When the constitutional outreach teams arrived in my home town which is a provincial headquarter for the programme, there was a strange and tense atmosphere on the streets. Its a feeling we haven't encountered for a couple of years since the last elections and already there are numerous reports of interference, threats, assaults and intimidation.

Within two days of the start of the outreach we began hearing news of disruptions from Karoi, Chinoyi, Bindura, Mutare and Chivi. Reports told of youths chanting slogans and promising violence, uniformed soldiers marching through suburbs chanting Zanu PF slogans and of violence and house burnings. From Marondera we heard of armed men in a white double cab vehicle abducting an MDC activist in broad daylight outside the Marondera Hotel.

Despite such traumatic events taking place, and despite everyone knowing and whispering about them, life goes on in its usual and strangely dysfunctional Zimbabwean manner. On one side of the road two dozen Constitutional / COPAC vehicles were parked outside a government building. Smart cars they were, double cabs and 4x4's and a world away from what was happening across the street. It was government pension pay day and I counted 140 people queuing to try and draw their pensions. Not so easy when there is no electricity which means no computers and no access to account holders records. As if they were naughty children in the school yard, a young security guard strutted up and down the car park, waving a baton stick and bellowing rudely at people to get in line. Its embarrassing to watch such humiliation but no one does anything for fear of losing their chance to draw their own pension money.

A block away there was a similar queue of about a hundred people crowded around the doors of a building society trying to withdraw their own money, also hampered by no electricity. A bus crowded with school children went past, kids hanging out of the windows blowing on raucous plastic trumpets known as vuvuzelas causing a few stares and a momentary distraction. And outside a supermarket a street kid approached with a little square of cardboard in his hand on which was written the price of the medicine he had been prescribed for a chest infection.

'Highly vulnerable' is the phrase that we were hearing three days into the two month long constitutional outreach programme. Highly vulnerable is a phrase equally applicable to everyday life here.

Already it is clear that our desire to create a constitution that will guide the whole nation for generations to come is not going to be easy. The people must be brave, an MDC organizing secretary said this week as he urged people to get involved in the outreach consultations. Easy to say but not so easy to do, especially when none of the perpetrators of 10 years of political violence have yet been held to account for their crimes and continue to walk free amongst us. Crimes that include rape and murder, torture and arson, theft and looting. Hardly inspires confidence in the present government but certainly instils determination in bringing an end to the old order