipisa, Harare. She's bundled into the back of a car with blacked-out windows. One of the abductors stuffs a hanky laced with something into her face so she loses consciousness. She comes to, she tells police after her escape, in a building "filled with human heads."

Police say they believe the building is somewhere near the city centre.

closing

"I just need a break from Zimbabwe," she says with a sigh.

She opened a restaurant in this eastern city nearly two years ago. It was in a beautiful old house: pine floors, teak furniture, a shaded verandah. She specialised in high-quality cuisine: exquisitely-served pancakes with maple syrup imported from Canada (she's Canadian), butternut soup with a hint of spice.

Her food was so good that the US ambassador reportedly dined there on a rare visit to the town. (Wonder what he made of the ZANU-PF headquarters just opposite: were they delivering truckloads of sugar the day of his stopover?)

"I'm closing at the end of the month," she says, casting a glance into my half-empty shopping basket. "I just couldn't break into the market."

Maybe there wasn't enough money in town, I suggest.

There are already two coffee-shops catering for the chattering classes. There's also the violently-red painted concrete Burger Bar and at least two Wimpies for customers wanting to watch the world go by over a Coke. ("Don't order any food here," Shingie whispered when we sat at the BB on a sunny Friday lunch-hour recently. "I got food-poisoning last time.")

"I couldn't break into the cliques," she sighs. "It's Small Town Syndrome. In Harare, there's a buzz. People are out all the time, spending money. Here - "

She shrugs, casts a glance at the wilted carrots and beetroot behind us.

"I learnt my lesson. I guess they'll detain me at Heathrow though, if I arrive on a one-way ticket?"

like it and (l)ump it

Frustrated store-owners in Harare are taking concrete measures against shoplifters who tuck stolen goods between their thighs: constructing 'humps' at store exits to force the thieves to drop their loot. Shoplifting is a growing problem in Zimbabwe, where workers are struggling to survive high prices following the abolition of the local dollar in 2009. Thieves are moving in organised gangs of up to 10, reports the Herald daily: many of them are women wearing long skirts. They take advantage of crowded supermarket aisles to slip goods under their skirts, squeezing it between their legs. The humps -- sometimes no more than simple steps -- are being installed at entrance and exit points to stop women "engaging in the between-the-thighs form of pilfering," says the Herald. "The assumption is that there is no way a person can go over [the hump], lifting one leg and then the other, without letting go of the loot under the skirt."

local shopping basket

Supa is in the supermarket. He sweeps in just ahead of me.

In fact, he stands aside very politely to let me get a basket. He has a big, burly man beside him in a leather jacket -- a bodyguard? Or just a friend?

Supa is Supa Mandiwanzira, the head of the local Affirmative Action Group (AAG).* He's an ex news anchor on the state ZBC News Hour (News Horror, as a Shona journalist we knew used to call it). I guess he left because of pay. The car in the supermarket is gleaming black BMW something-or-other. Nearly minibus sized.

I bet he didn't fill out a parking ticket.

Supa is causing a stir in the aisles of Spar. I manage to get one behind him at the checkout. He flirts with the cashier (who's reduced to giggles), catches my eye too. I engage in a scientific study of his purchases as I clutch my purchases of smelly butcher's offcuts (for the dog) and a pack of apples. Booze, basically. Lots of cans of Hunter's cider (now that's not local) and at least four bottles of what looks like brandy, the imported kind. And mineral water, imported too (now who has the money to buy that?). There are a couple of packets of Lobel's Strawberry Creams. At least they're local. He opens a wallet, wadded with cash (dollars and rands), hands over a 100 dollar note (there's almost no change). I can just see his ID card. He is polite, jovial. The security guards chat with him.

"That was Mr Supa Mandiwanzira," breathes the cashier when it's my turn to pay.

He's obviously a hero.

* I hear him on ZBC Saturday morning, urging white and foreign companies to comply with recently-gazetted indigenisation laws. The former opposition MDC is trying to get the laws toned down to make them more investor-friend (one suggestion is to let third or four generation white Zimbabweans be considered indigenous): Mugabe (and Supa's) ZANU-PF is adamant the law stands.

the colour purple

Purple is the new colour in Zimbabwe. In town today, I lose count of the purple tops I see: sequinned, strapless, spaghetti-ed. All are zhing-zhong and all are new (I know because zhing-zhong loses its bling fairly quickly).

Now that the shops are full again, it seems like everyone's shopping desperately. There are new clothes shops, restaurants (a recent Australia returnee wants to open a kids' party franchise. She's planning on matching the South African motherstore: 3 warehouses and expanding).

How do you square the shopping (most at imported prices) and the oft-repeated complaints about no money? There are a few clues in the paper: an ex-UN chemical weapons inspector who's earning 4,500 US on the side with his two butcheries, teachers in Harare demanding 20 US per child for 'compulsory' extra lessons (a class of 40 would give a tax-free monthly bonus of 800 US, pointed out one letter-writer in the government Sunday Mail paper), even the woman advertising a local church who said her beauty business and her prayers had bought her an 18-roomed mansion in Zimre Park and a Toyota Tundra.

Zimbabweans are famed for their ability to Make a Plan. They did throughout Zimbabwe's decade-long economic crisis: they're still doing it today.

party

"Are you having a party?" the cashier asks.
I'm doing an early-morning dash through TM stores. I've got 20 US to spend on sweets, crisps and cool drink for a once-a-year bash on Saturday for ten kids. My trolley's a good third full of junk food (for the only time in the year).
"Yes," I say. "My son turned six."
There are two youths behind me in the queue, waiting to pay for their sadza-and-stew packed in polystyrene boxes.
"Can we come to the party?" one of them says.
"Sorry," I laugh.
"It's because we're black," he retorts. He pulls his cheek.
"No," I say. "There are black kids coming actually."
"Can my child come then?"
"I'm sorry," I say. "My child doesn't know your child. He's inviting his friends." Shona birthday parties tend to involve the street, the neighbours and the neighbours' friends, though not in the high-income suburbs. Those Shona parties, like white-hosted parties, are invitation-only.
"I know you whites," argues the man. "It's because we're black. You don't want us."
"My child may be white but he has a Shona name," I say. It's not often I come across open animosity these days but incidents like this remind me how deep racial distrust goes, on both sides.
"So, and what does Tinashe mean?" I tell him.
The youths walk off, muttering under their breath. Later, driving home in the car, I wonder what sparked this incident off. Was it the sight of my shopping trolley, with its 20 US worth of sweets? Most probably. Dissatisfaction's gaining ground these days, with low salaries unable to keep pace with high prices. A civil servants' strike is in its third day. It may be poorly followed -- one teacher I spoke to said she couldn't strike because she was effectively being paid 'by the parents' in the form of top-up incentives -- but there's no doubting the disappointment. Legal watchdog Veritas says Zimbabweans blame the unity government: the pro-Mugabe Herald newspaper says they blame...Morgan Tsvangirai, of course

chicken

"I am going to do something very big for you," she says, disappearing behind the sofa. There is no power at Mai D's house. There was none at ours yesterday. Her arthritis is worse.

"There." She comes back clutching something loosely-covered in a plastic bag. It is fat and disturbingly fleshy. A frozen baby?

"A chicken," she says triumphantly. "I told you." I am embarrassed. My gift of bread and jam cannot match a chicken, not in these harsh times. But she insists.

"How?" I say. She begged Mai C for 2 US this morning to buy Brufen -- the local equivalent of Ibuprofen -- for the pain. "It's from that boy. He 'phoned a lady in Damgamvura (township), told her to bring his mother six chickens."

"But you mustn't tell the others. That time I bring bananas for your boy, Mai Simba saw. She said: "Are you selling those bananas?" She shakes her head. "They will all want some."

I nod dutifully. "Sometimes those boys are good," she says proudly. "They will care for their mother. But if those muroora (daughter-in-laws) get involved, I have to zip my mouth."

properly-dressed

It's not your normal way of selling a dress.

"I was looking out for you," Mai Musa says reproachfully. "Why didn't you come?"

I made the mistake a few weeks back of saying we didn't have a gardener. Mai Musa's sister's husband wants a job. She made me promise to go to ask my husband.

"I'm sorry, we just can't afford one at the moment," I admit. "My husband's doing the work in the yard now." Which is true: he wears an orange boiler suit brought out by my mother.

Disappointed, Mai Musa persuades me in to look at the new clothes in her shop. She is eyecatchingly dressed herself in a bright purple knee-length dress with a square neck and lots of buttons.

"I know you like dresses," she says. "What about these ones?" These ones are the maxi-dresses that have finally reached Zimbabwe. Mai Musa hurries past a sleeveless modele. "Not that one," she says. "I can't wear that one."

"Why?" (I thought it was me who was supposed to be looking).

"It's my father," she explains. "He's an apostolic. He won't let me wear anything that shows my shoulders. He doesn't like hair pieces either". She touches her ponytail of braids guiltily, shuffles through the rack until she picks out something suitably demure. Her father lives in Old Mutare, it turns out, so at least she gets some warning of his visits.

"I can do piecework at your place," she says eventually. "Even on Saturday afternoons and Sundays. These days, the money's not enough."

small change

The deal is for 300 million US dollars -- and they're negotiating it right next to us as a waitress hands out Fanta.

"That was Vice President Msika's* son," says the 30-something Shona man proudly. Earlier he told the adolescent busy fixing his wife's laptop that he'd lived in 'Ukay' for 20 years where he'd been a professional boxer. He returned to Zimbabwe three years ago. "Now I sell fuel," he tells the spikey-haired teen.

His wife returns with the associates. They sit on puffy leather chairs. There are flies on the tables.

"That was Vice President Msika's son," the Shona man repeats. "Douglas. Not the other one Joel. He's a bit stupid. He's just given us an order for three million."

The ageing white man -- Portuguese? Spanish? -- appears unimpressed. He's irritated by the heat, the flies. He flicks open his cellphone, shouts in broken English.

"Look, yesterday you tell me 46 cents a litre. Now you tell me 56. I want your boss. This not how you do business." He turns to his neighbour. "10 cents extra a litre - that's two million."

"They don't play games," insists the Shona guy to no-one in particular. His wife, freshly-coiffed, says she has a friend at Noczim, the state fuel procurer. She's on a cellphone too, asking about fuel prices in Bulawayo. "The Msikas are a good family, a strong family..."

"I call you tomorrow," the patriarch says.

* VP Msika died earlier this year. Businessman Billy Rautenbauch was specially thanked by the Msika family in the official Herald newspaper last week for help offered during their 'time of loss.'

the smartie run

South African toyshop chain Aladdin's Cave has opened a branch in a plush shopping mall in Harare.

"Don't tell my husband," says a white resident. "I don't want to miss out on the smartie run."

The smartie run is a girls-only shopping trip to Jo'burg, a hurtle through the border in a 4 x 4 supposedly to stock up on the necessities of life that haven't been on sale in Zimbabwe for a good few years. But things are changing. You can buy Estee Lauder in Sam Levy's Shopping Village now -- at a price, of course.

"My husband says you can get all you need in Harare now," says another.