Pants or no pants

These are today's purchases: one pink pair (Triumph), a khaki-coloured pair (white lace) and a pair of black shorts. Secondhand knickers, all of them. Bought from the market for 1 US a piece.

Former finance minister Tendai Biti once announced that as a man, if your wife was buying secondhand underwear "then you should know you had failed." He said this when announcing a (shortlived) ban on the sale of used underwear in the country.
I think about his words occasionally on one of my many forays to the market. I disagree. I've never expected my husband to buy my underwear for me, for one thing. And it's not as if the underwear on sale in Zimbabwe is affordable where it is of decent-ish quality. The only time I've bought new knickers here was when I was going into hospital and I knew I could throw them out after one wearing (which I did).

I wash my purchases out thoroughly before I wear them, of course. So, I imagine, does everyone else who buys them. I always find the bra stalls slightly off-putting, all those misshapen contraptions with straps tangled together like spaghetti. But I've dug deep in the piles and rifled along those bras stranded on hangers over the wooden rails and always found what I needed: Calvin Klein, Victoria's Secret.

I'm thinking about knickers again because of an unfortunate incident picked up Zimbabwe's state press yesterday. A 21-year-old model has appeared in court for modelling with no knickers. It happened in Harare in July. Apparently other photos were deleted (and possibly the other models also had no pants) but this model's pictures got circulated.

Secondhand knickers are better than no knickers, surely.

Afterwards

"She phoned me at lunchtime," she says. "Sekai's friend. She was Sekai's friend while she was alive. But now that Sekai is dead..."

"She says she wants 50 dollars. For cleaning up the blood when Sekai was killed. She said she cleaned up the blood and washed the blanket. Now she wants money."

"She says that if she does not get the money, she will go to the police. I told her 50 dollars was too much. But she says she does not want to talk. She says she wants me to send the money by Ecocash. To Mai Taungwa's account."

She shakes her head. "I have to call my father. In case that woman takes the police to his house."

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.

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?"

Miss Lizzie

"But she's beautiful," Miss Lizzie says as the baby squirms away.

 

Esther is here too -- a grown-up Esther in a purple dress with sequins on. Not so long ago, Esther was eagerly taking my twice-read magazines (because I got them secondhand already) to cut up and use for her Fabrics O-level coursework. Then her mother put her into a private academy (which isn't the same as private school. It's a lot cheaper, for one. And less regulated. The only thing the authorities seem to do is to close lots of academies down for "not being licensed." But often the exam results are better, partly because the teachers don't strike).

 

Esther wants to be a teacher, or at least, her mother wants her to. Miss Lizzie has dreams of a better future for her only child. She has enrolled her at the local teaching college.

 

"Look at me," she says. "No exams, no house. Nothing."

 

Esther suddenly seems downcast. We exchange pleasantries. How my elder child is growing. How Christmas was. How it's good the rain came.

 

"She has a husband now," Miss Lizzie says. "She's having a baby, you know. In March. I was not angry. But now - "

in the bank

"They should do e-banking here," the woman behind me says loudly. "It's dangerous to be moving round with large sums of money this time of year."

 

I look down at my fistful of dollars: an advance payment on next term's school fees. Inside the crowded banking hall, I feel safe.

 

"It's getting like Jo'burg," she tells me. She is youngish, bespectacled, well-dressed. Spends six months of every year in the UK "where my parents are. Wandsworth. Do you know it?"

 

The night before last, she tells me, she found a taxi idling on Herbert Chitepo, the main street. It's a busy street, lined with flamboyant trees in full bloom this time of year, dotted with phone card vendors. It wasn't late. Glancing inside, she realised something wasn't right.

 

"The driver was dead. He had a bag on his head. His wallet was open on the seat. They'd taken everything."

 

She called the police, who confirmed the man had been murdered for his takings. It was a Saturday. Somebody -- some people -- must have reckoned that by the end of the day, he'd have made a pretty penny.

 

"The worse thing was, he was old. And from Malawi. His family are all there. There's no-one to bury him here."

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"?