ONE DAY VICTOR CAME HOME from work in high spirits.

‘Guess who gave me a lift just now?’

‘Tell me.’

‘A young white guy. A Zimbabwean. He was also driving one of those old battered R4s. We chatted all the way and got on really well. He wanted to know why we were here, where we came from, what we were doing – he was so open-minded.’

‘Wow, that's amazing. So not all whites in this country are bloody racists?’

It was a revelation. We soon became friends with Nyle, Victor's hitchhiking acquaintance, and his girlfriend Marie-Lou and, through them, met more white Zimbabweans who were sympathetic with the black government. Most of them were from the creative sector: artists, gallerists, musicians, filmmakers, actors. Some of them had immigrated from South Africa, glad to get away from apartheid society, which was mindboggling and exasperating for any sensitive person. Others were native Zimbabweans, who had hibernated during the right-wing regime of Ian Smith or, after years abroad, were returning to their liberated home country. Relieved that their tribesman's dream of ‘a thousand years of white rule’ had not come true, they joined in the general euphoria of a new beginning. Getting to know such people heightened our own feeling of being in the right place at the right time. Vice versa, our new friends seemed inspired by our company, and perhaps the flair of worldliness we brought to the parochial Rhodesian atmosphere in which they had been enclosed.

‘Look at this,’ Marie-Lou said to a friend when she and Nyle were taking a tour of our house. By then our belongings from Germany had arrived and the house was fully furnished with our things. ‘Look at the clear lines and the bright colours.’ She was admiring the Marimekko curtains in the children's bedroom. ‘It is so beautiful and so simple,’ she said. ‘These flowers, pure red and blue, on the white – and feel the cotton! You won't find anything like this here. Come and look at this, Nylie …’ But Nyle was sitting in the playroom, immersed in building Lego landscapes with the boys and not all that interested in curtains.

My heart flew for Nyle. He was a charmer.