peculiar state

"That's another one in there," the pharmacy assistant says, pointing to my bump. I nod. She laughs, delighted. Her colleague looks at me over the nail polish, bends her head to one side quizzically: "Am I seeing right?" she says.

In OK stores, I hear someone calling my name. It's Mai Silitshena with B. "You are growing BIG," she says with relish. Her son, a teenager now, smiles embarrassed.

Actually, I'm not that big, not for seven months and a bit. But here in Zimbabwe, the expectant mamas contest appears to be among who can get the biggest, plumpest and roundest, fastest. Not, as in the West, who can claim the enviable: "Your bump's looking so neat." Not having seen me pregnant before, Tadiwa told me -- what, six weeks ago?: "You're as big as a house, Mai S", before telling me of her pregnancy diet (2 doughnuts per day, eaten on the trot). I had to swallow a plaintive: "Surely not. Aren't I quite little?"

Mai Silitshena fumbles in her handbag, pulls out a 5 US dollar note. "Here," she says triumphantly. "Buy something for the baby."

"No," I start to say, and then I hug her.

"It comes from the bottom of my heart," she adds.

I've been thinking about a phrase I found in an expat's account of her pregnancy in France: "that peculiar state of grace that pregnancy brings." That's what I've known here, half a world away for the tarte tatin of Normandy. While the anti-white rhetoric mounts due to the indigenisation drive and neighbours whisper of yet another armed attack and how so-and-so was abused at a traffic block (because he was white) and how somebody has hastened to Harare to finally get himself a gun, I think of the people I see each day and the friendship on their faces as they look at me. Of Sekai, whose name means laughter -- and no, she "doesn't have children yet" -- who rushes to push my trolley for me in the supermarket and urges me to consider Tawananyasha (We have found Grace) as a first name. Of the newspaper vendor whose name I do not know, who calls out from above the muffled bundle of her own baby (on the streets all day): "But are you pregnant?" and smiles indulgently.

I feel...privileged.

wedding blues

"We can understand where she's coming from," Mai N says.

She lives in the the dale-dailies, the plush leafy suburbs of Zimbabwe's towns and cities. Her oldest son, a research engineer just got married. That's married in the true Zimbabwean sense: he paid lobola, or bride price. That's no mean feat these days: the official Herald reports that the going rate is around 18,000 US these days.

Have a daughter, make some money. Nothing like being innovative.

New daughter-in-law is well-liked. She's degreed, has agricultural experience in China. She sends Mai N text messages while she drinks tea on my verandah. Mai N worried about this son-who-would-not-marry. The groom is 31, the bride 29. Western ages for marriage, I'd say. Or maybe just modern ages.

But now the bride wants a white wedding too.

"The whole thing," sighs Mai N. "We said to N.: keep it simple. Don't use all your money. He wants to buy a car."

"But she wants the 200-guests-at-Mutare-Hall, the triumphal parade through Main Street (Saturday: bakkies blaring: beribboned bridesmaids hanging out the windows, that sort of thing). Oh yes, and the dress."

What does N say, I wonder? "He says, you've got to see why she wants this. She's a ghetto girl."

N grew up firmly esconced in the middle classes. His parents moved into the plush suburbs in 1980. They have a nice house, a large garden. Roses in the beds. Vines trailing over the walls. The car might have have been in the garage for the last five years -- but that's because of Zimbabwe's crisis.

But as for the bride: she grew up in Damgamvura, an eastern township. "She wants to show she's finally Got There," says Mai N ruefully.

heist

Scraping together the money for T's fees for her social sciences degree at the University of Zimbabwe is always something of a challenge. She's in her last year now. First she comes to visit, bearing baby and a raft of exam results. Problem is: I haven't got the fee money together yet. My father is still trying to raise it, and I've been crafting desperate bios of T to send to my former English teacher who edits a parish magazine in the town I grew up in, in the hope somebody, somewhere will dig deep. Visit over, Dad texts. He's raised some -- but not all -- of the required (desired?) sum. Shall he send it? Yes, I say. Something, surely, is better than nothing. T does not have a bank account. Her husband (it's official, note: he's paid lobola), mired in the depths of rural Gokwe for 20 days per month carrying out a pre-Census mapping project, does not have a bank account either. Neither do her parents (this may not be true: I think it's rather that T knows she wouldn't see the money if it went to them). We settle on Western Union. Text messages bat to and fro between England, Harare and other locations, setting up secret questions, reference numbers, Union offices where she'll go to collect the cash. Then I wait. And wonder. For 24 hours. Were those sms-es intercepted? Has somebody withdrawn the money without our knowledge? Was it her brother's cellphone I was using (I have a whole handful of cellphone numbers to use for her, most of them belonging to other members of the family)? Late at night, my 'phone pings. "sorry 4 th late reply my 4n was off the whole of yesterday we only got power @ 1 this morning thank u 4 the money & ve a blessed day." Phew...Except, this morning. Last-but-one item on the ZBC news bulletin. "Police are investigating the theft of 83,000 US dollars from the University of Zimbabwe." Apparently an official was walking the 100 metre distance between the accountant's office and CBZ bank's campus branch when an armed gang of six pounced on him. "The money was part of what students have paid for this term's fees...."

death by diamonds

From where I am (by the bananas), the noise from the street is deafening. Trucks race up and down the high street -- 10 of them, or is it 20? Youths hang out of the windows, shouting and gesticulating.

Shoppers move cautiously to the open front of the store to watch. Pedestrians stop. I wonder whose demonstration it is. Probably ZANU-PF. MDC marches are rarely allowed. Maybe this is something to do with indigenisation? I look for flags, banners -- anything that'll provide some sort of a clue. The BEE minister has been upping the I'll-grab-your-firm rhetoric recently, even taking on the (also ZANU-PF) central bank chief who's warned against his use of "verbal gunpowder." I know of at least one white businessman who skedaddled down South for an extended 'holiday' after ruling party stalwarts tried to test his 'patriotism' by ordering he attend -and contribute to - local celebrations to mark Heroes Day.

No-one in the store knows what the demo's for. I forget about it until I see this week's paper.

The demo is actually a funeral procession for a local diamond dealer named Bothy. A former street-kid, according to the lengthy obit (diamond dealers get star treatment here from the local press) who used to sleep in cardboard boxes, Bothy (/ie) was killed in a car crash (aren't they all?) and died at the local private clinic. "Police were just overwhelmed by the event," said the Manica Post. The rumour is that he'd duped gwejas (diggers) of their gems. The crash was his reward.

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.

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.

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.