Mandla found something oddly unsettling about her indifference. Not in a troubling way. It was not coldness, and it was not punishment. Chichi had tried both of those before. This was something else. It was the kind of peace which meant she didn’t need him. He had been married to Chichi for four years and she had never not needed his approval. She needed him to notice her hair. To tell her the dress looked good. To laugh at the story she had already told twice because the first time he had been scrolling through his phone. She needed him to say the food was good, that she was beautiful, that he was happy, that they were okay. Even when they were not okay, she needed him to say they were. Especially then. There had always been something almost desperate in the way she watched him. He had not noticed it at first. Or perhaps he had noticed it and liked it. That possibility made him uncomfortable. There was power in being needed. He had never said that aloud, of course. He was not some vil...
I am sitting in a meeting planning for the close-out of US Government-supported programmes in Zimbabwe. Even writing that sentence feels strange. For more than two decades, American funding has been woven into Zimbabwe's development and health response. HIV. TB. Malaria. Maternal and child health. Food security. Orphans and vulnerable children. Adolescents. Reproductive health. Humanitarian assistance. Education. An entire generation of development workers has grown up inside this ecosystem. And now, we are sitting in meetings discussing how to close parts of it down. I am not a political analyst. I cannot give you the sophisticated geopolitical analysis of how we arrived here. I cannot tell you who should have conceded what, or give you a technical model predicting exactly how many lives will be affected. But I am a witness. I have sat in the meetings. I have watched programmes move from PowerPoint presentations into communities. I have seen healthcare workers trained, medicines d...