The Year The Lights Went Out

When everything familiar collapsed — health, love, money, the church, and even the nation itself — I began to learn what it meant to keep standing.

Oct 05, 2025

My new life in Zimbabwe didn’t get off to the best start.

I had bought another flat in Glasgow, and had arranged for it to be rented out. I packed my personal belongings — everything I thought I’d need for a new start — and organised my settling-in funds in cash, thinking it would be simpler to exchange in a developing African country. The CEO of the international financial brokerage I was joining told me to buy a one-way ticket, assuring me that my regional boss would arrange my visa and accommodation. Although the role was ultimately commission-based, he said I would receive a salary until I found my feet. I took him at his word and paid scant attention to the paperwork, too focused on getting ready for my new start.

As the time for my tenant to move in approached, I had still been unable to reach my new boss in Zimbabwe, so I decided to fly to Kenya, where my parents were once again full time missionaries. I thought I might stay a week or two while waiting for confirmation that everything was ready for my arrival.

Shortly after my arrival, the unimaginable happened. First, all my cash — the money I was relying on for my move to Zimbabwe — was stolen from the safe in my room as I slept, at a five-star resort where I was taking a short break. Before I had even recovered from that blow, all my personal belongings were stolen from a mission villa, in a high security compound. In the space of a few weeks, everything I owned was gone. I had made the decision not to get travel insurance — I could only get cover for 30 days, which was of little use for an indefinite stay. So, when I say gone, I mean gone.

Meanwhile, those two weeks in Kenya stretched into six weeks of waiting for my new boss to pick up. Eventually, I phoned the company’s head office in the UK to find out what to do. They told me to continue on to Zimbabwe, assuring me they would contact my regional boss and make him aware of my circumstances and arrival. I paid for my onward ticket with my credit card, bringing it to its limit.

I arrived in Harare on a one-way ticket, with none of my possessions, no cash, a maxed-out credit card — and no sign of my boss. I knew no one, had no money for accommodation or food, and no means to get back to my home on the other side of the world.

At the airport, I noticed a very respectful-looking white man holding a sign for a bed and breakfast. I’m ashamed now that the colour of his skin was what made me register him as safe, but in that moment, my fear left me grasping at whatever sense of familiarity I could find. Very nervously — with the thought that I might end up “dead in a ditch” — I went with him.

We drove about twenty miles out of Harare to his rural home, where I was relieved to meet his wife and their young child. I booked into their small guest room for dinner, bed and breakfast for a few days. Each day I rang my boss’s number, and each time the phone rang out. My hosts began to ask gently about payment, and I explained with as much confidence as I could muster that my boss would settle the bill.

The days dragged into weeks, and the stress and isolation started taking a toll. The only other people I saw each day were my hosts, briefly at dinner. The atmosphere had grown strained — I didn’t know how long I would be there, and they were relying on my word that they would be paid. I began to keep my distance. In an unfamiliar country, thousands of miles from friends and family, I felt myself detaching from my surroundings. Time stretched, and with little to do, I hid myself in sleep.

When I finally reached my new boss, I learned that he and his wife had been out of the country for several months dealing with visa issues. He had no idea who I was, let alone been expecting me. There was no office waiting, no salary, no formal position. What he did tersely offer me was a rolling loan account — which he would personally have to fund from his savings — a telephone line, and a Yellow Pages.

I recognised that I had reached a crossroads. Either I would fall apart, or I could set to work.

I set to work.

I made three lists. My “Things I like to have around me” list reminded me of what made me feel secure — small constants that would help me anchor in this new place. Cut flowers, hand-made pottery — things that conveyed care to me. My “Things I’d like to do” list was full of daredevil activities to look forward to, things I somehow knew would help in rebuilding my inner strength and self-belief. My third list set outrageous professional goals — “top consultant in the world,” that kind of thing. Not only something to work towards, but something to stay focused on.

I started phoning professionals, making it clear to each one that I had been a top investment consultant in the UK. To my surprise and relief, my calls were welcomed —everyone wanted to meet. Many had been squirrelling money into offshore accounts for years and were desperate for reliable investment advice.

I began earning good money quickly, and being paid in pounds sterling meant it stretched further than it ever could at home. I paid off my loan, found a short-term lease on a beautiful house, and hired a driver to take me around each day. I met other expats and, together, we enjoyed the delights Zimbabwe had to offer — parties, restaurants and clubs, yes, but also the wild edge of the place. I sky-dived; parascended off the Zambesi escarpment; and body-surfed off the back of boats in croc-infested Lake Kariba. My self-belief soared. I also found a local church I enjoyed — missionary friends of my parents from Mocambique had recommended it. Finally, my stress began to ease.

And then I met someone.

I’d had a few long-term boyfriends before leaving the UK. I hadn’t been drawn to any of them so much as flattered by their attention, and each relationship ended disastrously. This time seemed different.

Our office had expanded to include two new consultants. One Sunday, one of them — Jan — said he was going to play golf and invited me along. Keen to escape the dismal house we were all living in at the time, I accepted. This was before my success, and with limited clothing I was dressed like a twelve-year-old — faded denim shorts, tennis shoes, and a Disney T-shirt. Two men walked past us, laughing and joking. One of them caught my attention with his laugh — and of course, they were the two-ball Jan was paired with. We shared half-time drinks, and I was taken by how charming and chivalrous they were. They were brothers, and while the younger mentioned his wife, the older — the one I liked — was not married. So when he offered to show me around Harare, I accepted.

We had seen each other a few times over several weeks before he told me he had been engaged when we met, and had just broken it off. His former fiancée told people she ended it after finding us in bed together — a lie, we weren’t lovers. But it was her word against mine, and I was a newcomer. The white community in Zimbabwe was small and tightly knit, with little room for anonymity, so her version travelled quickly — into my church, and even to my parents in Kenya via their missionary friends.

As the rumour settled, I felt judgement close in from all sides — from strangers, and from people I had called friends. The man I’d now begun dating met me with understanding and support. He was becoming my only steady constant. Within weeks he proposed, I accepted, and we moved in together. Although it was a fairy-tale proposal, I wasn’t feeling the joy I had expected. I had been labelled a home wrecker — the single woman who had come to Zimbabwe to snag a husband, and who broke up a ‘happy’ relationship. And regardless of the fact that we were engaged, my church judged me for having moved in with my fiancé. I carried a heavy shame, and seeing that judgement reflected back wherever I turned only reinforced it. Other than my husband-to-be, I felt quite alone.

I poured my energy into work, the one place I felt seen and appreciated. Within nine months of my arrival in Zimbabwe, I had reached the top of my field — netting £37,500, in a single month, in 1995. I had reached my goal of being the leading consultant in my company’s global operations.

I had achieved everything I’d set out to — from a standing start. And I was due to be married in four months! I thought that I would just continue to keep all the plates spinning. But it wasn’t long before they began to fall.

(Content warning: this section includes descriptions of domestic abuse. Please read gently and pause if you need to.)

My husband had begun staying out until the early hours after rugby training and golf — Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday nights. Sometimes he did not come home at all. He had become volatile, walking out after the slightest offence. When, after eighteen months in our own home I laughingly teased him for not knowing where the dish towels were kept, he walked out. He was gone for two days. When I confronted him, his words ran out before mine did, and he used his hands instead. The first blows shocked me more than they hurt.

There were many incidents. One day, we argued in the car about his hidden use of my credit card to buy me lavish gifts — all to impress my parents with his ‘love’ for me at Christmas, a couple of months before. He hit me hard on the ear, rupturing the eardrum. I asked him to stop and let me out of the car, but he refused. At the next junction, as the car stopped, I opened the passenger door and jumped out. He caught the back of my jacket and pressed the accelerator. I was dragged along the road for twenty metres, on my forearms and face.

Years later, I watched a film about the Irish journalist Veronica Guerin. There is a moment when she looks into a mirror after being badly beaten. I wept. I knew that shock — the disbelief of seeing one’s own face looking unrecognisable.

When he saw what he’d done, my husband was stricken with remorse. I asked him to take me to his brother’s house — I thought that if anyone could talk sense into him, it would be him. Both he and his wife were visibly shocked, but neither said a word of reproach. I drove on to the home of an older friend, one of my church elders. She told me I should speak more respectfully to my husband.

Eventually, I learned he’d been having an affair with his ex-fiancée — and had an account at the Holiday Inn, where he entertained other women. I went to our pastor and to the church elders about my husband’s abuse, and with evidence of his infidelity. But I was kindly reminded that God hates divorce — that I had made my bed and should lie in it. Each time I pleaded for the help of our church, their response tightened the net a little more.

It was that, more than the violence itself, which marked the point where I understood how alone I was. I had believed that faith communities existed to protect the vulnerable. Instead, I was met with silence.

I began to understand how easily theology can become a cage. My husband knew it too. I pleaded with him to change, but he knew that I had made a vow before God, and that would not allow me to leave. “You know what to do if you don’t like it,” he taunted. To his friends he boasted that they should find themselves an “import” (imported wife). According to him, Zimbabwean women knew only how to secure a man with prospects, have children, and then live a life of leisure while the maid took care of the kids. But he had found himself a Golden Goose, and for that he should be applauded.

Over time, he convinced me that his anger with me came from wanting children and my failure to conceive. While we were engaged he had been kind and caring when the pain of my endometriosis took me to bed, but he had swiftly grown callous and disparaging of me. But, falling for the age-old lie that this ‘could save our marriage’ we went for tests. His results were normal, while mine showed that at 29, I had entered premature menopause — producing less oestrogen than a post-menopausal woman.

I was officially diagnosed infertile.

As the pressures at home increased, I grew steadily unwell — in both mind and body — and stepped away from work. My energy drained away, but my mind and body would not rest. My hands trembled, I sweated constantly, and my heart began either skipping or racing. When I checked my pulse while lying still, it was one hundred and forty beats a minute. I was so caught up in the frightening moment-to-moment experience of it all that it took time for me to notice the swelling in my neck, or that my eyes no longer looked normal — they had begun to bulge.

The diagnosis was Graves’ Disease, an autoimmune disorder of the thyroid. I was prescribed carbimazole to suppress hormone production, and propranolol — beta blockers — to slow my heart. Neither worked. The doses grew so high that the pharmacist questioned the prescription.

In no condition for surgery, I flew to the UK for radioactive iodine treatment. By grace, an old university friend of my uncle — now one of Scotland’s leading endocrinologists — had agreed to see me at short notice. Before the treatment could go ahead, I was asked to provide medical evidence of infertility. At that time, the radiation posed a lasting risk to any future pregnancy, and treatment was reserved for women who could no longer conceive. My Zimbabwe doctors confirmed my diagnosis of infertility, and the procedure went ahead.

My recovery was slow. After the treatment, I remained physically weak and, with no change in my marriage, my mental health further declined. I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety, social anxiety, and depression, and prescribed Valium. Yet something within me — a quiet knowing — warned me not to take it, that I would find another way. Looking back now, with the understanding of my recent MCAS diagnosis, I see the wisdom in that inner guidance. Most medications make me sicker, not better. At the time, though, I had no idea what I should do instead.

The depression settled heavily. My confidence ebbed away, and with it the will to stand up for myself. I felt hopeless, alone, and without direction. My body was so weakened I could not lift myself from the bath. I spent weeks in bed, in a darkened room.

And quietly, in the background, Zimbabwe was crumbling.

While I had been living in comfort, Zimbabwe’s economy had been collapsing. Ten years earlier, Robert Mugabe had assumed the new role of executive president — a position that combined head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. It gave him the power to dissolve parliament, declare martial law, and run for an unlimited number of terms. With unchecked power came decisions driven less by prudence than by political survival, and over time the country began to bear the cost.

By then, average wages were lower than they had been fifteen years before. Life expectancy had fallen, and unemployment had tripled. At the same time, former guerrilla fighters from the liberation war were demanding pensions the state had never budgeted for. In August 1997 — the same month I was receiving treatment in the UK — Mugabe announced a compensation package worth Z$4.2 billion, about three percent of the country’s GDP, with no plan to fund it.

On 14 November, he ordered the finance minister to release the full amount as a one-off payment to more than fifty thousand war veterans. Within four hours, the Zimbabwe dollar lost almost seventy-two percent of its value, and the stock exchange fell by nearly half. The nation experienced an electricity blackout — not just for hours, but for the whole weekend. Even in Harare, traffic lights and street lamps failed. Yet this was only the beginning.

Together with an abusive marriage, this was the landscape through which I would now navigate not only my recovery, but my return to work. I think I only made it because God showed up.

The Year The Lights Went Out

When everything familiar collapsed — health, love, money, the church, and even the nation itself — I began to learn what it meant to keep standing.

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