Dear Family and Friends,

I don't know what the colour of sadness is, but this October 2007 I think it must be purple. The streets in our suburbs, towns and cities are lined with Jacaranda trees and they are in full blossom, carpeting the roadsides with soft purple flowers. The Bougainvilleas are covered in flowers too - mauve, lilac and bright purple. It's hard to believe that with such tropical brilliance all around us this hot October, there is such sadness too.

Dear Family and Friends,

There are fruit flies in my fridge! Stupidly I keep putting things there to keep them cool in Zimbabwe's searing October heat but at last the reality is sinking in. After the second week of having electricity for just five of every twenty four hours, fridges and deep freezes have finally given up. In my area the electricity has only been on for 25 of the last 120 hours and then only in the middle of the night. Now we have no choice but to live from hand to mouth.

Dear Family and Friends,

Standing outside over yet another smoky fire late one afternoon this week, a Go-Away bird chastised me from a nearby tree. I'm sure this Grey Lourie is as fed up of me intruding into its territory as I am of being there - trying to get a hot meal for supper. For five of the last six days the electricity has gone off before 5 in the morning and only come back 16 or 17 hours later a little before midnight. "Go Away! Go Away!" the Grey Lourie called out repeatedly as my eyes streamed from the smoke and I stirred my little pot. My hair and clothes stink of smoke, fingers are yellow and sooty but this is what we've all been reduced to in Zimbabwe. Our government don't talk about the power cuts anymore and don't even try and feed us with lame excuses about how the power is being used to irrigate non-existent crops. We all know it's not true and the proof is there in the empty fields for all to see.

Dear Family and Friends,

The eyes of the world have been on Zimbabwe for the past week and it is heartening to know that we are not alone and humbling to think that people care about our plight. In fact, everything about life in Zimbabwe is pretty humbling these days. As the weeks pass and conditions deteriorate ever further, it is hard to understand how people are surviving and beyond belief that we have not erupted into food riots and violence. When you see schools still desperately struggling to maintain standards and continuing to educate our children and institutions scavenging for food for their residents, it is truly humbling.

Dear Family and Friends,

Day after day Zimbabwe is on fire. Smoke rises in almost every direction, the wind carries trails of black debris and every evening the sky is smudged with ash. Night after night there is a great orange glow on the horizon and long after the moon and stars are overhead the fires continue to burn unchecked and out of control.

Dear Family and Friends,

This week I write with three short anecdotes from small town Zimbabwe. They are not connected to each other in any way except by example of life in a country which, by all reasonable accounts, is barely functioning. These are all true stories, and putting them down in black and white makes the absurdity, and fragility, of our lives here frighteningly real.