Scarface

I don't know what Mr. Calderwood headmaster of Peterhouse must have thought when he was hoisted in the back of a police vehicle and taken off to spend a night in the cells but he must have been very relieved to be released on bail the next day.

Just when you thought it can't get any worse it does, it gets so much worse. We spend our days reeling from one shocking incident to the next. At the same time we are trying to keep a grip on our lives, marriages and families as all things safe and real spiral away from us. Then in the midst of all this you go and do something really stupid to yourself. No not suicide!!. I decided to whip my moles off my face that had been constant companions to me for a number of years. Why I suddenly thought it was very important to get rid of them I have no idea but I booked myself into the last surviving plastic surgeon in Harare and went through with it. Our own lovely surgeon in Mutare was away and I heard through the grapevine was no longer doing mundane things like moles but now I wish I had waited. As I was pinned down on the operating table under the surgeon's scrutiny I started to have second thoughts but it was too late. So I resigned myself to my fate.

The surgeon seemed taken aback by the amount of sun damage to my face and pointed to various things rather accusingly and asked abruptly if I wore a sunhat at all times. Well no I had to admit feeling ashamed and very vulnerable under his operating spotlights. I was wondering if he could tell I hadn't plucked my eyebrows for ages. He tut tutted in disgust at my sun spots and started sharpening his knives. I cast my mind back to my teenage years when we would lie on our front lawns dowsed in cooking oil and lemon juice and fry ourselves between 12 pm and 1pm listening to LM Radio. Nobody had ever heard of melanoma. Our mothers had never heard of sunscreen either in the era I was brought up and only pansies wore sunhats.

It was soon over and I staggered out looking like a survivor from the chain saw massacre. Having coffee with a friend in Cork Road afterwards I felt all eyes on me, they probably thought I had been attacked by a Rottweiler or a machete wielding settler. I hid behind my menu feeling like a lepper. In time hopefully the scars will fade but as I see the demise of our most beautiful country I don't think the scars in my heart will ever heal. I am sure you feel the same.

Mandy Retzlaff
Bvumba
Zimbabwe