OVER THE WEEKS following the farm invasion, war vets tried to abduct Claire on five different occasions. Groups of around twenty ZANU-PF youths would be waiting for her when she came out of school and in the car park of the supermarket when she finished shopping. She was lucky that each time the school security guards or shop manager intervened. Nigel also found himself surrounded by war vets in his car one day and only escaped by revving up and driving through them. It was so terrifying that the Houghs ended up moving to Harare.
They now live back in Marondera on the campus of the school where Claire teaches. A new baby, Ollie, joined the family in 2004, so there are seven Houghs squashed into the tiny three-bedroom bungalow furnished with the items rescued from the farm by Aqui. It is a far cry from their sprawling farmhouse, and there's a battle every morning for the one minuscule bathroom. But it is a happy home, full of beautiful blond-haired blue-eyed children reading, drawing or playing, and the comforting smell of a chicken roasting-at least until one of the many daily power cuts turns off the oven. Only occasionally does someone go quiet and a far-away look come over their face and you know that they are thinking about the big old farm with its msasa trees and rock groves or Emma's stuffed zebra that now sits on Netsai's dresser.
‘I don't like driving down that road past our farm,’ admits Claire. ‘I try not to look, I feel very bitter. But then when I see Netsai hitching a ride at the bus stop and I'm driving past in my people carrier, I think I'm still much better off. All this land grabbing has not improved their lives; they are still living a life of subsistence. You just feel, What was the point?’
They have arranged visas for Australia but are reluctant to leave their beloved country between the Limpopo and the Zambezi, still hoping that Robert Mugabe will somehow see the error of his ways. ‘Now we have a tiny little life,’ says Claire. ‘I miss the space of the farm and doing my cows and sheep and chickens, but on the campus I feel safe and happy.’
‘The thing I am most grateful for is that the children weren't there when the invaders came and so weren't traumatized. They can still have happy memories of the farm.’
In the whole Marondera district there are only five white farmers left out of around 400.
Of the 36 farming families that Nigel is related to in Zimbabwe, not a single one remains on their farm.
‘I don't think we will ever get the farms back,’ says Nigel, who has various business ventures under way, this time involving crocodiles rather than ostriches, crocodiles being rather less prone to stress. ‘I really think it's destructive to mope about the past. The good thing about what has happened is that it makes you focus on what really matters, and that's your relationships with God and family. And of course Aqui. On one side there's still a big cultural divide and our lifestyles are so different. But I feel like a barrier has been broken down. It's no longer just an employer-employee relationship but a friendship.’
Aqui is back living in the shack in Dombotombo, sleeping under the kitchen shelf and sharing the three shoebox-sized rooms with an assortment of her own children, her sister and her sister's new baby. The jit music on her neighbour's radio is as noisy as ever and she can no longer remember the last time the shops had cooking oil, milk, sugar or flour.
Her warm, vivacious personality led to her being talent-spotted and briefly starring in a television soap opera called Waiters, set in a restaurant. She played Marjorie, a hard-nosed magazine editor, always threatening to write a bad review of the food.
Like most things in Zimbabwe, the production ran out of money. She is now working for the Houghs part-time, surviving on money sent back from England by her eldest daughter Heather who works in a care home in Southend and longs to study nursing. Aqui still dreams of one day extending the shack.
She insists she wasn't tempted to keep the farm. ‘It wasn't mine,’ she laughs. ‘Anyway I don't want a palace, I just want to be comfortable.’
Although Aqui firmly believes that Nehanda should be avenged and the land returned to the Shona, she is sure that what her old hero Mugabe has done is not the answer. ‘There's no point having a farm if you don't know how to farm,’ she says. ‘Before, when I would get the bus along the Hwedza road to the Houghs' farm, I just would see green the other side, fields of mealie maize, and some nice plump Jersey cows. Instead, now if at all you see maize, it is short and yellow, because it has not been fertilized and not planted at the right time and there are no cows. Mostly the fields are black and burnt.’
Her mother still lives in a hut in Zhakata's Kraal. Nobody has cows or goats any more and the villagers are surviving on baobab pods and ground roots.
Recently the Houghs all went to Sun City in South Africa for a holiday and took Aqui with them. It was the first time that Aqui had ever flown or indeed gone on vacation. ‘I went in a big plane with them and stayed in an amazing room with a bathroom as big as my house. We all ate at the same table and they treated me like a sister. It was like a dream come true.’
As a result of Barry Percival's courageous help during the takeover of the Houghs' farm, he and his family became targets of the local ZANU-PF militia. Thugs surrounded his house, chanting and dancing, then abducted him to one of their torture centres in Marondera. The police inspector Julius Chikanda telephoned Nigel and warned, ‘We're going to kill your friend.’ Nigel was horrified but the ever-resourceful headmaster managed to escape with the help of a local party official whose child was a pupil at his school. A week later Barry and Rosanne Percival and their children left the country for England.
Netsai is still living on Nigel's farm. Her boyfriend Shasha died shortly after the takeover, the third person involved to die mysteriously.
The whereabouts of General Tongogara and his giant blow-up whale are unknown.