Sunrise is around 6am, when bright sunlight pours through the straw walls of our hut to wake the children. I used to rise at this time and go to fetch water and then I'd begin cooking for us. But now I'm often too ill, so I stay in bed. Lydia, who's seven, takes Benard from me, gives him some water to drink and takes him to a neighbour's house to play.

On good days, when I'm feeling a little bit stronger, I go with Lydia to collect water. It's an hour's walk away. We bring a 10-litre jerry can, and she and I take it in turns to carry it back. But mostly it's my mother who gets the water. Then she collects firewood and, if Lydia is not at school, she will help her to cook our food — nshima [maize porridge], which we eat with okra or cabbage around midday.

We are very poor, so sometimes we don't have the maize to cook nshima, and my children may have nothing to eat for a few days. It was very difficult last year when the harvest failed and we experienced a famine, and people like me who are sick grew even sicker.

After we've eaten, I may feel weak and need to lie down. I hate not being able to do anything, and I feel very upset that I often don't have the strength to wash the children's clothes or to cook for them. My mother works in the fields, as a casual labourer, for the money we need to buy maize and paraffin, but the most she can earn is about 70p for a hard day's work. She is 75, too old to be working like this.

When I got married eight years ago I was beautiful and fat. But no longer. What is wrong with my body? What is happening to me? Nearly three years ago, my husband died very suddenly. I think he had Aids. He was a good man, and worked hard as a security guard in the city of Kitwe-Nkana, about 100 miles away. Then suddenly he got ill, and he became thinner and weaker and he had bad diarrhoea. I tried to find medicines to cure him, but nothing worked.

On February 20, 2001, on the day he was taken to hospital, he died. I was grief-stricken, but I struggled to survive. Then, nearly a year ago, I realised I was getting thin and sick myself. Now I often have diarrhoea and bad chest pains, and I need to stay in bed for days.

Last February I came back to my home village to be close to my mother, because I could no longer look after my children. I don't know how I would cope without her. At her age she shouldn't have to do this, but I'm her youngest child and we've always been close.

In the afternoons, while the children play, I'll sleep some more, and later I may go to my mother's hut and we sit and chat and she tells about long ago, when there were no diseases or hunger in Zambia. Now we've lost many people to the disease they call Aids, which I know kills people. I worry that I have Aids, and I feel angry that I don't have the strength to work and support my children. Why should I get this disease? I've been a good woman and worked hard all my life, and I want to see my children grow up.

Late in the afternoon, I watch them play football — they made the ball themselves from plastic bags. If she has some money, my mother tries to get me some bananas, which are easy for me to digest, and Mazoe, a sugary drink that gives me energy. Around 7pm I will light a paraffin light and my children and I retire to our hut to go to bed.

It can be quite cool at night, but we have only one blanket. Before we go to sleep, my mother comes to check that we are okay. I lie listening to the children breathing, but I worry about my hut: the walls are only made of grass, so a snake could get in and harm the children, and now it's the rainy season, we have no protection. I almost built a hut with mud bricks before I got too ill, but I needed 30,000 kwacha [about £3.50] to pay for a roof. Now I am told the charity World Vision will help me. So I feel very fortunate.

Some nights I am in a lot of pain and my diarrhoea is bad, so I have to get up several times to go to the toilet. The worse the pain, the more worried I get. What will become of my children? My mother may not be around for much longer. I pray that God may give me the strength to live longer, but in my heart I feel sad. I fear that I am just waiting to die.

The book A Life in the Day, celebrating 25 years of this column, is available at the Books First price of £10.39 (RRP, £12.99) plus £2.25 postage and packing. Tel: 0870 165 8585, or visit www.timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy

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