What a busy day. I am awake at 6am, and leave with Basil by 7 for his office a short distance away in Harare. Here I am introduced to Pam, his personal assistant, and get to see some photos he has taken of Reaper’s operations over the past few years. With cheques signed and business generally attended to, we depart again for the rural town of Rusape, where Reapers own a petrol filling station. The trip takes about an hour, and when we arrive I am surprised to see attendants at each pump, before realising that self-service stations are simply not present in Zimbabwe. I am introduced to Davina, the station manager who gives me a tour while Basil conducts a meeting. “I hear that you have to fill up the cars yourself in England?!” she observes.

Basil returns and we continue driving, making a brief stop at a storage depot before visiting the larger of Reaper’s two groudnut processing facilities. The raw groundnuts are being delivered and stored ready for processing, which will start on Monday, and last for most of the following ten months. After a brief tour, we have lunch at Basil’s country home, and drive to a local country club to attend a farmer’s meeting, the last stop for the day (my head is already spinning with new places and names).

This was most definitely the main event of the day. We arrved as the chairman was plodding rather monotonously through some statistics, and were then subjected to a *very* detailed report about the events that had occured at another meeting the previous week. The meeting started getting very interesting when a fierce debate about “the land issue” erupted. Everyone accepted that land reform was necessary, but none agreed that the current methods employed by the government were appropriate. A rough consensus was reached – that a letter should be produced and presented to illegal occupiers, informing then that their occupation was illegal and the farmer was co-operating under duress. We broke for tea, during which time I met Kim, another local farmer growing a number of different crops, who offered to give me a tour of her farm during my stay.

After tea, the association had it’s AGM, which went well until close to the end, when two charity donations were proposed, and it was doubtful whether the farmer’s association could afford to give $100,000 to them both. A forthright farmer rejected one cause as unworthy, and caused a more moderate farmer to resign from the association on the spot.

We had stayed longer than Basil had intended since the meeting was so eventful, and it was long dark. The journey back to Harare was the scene of a lively political discussion with Basil, during which I learnt much about “the land issue”. We stopped briefly at a friend of Basil’s before finally arriving home, to a late dinner. I watched a movie on digital TV and then retired.