I love a country where having a mojito at 10am is perfectly fine. Muy chévere. Have another one. Otro mojito. And one Cuba Libre, please. Cubans start drinking whenever it pleases them. No hang-ups, just hangovers. Such a nice way to while away the time in this Jurassic Park of 50-year-old technology that still works -- Soviet-era tractors, washing machines and typewriters clanking on.
In that pleasant land, the universal myths of Cinderella and Peter Pan -- the woman who marries up and the boy who does not want to grow up -- are re-enacted collectively every year in one of Africa's most beautiful and heartfelt pageants: Umhlanga, the Reed Dance, in Swaziland.
Passion, power and sex wrapped in fab music: see U-Carmen eKhayelitsha. I couldn't disagree more with Mail & Guardian reviewer Khubu Meth (Friday, May 13), who finds it irrelevant to 21st-century South Africa. What could be more relevant to a country where a woman is murdered by her partner every six hours, than a story where the heroine is killed by her lover?
My friend in Mutare, Zimbabwe, writes me an e-mail: ''The roses are blooming in the garden, my German shepherd sleeps under the window and my young lover is back in my arms.'' Sounds like bliss. They were together in 2000, split, and hitched up again this year. My friend is 53 and he is 33. How does tiny Mutare react to them?