December 24

I often feel a bit of a fraud.  I am hailed as a Bulawayo writer; This September Sun was set in Bulawayo and many people have told me how it reminded them of their time growing up there.  Yet I am not a real Bulawayo person.  I still feel very much an outsider.  When I was growing up, my family moved around quite a bit.  Life for me started in Kadoma, although we did not live there, but in Chakari.  From there, we moved to Mhangura and then to Redcliff, then to Penalonga and then to Bulawayo, although I only went to school there; we lived on a mine thirty kilometres away.

We arrived in Penalonga in 1981.  My dad worked at Redwing Mine.  Every day, we went on a very old school bus that chugged its way into Mutare and back.  I remember very cold mornings and evenings; finding a secret garden with my sister; spending afternoons at La Rochelle; going to Nyanga and the Bvumba on day trips; lots of hydrangeas and posting a letter to Father Christmas from the post office.

It was a magical place, but it was also not long after Independence and the Eastern Highlands had been quite a hot spot during the Rhodesian bush war. My best friend at school had lost her father when he was blown up in a land mine.  The war in Mozambique was still raging and my mother used to buy tins of tuna fish from the refugees who crept across the border to sell the food aid they had been given. The tins used to say: Food aid from the people of West Germany.  We were under strict instruction not to tell anyone at school where the tuna fish in our sandwiches came from and I used to live in fear of my mum going to jail if it was discovered that she was buying food aid.

The girls make mince pies - the first batch burns - and we explore our immediate surroundings. I make the discovery that I have forgotten all the chocolate for the Christmas stockings.  After being excited to find chocolate coins and Father Christmases in Botswana, I cannot believe they are now in my cupboard at home. Ellie still believes in Father Christmas and I don't know how to explain that he has forgotten to bring chocolate.

'Don't worry,' says Sian.  'Just write a letter from Father Christmas and say the chocolate is at home. You were filling our stockings when you got word we were in the Bvumba and rushed over here, forgetting the chocolates.'

'OK,' I agree tentatively.

'Anyway, she's used to Father Christmas being a bit duh.  He always forgets something.'

This is true.  I don't know how many times a present has arrived on Boxing Day because I couldn't find it on Christmas Day. 

In the afternoon we go for a drive that takes us to the Botanical Gardens.  When we try to pay to go in, we are told the swipe machine is not working and there is no signal for Ecocash. We have a very limited supply of cash that I am loathe to use.  So we drive all the way back up to the main road where we can pick up signal, pay by Ecocash and then drive back down to the gardens. 

This is one of my favourite places.  I love all the paths that go off around the gardens, the green cool underneath the cycads and ferns; the huge pond and all the rhododendrons, hydrangeas and azalea bushes. Formerly called Manchester Gardens, they were started by the Taylors in 1926.  Mr Taylor was mayor of Mutare and he and his wife would spend weekends on their plot in the Bvumba, clearing it and planting flowers.  When he retired in 1940, the couple moved there permanently and the gardens became a favourite for people to visit from Mutare. After the war, Mrs Taylor offered to receive soldiers suffering from physical and mental trauma.  She died in 1954 and, not long afterwards, Mr Taylor sold the gardens to the Rhodesian government. 

The cafe, which is now closed, is the first place I ever tried pizza.  I was ten or eleven.  It's hard to think now that I had not had it before then.  The house the Taylors lived in is now inhabited by National Parks people.  It's run down and looking quite sad, but there is still something gracious about the steps up to the veranda.

In the late afternoon, we watch a magnificent sunset from the veranda of the cottage and in the evening we play Cluedo and light a fire.