October 1

I wake up with an ominous feeling: the water did not go off yesterday.  Why not?  I cannot deal with this inconsistency.  There is nothing quite like being ready for disaster and it not happening. Both Bulawayo City Council (water) and ZESA (electricity - I have never got used to calling it ZETDC) issue timetables for their cuts, but neither are particularly good at following them.

When the power crisis first started, we used to run around frantically getting everything ready.  When the power was on, we cooked, baked, blended, mixed, liquidised, hoovered, polished and mowed in a hectic frenzy.  There was nothing better than watching the clock hands approach the cut-off time, knowing we were ready: meals cooked, washing done and ironed, everyone showered and everything that needed charging charged.  The sense of readiness induced a warm, smug feeling. C'mon, ZESA, hit me.  I'm ready  for you. Now, the schedule tends to be far more erratic and there is nothing worse than half killing yourself to get ready for a power cut and then finding yourself sitting there, lights blazing away, because they decided they won't switch you off this time.  You would be wrong to rejoice when a power cut does not happen and view this as ZESA being generous.  They'll choose some time when you can't possibly be prepared and hit you with an18 hour cut. Your cries of 'but it's not the right time for a cut' will be drowned by the gathering whirr of generators.

Some good news is that the Germans are on their way and should be here between 2-3.  We have a booking for Sunday - this is exciting.  We don't often have more than one booking a week anymore.

The Germans arrive at 2.30 exactly.  As I suspected, they are German South Africans - or South African Germans?  They are very jolly and take to Rolo right away (always a good sign).  However, the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I hear that their first port of call will be the Railway Museum.

I have nothing against railway enthusiasts per se, but they can be a little bit strange.  About two years ago, we had a man come to stay who was completely obsessed with trains.  On his first night, he came up to the house and proceeded to show us over 400 pictures of various engines, carriages and goods trucks. I didn't know that there were different classes of goods trucks, but believe me there are! The next day he returned from the station quite put out that an engine he wanted to photograph was missing its number.  He then went to the extreme measure (well, I thought it was extreme) of finding a photo of the number online, printing the picture out in colour at a print shop in town, taking it to the station and sticking it on the engine so that he could then take the photo.

From us he went to Hwange where he was looking forward to taking photos of the coal trucks.  On the way back he was involved in what could have been a very serious accident.  He got out of his car at a police roadblock to show the policeman his spare wheel, fire extinguisher and all the rest one is legally required to carry in a vehicle in Zimbabwe.  When getting back into his car, he was hit by a bus that had swerved to the wrong side of the road in order to bypass the roadblock. He was taken to hospital in Bulawayo and it was from here that we received a phone call.  Not knowing anyone else in Zimbabwe, he had put us down as his next of kin.  John went to see him at Mater Dei and he ended up coming to stay a couple of days with us until he could arrange a ticket to fly back to South Africa. We had a bit of a scare one day when he did not emerge from the cottage until lunchtime.  John and I kept looking at each other anxiously, hoping that he had not died in the night. Thankfully, he had just been in need of a good sleep.