Dearest Deborah,

Happy Birthday Shamwari. I am missing your visits, your chats, your laughter, your advice, your informative Whatsapps, your crazy presents, your cutting-edge ideas, but most of all I am missing you. Rather than curling up in a ball and crying, I am making a garden. A bull in a china shop, a dog with a bone, ‘bloody minded’ I think Mum calls it – you and I have never done anything by halves; we have enough enthusiasm, dedication and determination to make Mma Makutsi with her 97 percent look like a layabout. So, on your birthday, Friday 13th of May, I am planting nearly 500 plants which I have grown from seed or tiny plugs. Like a real Zimbabwean I am doing that now, just now, right now, now now!

Lots of love and hugs your No 1 sister Anita. XXX

PS Sean mentioned how he loves hearing your African stories. Which one shall we tell him? Maybe one about plants, maybees the one about the elephant ear plant...

During the school holidays, you and I enjoyed freedom - complete freedom of being at home on our own. Mum and Dad were at work. I had eaten all the chunks of peaches out the jam, snapped the trunk of the Tamarillo tree while trying to pilfer fruit and tracked down and gorged on every red strawberry in the garden. You had used every cup from the cupboard for your chocolate cake cooking demonstration, whilst pretending you were on TV. We had earnt $1.20 each by digging donkey weeds out of Dad’s lawn at one cent per donkey weed (bulb intact). We had built a tent out of Dad’s dustsheet, read our Enid Blytons, eaten lunch and it was only eleven in the morning. No war, no burglaries, no bushfires - nothing happened at this house, well apart from ‘the flood’ and the lady neighbour clad in a bikini, who would park her towel against our fence and wave to Dad. Mum said Bikini Clad lady was welcome to him, but she would probably bring him back by the afternoon. Nothing ever happened at this house.

We decided to head for the main road; Golden Stairs Road. Roller-skates, straw hats on and wearing sunglasses over our Incredible Hulk masks from the UK, we were off to wave at the passing traffic. We regularly did this and loved the hoot of the horns, drivers slowing down, passengers leaning out their windows, the laughter and the waves. In a country where there was only black and white television, one channel and with many people not having TV, we were a phenomenon.

This day was different, you had another creative, cutting-edge idea and I was only too willing to go along with it. You suggested I needed a costume to look more like the Incredible Hulk. We hacked down two gigantic leaves from the elephant ear plant with Mum’s bread knife. I am sure we rinsed the knife afterwards because we knew when David McFadgon ate elephant ear plant he had to have his stomach pumped. With a skipping rope, you strapped one leaf to cover the front of my body and one behind. I was green just like the Incredible Hulk.

We headed for the main road, slowly as I didn’t want to rip my costume and it was difficult to skate because the sap kept dripping down my legs, so you discarded your skates and mask and pulled me along on the end of the dangling skipping rope. Up the drive, across a road and along a red ribbon of dirt track up a hill - this too proved difficult because I kept rolling back down and I couldn’t bend forward, as the midribs of the leaves were so thick it was like having a lamppost tied to the front and back of me. Finally, with you hauling me up, we made it up the hill to the main road. A Toyota truck with passengers spilling from its cab and trunk tooted and slowed down. Its people whistled, whooped and waved. We waved to traffic for about ten minutes before my legs started to tingle, before my arms started to itch, before I started to scratch. The itching became so intense it started to burn. I was on fire! I abandoned my skates. I ran, ripping, scratching and discarding my leafy attire back down the dirt track, back across the road and back down the drive. Key, key, back door, bath tub, bath tub, bath, taps, I leapt in, taps on, taps on full blast, plug in – I whooshed, splashed and plunged my burning skin… Relief - I laid in the bath, the cool water washed away the poisonous sap and soothed my red rash. I was no longer green, I was red, very, very red.

‘You looked so funny man,’ you said later, ‘legging it down the drive, just like the real Incredible Hulk. You know, when his shirt rips and he throws it to the ground when he is angry.’