“Meddum,” she said. “I have some bad news. Nelson is in prison!”

It was the jetlag, I thought, I couldn’t have heard right. It was bad enough coming home to find Saziso, our lovely housemaid, pregnant. We’d only been gone a month; how did I not know before?

Trying to get my travel weary brain to focus, I asked “Nelson? Prison? How? Why? When?”

Apparently, the police had just turned up at our house two days ago and told her. Saziso had tried to find out, but as was the norm here, she wasn’t told anything. Neither were our local friends who she had gone to for help.

“Not Nelson,” we muttered despairingly, he was the sweetest man God had ever created, with an extra heart where the brain should have been. My husband went directly to the local police station, while I came inside to unpack, shower, and make sense of it all. Random arrests in Hwange were not uncommon, but what could the authorities possibly want from a simple, hardworking, and honest gardener? I found myself in tears, thinking of our dear sweet boy.

This is a true story. I’ve heard it so often; I can recite it verbatim just as my father told it.

He’s been retired for thirty years, my father, exactly as long as I’ve been married. Retired as an Infantry Brigadier General from the Indian Army after which he continued to work as the Security Advisor at the Indian Tea Association. In fact, at 84, recovering from a massive heart attack, he still thinks he does… his poor bosses at ITA just don’t know how to get rid of him.

Like every old-fashioned gent (not many of them around anymore, sadly), he has a handful of stories, which come out every time there is a group of people, a few drinks, and fried peanuts. They are taken out lovingly from his little repertoire, told, polished, embellished, and then put away till the next time. My sister and I had to go through it all with our friends as we were growing up, there was no escaping. And now, our children must as well, no escaping for them either.