THE YEARNING STARTED THE moment we set out from Harare on the eastward road towards Mutare. All the pain, the hurt, the desperation about a love which could not be lived shrank to tiny dots, like drops of blood which, once dried, you do not notice anymore. In their place my heart was filling with longing.

Passing through Marondera, with its huge mills and silos which in the years to come would be filled to the brim with maize, Zimbabwe becoming the granary of the SADAC region; shortly after, Malvatte, the farmhouse where you could have coffee and cake on the lawn, surrounded by orchards and grazing sheep, and fill up on fresh vegetables; an hour later, Rusape.

Remember, Dambudzo? Our two days there, the pain of your return, the passion of our embraces?

‘It is an eagle, an elephant, a whale!’ the children cried out at each picturesque rock formation we drove past in the grassland on our right.

After another hour's drive we had reached the crest of the road. Down below us the city of Mutare, glistening white, spreading far out onto the plain.

What is he doing? Does he feel lonely? How is he feeling all by himself ?Some miles past Mutare, the road began to climb again and we drove, up, up, up, in serpentine loops towards the heights of the Vumba, a cone-shaped mountain of about 1 900 metres at its peak. The higher we climbed, the more it felt like we were entering a jungle, a dense tapestry of foliage enclosing us, slings of lianas and braids of moss dangling down into the narrow bends. On either side vines, creepers and ferns made the forest appear impenetrable. It became so dark and misty we had to switch the headlights on.

‘This is eerie,’ Max whispered. ‘Is this where the elves are hiding? Look, the road is all wet. Has it been raining?’

‘Vumba means mist in Shona,’ Victor explained. ‘It is so humid here that the moisture remains on the road even if it is not raining.’

‘Look – baboons!’ Franz crowed as a mother with a babe on her back bobbed across the road in front of us, quickly vanishing into the thicket. ‘Can we see more?’