TAB

'That's Africa Baby!' was the incessant and, if truth be told infuriating, cry of the old Africa hand. Produced in response to any complaint about bureaucracy, sickness or any other sort of inconvenience.

I went over to Zimbabwe on my Gap Year and taught in a really very remote little Mission School in the middle of the bush. None of you will ever have heard of it...or at least now you might have, because, slap in the middle of the dusty, parched and, above all, uninteresting and quiet little region diamonds have been discovered.

To be honest you could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw this. Admittedly the only reason it was newsworthy was that Mugabe was appropriating the mine without compensation, but still... But I was really quite tickled by this story that emerged recently. Some poor Belgian has been picked up with illegally acquired diamonds in Mutare (a once-lovely city).

Fortunately for Ibrahim [the Belgian], the State will not be able to produce the exhibit because the diamonds disappeared in the hands of a police sergeant. The sergeant will soon be arrested in connection with the theft, police sources said yesterday.

I love Africa...