March 30

If you are a teacher, whatever you do, don't get yourself connected to Google classroom so you can keep up to date with your pupils - it is far too much work!  I really wish I had done what many a teacher has done and just said 'do notes' or 'read'.  Instead, here I am busy for literally hours, answering queries, involved in discussions and marking work.  Not fair.

On top of that, Sian and Ellie are bombarding me with questions and my dad is wandering around with that face that says, 'Any chance of a cup of tea?'  I am certainly looking forward to the end of school on Thursday!

John has gone off to town to try and get milk and vegetables.  A man appears at the gate, looking very forlorn.  He has a speech impediment and struggles to get his words out.  He is asking for food and something to drink so I go and get him half a loaf of bread, some tomatoes and a bottle of water.  Then he asks for money to pay for his prescription so I give him some money for which he is very thankful and he says that he will come back to do some gardening for me when the shutdown is over.

When John comes back, he says that town is wonderful as there are no cars on the road and the supermarket is wonderful and empty.

Rolo keeps throwing us reproachful looks.  How can we be at home and not take him and Tallulah out for a walk?

March 29

As a child, I really detested Sundays.  I think it was the quiet: there was something unsettling about the silence.  This was the days before all day television and we didn't even have a video recorder.  I hated Sunday evenings the most, probably because school loomed that bit closer and the fun of the weekend seemed to have evaporated and was yet to be replaced by the energy of Monday morning.  It occurs to me today that we are about to have 21 days of Sunday, all in a row.

We take the dogs for what could be their last walk for three weeks.  We have a 3 acre garden and for some people, walking the perimeter would be exercise enough, but this is not true of Rolo and Tallulah.  Dog walking is not a popular activity in Zimbabwe.  I think we are part of a very small group who exercise their dogs regularly.  I know many a dog who has never left the confines of their garden.  The problem comes when someone suddenly decides to take their dog for a walk and then finds that they are not socialised at all and they are very aggressive.

Walking dogs for me is one of life's great pleasures and it's funny how the walk itself is very different when you go on your own.  It's as though you have left something of importance behind, like your shoes. One of the reasons I was desperate to get a dog was because having one gave me a reason to walk. My mum loved taking the dogs for a walk and on Sundays we would go with her.  Perhaps it is a very British thing to do, along with drinking tea and gardening.  It's probably part of my genetic make up.  

There is a bitter-sweet feel to the walk and suddenly the reality of the situation hits me: three weeks at home with the dogs, my dad, Sian, Ellie and John.  Three acres is definitely not big enough for us all!

March 28

Chaos.

One of my elderly friends phones early in the morning, asking if she can have a lift into town to do some shopping.  John is going out anyway so he says he will pick her up.

I go out to try and get mealie meal for Elizabeth and find that overnight it has gone from $230 for 10kgs to $300 - and the US$ rate has dropped.  At times, nowhere kills my faith in humanity more than Zimbabwe does.  If anyone can make a quick buck they will, even out of the poorest, most vulnerable section of society.

At TelOne, I wait in a ginormous queue to buy a top-up voucher for the Internet as no one is sure whether they will be open next week.  I overhear a man in the queue talking about Thorgrove, the infectious diseases hospital to which all COVID-19 cases are being referred:

'Thorngrove!  Does anyone know anyone who has come out of there alive?'

I am so happy when I at last get home.  We decide to take the dogs out for a walk.  At the gate of Hillside Dams, the man in charge jokes that Rolo needs to wash his paws before coming in.  Rolo growls at him in response.  He then tells us that they will be closed from Monday which is pretty devastating news.

On the walk, we bump into a lady with two dogs.  Tallulah is off the lead and she goes roaring up to them - but doesn't do anything besides sniff them out.  This is most unusual and I can only think Sian's dog communication is working.

John plants the lettuces, chermolia and spinach seedlings that I bought yesterday and I mark entries for my school's literary festival.  Everything is very unsettled: so normal, so strange.

March 27

My phone is buzzing with all sorts of messages, mainly those of doom and gloom.  Besides all the hundreds of WhatsApp messages, every single organisation, website and bank I am in the remotest contact with sends out their 'COVID-19' advice.  What they are doing, what we should be doing: it's all the same stuff but I suppose for them they have ticked 'send email about virus to 4 million people' off their to-do list.  I even have one from the Easter Bunny, something Sian signed up to when she was a lot younger, assuring her that he will still be delivering and that he is following all the correct advice and washing his hands.  Perhaps there may be children out there who refuse to open their Easter eggs after calculating with a growing sense of horror how many homes the Easter Bunny may have been to before theirs.

Last night, the government, who are obviously struggling since they are all grounded and can't fly around the world, accessing foreign bank accounts and spending the country's money on themselves, declare that the US$ is now legal again for trading.  Just a couple of weeks ago, they said that any teacher caught charging for extra lessons in US$ would be fined heavily.  Now, it's all OK. 

Tonight, they announce that on Monday there will be a 21 day lockdown.  Everything will be shut except food shops and pharmacies and a few essential industries.  We are now quite used to these last minute panic announcements, but what concerns me is why they suddenly decided to do it.  Officially, their figures concerning people infected with the virus are quite low, but maybe they are much higher than they are letting people know.  

March 26

It's one of those mornings that's starts off all peaceful and slow and suddenly spins out of control.  I begin to get all these messages that certain shops will be closing and from now on will only do orders.  Online shopping doesn't really exist in Zimbabwe; it's a case of we'll put your order in a box and you come and fetch it.  I have many reservations about this, one of the biggest being that there is always a shortage of something and so, whilst it may appear on the shop's list of available groceries there is a good chance there will come a message: Sorry, we're out of that. And we're out of that, too.  Yep, that too.  If I pay for something and it doesn't arrive, how will this work out with the shop?  We have to all admit that customer service is virtually non-existent in Zimbabwe and so chances are that refunds for non-existent items will also be non-existent.

My other concern is that there are so many people for whom ordering 'online', which really means just choosing things from a list, may be difficult.  The elderly are an example of this.  I send a message to a couple of my older friends and ask if they want shopping done.  Then we zoot off to the shops ourselves and buy a few necessities such as pirated DVDs and hot cross buns.  In Pick n Pay, there are markers on the floor leading to the tills, each a metre apart and customers are asked to stand behind them when queuing, but no one does.  Everyone is in their usual heap, despite wearing masks and gloves.

There's definitely fear in the air: it's in the bottles of disinfectant on shop counters and the masks that make everyone look eerily faceless and suggest the anonymity of disease and germs and hospitals and death.  It's in the way people seem to hurry themselves a little more as though an invading army is approaching the city; it's in the way they pile up trolleys and boxes and boots of cars; the way car windows are wound up and shop door closed and notices have popped up.  Closed Tomorrow.  Closed From Friday. Closed Until Further Notice.

March 25

It is a wonderful day!   The weather is just perfect and the garden is beautiful.  I sit outside again to do my meditation and it crosses my mind that we should change the name of our cottage to Zen Garden and try and attract Buddhists, meditators and the like.

At this stage, Sian and Ellie are still quite excited by the idea of home school, which is great, except that they see me as their teacher.  John has this incredible ability to cut himself off when he wants to.  All he says is that he is going to do some work and doesn't want to be disturbed for two hours. I can say this, but no one will listen. Today, it's a constant round of questions from how to spell a word to multiplication sums. 

By the afternoon, I am behind with all my work, but the girls have finished theirs and have now moved on to baking.  This is all great, except that if they continue this vein, we will run out of supplies shortly. My attempts to get them to make 'those nice plain biscuits that only use flour and water' come to nothing.  

We take the dogs for a walk and Sian tries out her animal communication skills.  Tallulah gets so excited before going out, that she bounds all over the car and can be quite a hazard.  However, today she is much better and I am impressed that Sian seems to have made some mental contact with her.  Likewise, during the walk, we try letting Tallulah off the lead for a bit and she actually comes back.  People often wonder why Rolo is not on a lead, but Tallulah is.  The reason is that she is quite aggressive when she meets other dogs, which in turn makes Rolo more aggressive.  On his own, Rolo loves other dogs.

In the evening, Sian and Ellie make supper which is sweet and sour chicken.  It really is delicious.  I could never have made such a meal when I was their age.  My mum didn't let my sisters and I into the kitchen very often.  She was very much a perfectionist and took the view that we were bound to get things wrong.  I have been quite different in my approach and have always allowed the girls to try cooking and baking from a very young age.

Long, beautiful days with supper cooked for me every night and a range of sweet treats on offer throughout the day - perfect.

March 24

School finishes at 10.30 and I stop off at the shops to buy a few things.  People have started to go a bit nuts and trolleys are piled up.  Some people are wearing masks and gloves.

The phone rings: 

Sian: When are you coming home?

Me: I won't be long.  I'm at the shops.

Sian:  You've been away a very long time.

Me: I'll be back now.  Who's that coughing?

In films, as soon as someone starts coughing, you know they are a gonner, especially when they say, 'I'm fine.  Just a little cough. Nothing to be worried about.'  Usually, it's just when they have found the person of their dreams or had a promotion or discovered the secrets of the universe which makes their demise even more poignant. In films, no one ever just coughs for no reason.

That is how it has become in real life since the start of this virus so now when Ellie starts coughing, I cannot help but feel a little twinge of panic. I buy honey and lemons and something called fire cider which is made from Kombucha vinegar, garlic, ginger, tumeric and onions.  I'm going to sort that cough out.

News is that the coronavirus victim in Harare has died.  He wasn't even thirty and he was a government minister's son. Unfortunately, he was not allowed to be transferred to a private hospital from Wilkins, the government infectious diseases hospital as private hospitals are not yet allowed to receive patients.  I am sure he had access to huge amounts of money and it is ironic that he should die in a government hospital, especially as his father is on record for saying how good the Zimbabwean health system is. Some may call it bad luck and some may call it karma; either way, it has got all of us who depend on private health care very worried indeed.