December 29

I realise I have not told everyone how the dogs got fed over Christmas.  I never did get in touch with Elizabeth.  Her phone just rang and rang.  Our friends, Paul and Ute, also tried to get hold of her to no avail.  The next day, Paul got another key made for the door (I had given him the number) and, accompanied by another friend of ours, climbed over the wall into our garden.

Elizabeth, who I feared dead, or at least unconscious at the bottom of the back door steps, was found and the house was opened.  She had actually used some of her own mealie meal and cabbage to cook the dogs food.  Yesterday, I tried to ask Elizabeth why she had not answered her phone, but got no real answer from her.

'Elizabeth, I tried phoning you about 30 times.  Is there something wrong with your phone?'

'No.'

'But you didn't answer.'

'Did you send me a message?  I can't read messages.'

'No, I phoned you.'

'Don't send me messages.  I don't like them.'

'But I didn't send you a message, Elizabeth.'

'Next time, you phone me. It's much better.'

In the afternoon, we go and see Paul and Ute to thank them for rescuing the dogs from hunger.  Over a glass of wine, we discuss various New Year options.  New Year is always a funny time.  I don't know how to spend it and, when it's over, I hardly ever feel that I spent it in the way that I wanted to. But I don't know how I wanted to spend it.  

December 28

We wake to very light rain.  Yesterday on the way home, we drove through a number of showers until we got to about 30 kilometres from Bulawayo when it all stopped.

It is my younger sister's 40th birthday.  Time certainly seems to fly by.  I remember quite clearly the day she was born as my older sister and I had to go and stay with friends of my parents.  It was early in the morning and . . . guess what? The electricity had gone off.  

We take the dogs for a walk and pop into the post office on the way home to see if the presents that my sister in the UK sent have arrived.  They have, but it will cost me $748 to get them.  This is just ridiculous.  My sister always sends presents for birthdays and Christmas and I have never paid this much.  

Around midday, our guests arrive.  The woman is very jolly and friendly, but her husband does not even greet me.  He looks like one of those people about whom his wife would say: 'He's very nice really.  You just have to get to know him.'  They are going to Hwange for New Year.

'How long are you there for?' John asks the man.

He shrugs.  'We get there when we get there.  We leave when we leave.'

December 27

Just after we get up, the electricity goes off.  We have been really lucky as the only power cut we had was the night we arrived.  I send a quick message to Ritz to say we are off.  She wants to come round

to do an inventory of all the stuff, but this is not going to happen. We have a long way to go and she will have to trust that we are honest people.  Moreover, we have no idea what exactly what was in the house and I will not be held responsible for things we have not broken or stolen.

Recently, we discovered one of our guests had broken the small cafetiere that is in the cottage. People often break glasses and teaspoons very easily disappear in picnic baskets.  However, we do generally find most people quite honest about breakages and, if they aren't, we have to carry that expense.  I do not like the idea of treating guests with suspicion and going through every single knife, fork and spoon before you allow them to leave.

Before we leave the Bvumba completely, we visit a castle near the White Horse Inn.  The castle belonged to a friend of mine's dad and step-mother.  When I was about 14, she invited me and a couple of other friends to stay a week there.  It was really quite an experience.  I am not sure who built the castle originally, but it was great fun to stay in.  Every day, we went into Mutare in a beach buggy, spent the morning at the municipal swimming pool and went for lunch at the dairy den, which was also owned by my friend's dad.  Both he and his wife have now died; his wife suffered a terrible death when she fell out of a top floor window(there are three floors) and broke her back.  

It is my turn to drive and John's turn to sit in the back.  Apart from one game of hangman, John is left undisturbed and manages to read a book. Why are children always so different with their mothers?  As we are approaching Masvingo, we see what looks like a small walled cemetery on the right-hand side of the road.  I stop and the girls and I walk through the bush to see what it is.  It is indeed a cemetery, but is no longer in use.  A plaque informs us that it used to contain the remains of a number of Italians interned near Masvingo during the Second World War and they have now been removed to the Chapel of St Francis of Assisi.  

I have heard of this place and really want to go and see it, but it is not signposted and I have to make some inquiries.  The internment camp is now the headquarters of Fourth Brigade.  It is very run down and looks like a scene out of Bridge Over the River Kwai with its rickety wooden look-out tower and old Nissan huts.  The chapel is just outside the camp and is well looked after.  Inside, it is beautifully decorated with murals on the walls and ceiling.  The names of all the internees that died are in an alcove on either side of the altar with the names of the places they were born and where they died.  One is just a child of seven and the oldest is about sixty six. 

These Italians were brought from Abyssinia (Ethiopia) by boat to Durban and then sent up to Rhodesia.  It is extremely sad that you can be quite happily living your life when someone decides you are the enemy and sends you off to a totally different place.  Although they were living in Ethiopia, the majority of the Italians were born in Italy.  I wonder if they were homesick or quite glad to be out of Europe.

About 60 kms from Masvingo, I realise I have taken the wrong road and am extremely alarmed to see that the next place is Mvuma; I am on the Harare road.  In Zimbabwe, roads are very straightforward.  There's no looking at maps and seeing which junction to get off on or anything like that.  There is a road into town and a road out, yet somehow or other, although I followed the sign for Bulawayo, I must have missed another turning.  

After some deliberation we decide to carry on to Mvuma.  My dad was general manager of Athens mine at one time.  I remember him telling me about the mine manager who had spent his entire life except for university in Mvuma and did not ever want to leave.  Mvuma has, perhaps, a  shop, a school and a police station.  A few years ago, my parents bumped into this man in Botswana.  He had moved to Selibi-Pikhwe after his wife left him.  He was a lost man.

From Mvuma, the next stop is Gweru.  If it is one thing I cannot understand about Gweru, it's how anyone lives there.  I really feel it is the arse end of the world.  The only place that perhaps surpasses it n this respect is Kapiri Mposhi in Zambia.  I have connections with Gweru though for quite a lot of my family lived there.  My great-grandmother, who was only about four feet tall, ran the bar at the Midlands Hotel.  She was a very cheeky Welsh lady who had also run the bar at The Meikles in Harare.  My grandparents lived in Gweru as did my gran's sister and her husband.  Legend has it that one boozy evening when they were driving home from the club, he fell out the door as they went round the roundabout.  My gran's sister carried on driving, went round the roundabout again and picked him up. Luckily, there was not much traffic in those days.

Finally, we are home.  The dogs are absolutely ecstatic to see us.  Rolo does about five laps of the garden before he will calm down.  I make the excuse that I need the toilet and I rush inside and quickly get the Christmas chocolates out of my cupboard and leave them on the mantelpiece for Ellie to find.

I'm tired, hot, glad to be home and sad our very short holiday has come to an end.

December 26

After a slow morning, pottering about and just enjoying 'being', we attempt another walk. We go down a path that begins well, but becomes increasingly like an obstacle course with trees down all over the place.  We climb over tree trunks and under tree trunks, sometimes even sliding along the ground.  The path finally comes to an end at a mud hut and so we turn around and go all the way back, this time uphill.

No visit to the Bvumba is complete without a trip to Tony's coffee shop.  In a place where you cannot even buy a pint of milk, Tony's may seem a little unexpected, but he and his cakes are famous throughout Zimbabwe.  Tony's cakes are the best I have ever come across.  My dad always got annoyed with us if we described something as 'divine' as he said it was a gross exaggeration, but really Tony's cakes are divine.  There is no scrimping on cream, walnuts, creme fraiche, pure chocolate or any other of the expensive ingredients that go into his cakes.  His coffee shop is very popular with expats and diplomats who come all the way from Harare to have tea and cake and then drive home again. He uses the most beautiful china and proper teacups and saucers and silver teapots, jugs and sugar bowls so he is obviously a favourite with me.

As we are on a rather tight budget, we order two pieces of cake and divide them between us.  A group of Chinese visitors order the chocolate cake and then leave more than half.  It seems like such a waste of food.  According to Tony, they run a hotel on the outskirts of Mutare and come for tea almost every weekend.

I receive a message from the lady who is booked to stay with us on Saturday, asking what time she and her husband can check in tomorrow.  I feel a surge of panic.  Surely she has got the dates wrong?  If she hasn't, I will have to try phoning Elizabeth and ask her if she can open the cottage for them. Getting through to Elizabeth is the first hurdle and no doubt there will be much tongue clicking when I ask her to let this couple in.  Luckily, it turns out that the guest has got the date wrong.

We are all very sad that we are already going home tomorrow.  We go for a last walk up the road and try to soak up as much of the forest atmosphere as possible.  I like to think that the memories we will have will serve as, to misquote Wordsworth, 'beauty recollected in tranquility'.

December 25

Last night we made a deal with the girls that we are not to be woken before 7.  It doesn't work.

After opening some presents, we start preparing what needs to be done for lunch.  John does most of the work.  I am in charge of the potatoes.

The highlight of the Christmas lunch is Christmas pudding which we douse in brandy and set alight.  It burns incredibly well.  My gran told me how they used to have trinkets the Christmas pudding until one Christmas her father, a very fiery bad-tempered man, choked on one and thereafter they were banned.  We retrieve four of the five trinkets and believe that my dad has swallowed the fifth.

After lunch, which finishes late, we go for a walk and struggle quite a bit to get up the hill on our full stomachs.  Sian and Ellie swim in a pond near the house.

In the evening, we play Ellie's new game, Time Flies, which is a mixture of Pictionary and Charades. You have to either draw, explain or act out what you are given on your card.  One of the titles I am given is Eurovision Song Contest which I have to act.  I try to be ABBA and it fails miserably.  

If I am proud of one of the things we have done as parents, it is limiting access to television and phones.  I honestly hate it when I see children given phones as presents. We don't have television and only ever watch DVDs.  Some people find this absolutely unbelievable and we always get that question: 'Aren't your children left behind?'  No, I don't think they are left behind at all.  They still have Internet access and have good computer skills.  Both of them get very, very bored with friends who come to visit and bring their phones with them.  This on its own is enough for them to see how badly addicted some people can get.

Board games are challenging and fun and involve many people; playing on your phone is a lonely business.

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.  

December 23

We leave home at 8.30 with me sitting in the back of the car with Sian and Ellie.  My dad is in the front and John is driving.  I am therefore subjected to numerous rounds of hangman and noughts and crosses.  I also act as a cushion, mattress and fountain of information.  All questions are directed towards me, including 'How far have we gone?' and 'Are we nearly there yet?' (The latter first asked just as we pass through Esigodeni and have about another ten hours of driving to go.)

About 70kms from Zvishivane, we discover that one of the fuel pipes is leaking.  There is nothing to do but carry on driving until we find a place where it can be mended.  In Zvishivane, we find someone in a back street who fixes the problem. By this time, we have lost a third of a tank of fuel, frustrating at any time; even more frustrating in a country where buying fuel is difficult.

In Masvingo, we stop to buy a few groceries.  Pick n Pay is manic.  The shop is so overcrowded you cannot help bumping into people.  I am asked by three different people if I am paying by cash.  I am always approached in a very surreptitious way: there is the smile, the greeting and then, in a lowered voice : 'Are you paying by cash?'  Cash is in such short supply and the queues at the ATMs are so long, that people look for someone paying by cash, offer to buy their groceries for them on their card and then keep the cash.  Unfortunately for them, I have no cash.

The road down to Birchenough Bridge is long and hot.  Baobabs make their appearance.  John asks why you never see baby baobabs, only big ones. Along the road, people sell mats, baskets and hats made out of baobab.  They cut squares out of the baobab trunks and make it into a kind of rope.  We start the climb upwards into the Eastern Highlands, the road gradually becoming more steep and winding.  At Hot Springs, we pass what used to be a hotel.  We used to know the people who ran it, but it was taken over by war veterans during the land invasions.  It looks pretty empty now.  Not far from here are the notorious diamond fields.  Since the diamonds were discovered in this area some years ago, Mugabe, Grace Mugabe, the current president and many government ministers have done extremely well; the Zimbabwean people have not benefitted at all.

Around about 4pm, I receive a missed call from Elizabeth.  I phone her back and discover that she does not have a key to get into the house.  John thought I had left the spare key and I thought he had left it as he had locked up.  We are very security conscious - the key is usually left for Elizabeth in a flower pot.  She needs to get in to make the dogs their food.  I phone a friend of ours to ask if he has a similar key (I give him the number), but he hasn't.  However, he and his wife suggest that they take food round for the dogs tonight and they will have a key cut in the morning.  I try to phone Elizabeth to ask her to meet them at the gate.  The phone just rings and rings and rings.  By the time we have reached Mutare, I must have tried thirty times to call her.

The final part of the road from Mutare to the Bvumba, twists and turns as it climbs upwards.  The sun is setting and the distant mountains are a beautiful orange and pink.  We have just stepped over the threshold, leaving reality behind.  The forest is dense and begins to close in on us.  One feels that stirring of all things magical.

We follow the directions we were given by Ritz.  It is now 7 o'clock but I had messaged her to say we had run into car trouble.  A night guard comes to the gate with a map and tells us we need to go back a bit and then down a steep mountain road.  So we do so.  The road is very steep and bumpy, but eventually we arrive at where the guard told us to go.  We hoot, but no one comes so I phone Ritz who tells us that the guard has mistaken us with another family due to stay in this cottage - we need to go back on the main road.  She says she will meet us halfway.  

A figure doing what appears to be star jumps with a torch in hand leaps out of the darkness and introduces himself as Ron. 

'Hey, where are you guys from?'

'Bulawayo.'

'Bullies.  I love Bullies.  It's my favourite place.'

Bulawayo tends to be a favourite with people who don't live there.

A very flustered Ritz appears armed with a number of forms and maps. The car is parked at a sharp angle on a dark, bumpy road; we left home eleven hours ago and we are all hot and tired - and Ritz asks me to fill in a form - name, address, all that sort of thing.  

'What now?' snaps John.

'Yes. won't take two minutes.'  She pushes the form through the window.

'Now?' repeats Ron.  Even he can see it may not be the best time.

'Yes, yes,' she retorts and then begins to reel off directions to our cottage and other numerous rules and regulations.  'And do me a favour, will you?  Just stop off at the place you went to first and tell the night guard that this map needs to be given to the other people coming.'

'And if you could do me a favour as well,' begins Ron.  I can see John is about to explode.  You cannot ask people who have just travelled eleven hours to do you favours.  I think he senses John is about to punch him because he stops and we never get to hear what the favour is.

'You are very lucky; you have a full generator,' he begins again in a jolly tone.  'Only please don't use it to heat water.'

Please shut up, I think.  Please just shut up.

'Hey, boet,' says Ron, looking in at the dashboard of the car.  'You're nearly on empty.'
I close my eyes and pray.  Some people are boet (brother) people, some people aren't.  John is not.  John never will be.  Is it not clear, I think?  Is he wearing a cap with wraparound sunglasses? No. For crying out loud, the man can't braai a sausage. Don't call him boet.  

At this point, John begins to put his foot on the accelerator. 

'What kind of an idiot does he think I am that I would drive all the way here with no extra fuel? John mutters angrily as we reach the main road and look for the turn off to the cottage.

We eventually arrive at our cottage at 8pm.  The electricity is off but we have brought our inverter and soon get a couple of lights going.  The girls are very excited and run around, looking at all the bedrooms.  I am glad I made a meal to eat tonight as cooking is the last thing I feel like doing.  I am so happy to be in one of my favourite places.