A fascinating journal of the time in the mid 1990’s when Nzemza-Shand returned to Zimbabwe with her Australian husband Adam Shand. She is a qualified nurse and gained a PhD in International relations whilst living in Melbourne which makes her almost effortless transition back to part time rural Zimbabwean village life all the more interesting. I say part time as Adam lived in the capital, Harare, working as a freelance journalist covering African affairs and obviously she spent time with him in the capital but she appears to have also spent a lot of time apart in the village where she was born and grew up. She only mentions Adam as being in the village during specific events and they clearly spend a lot of time living apart whilst she gets more involved in village life and it is those periods which are the most interesting in this book.

The tale starts with the impact of the AIDS epidemic in Africa and the loss of so many people including family friends and ultimately her brother Charles, indeed it was to attend funerals that first brought her back to Zimbabwe from a comfortable life in Australia. Her descriptions of the simple village life in a part of Africa largely denuded of its forests and wildlife even during her lifetime, of the coexistence of Christianity and ancestor worship, and the poverty of the villages especially compared to the greater affluence in the capital is powerful reading. Polygamy is also normal in rural Zimbabwe with men having many wives and lots of children with each of them which of course adds to the scarcity of food for such large families and the resultant hand to mouth existence for so many she describes.

AIDS rears its ugly head later in the book as well when she is travelling to Omay in the north west of the country to visit the Tonga people who had been displaced from their lands by the creation of Lake Kariba in a hydroelectric scheme. Whilst they had been promised support in transitioning to a new life as farmers as opposed to a semi-nomadic existence alongside the Zambezi River this had barely materialised so they relied on international support including the Australian aid corporation that paid her to go there to evaluate what they most needed. During an evening meal stop she started talking to some local prostitutes who assume that she is also there to work in that trade and they told her that the going rate was $30 for a night at a man’s house, $40 if they went to the woman’s place but they explain that if the man wants sex without a condom then she should insist on $60 because less than that “it’s not worth getting AIDS for”.

I was particularly interested in the rituals described such as the second funeral for her brother at which his wandering spirit is finally at peace and the description of the process surrounding the death of a local chief. There is also a chapter dealing with local law and another chief’s court with justice meted out far swifter than a formal court of law and in the presence of the local people so they could see that all was fair and just. There is so much that is done because it has always been done that way without involving the formal authorities and everything is accepted by the people as right and proper. Anyone who is interested in just how rural Africa continues to operate much as it always has done should read this book and by way of contrast there is a chapter dealing with Nzenza going to a baby shower in Harare, mainly because she had never been to one.

Nzenza left Zimbabwe for a career with an international development organisation based in the USA before returning to Zimbabwe in 2011 and later starting a weekly newspaper column for The Herald, a paper based in Harare, largely continuing her theme of rural life that she started with this book. That column ended in 2018 when she was elected as the Member of Parliament for Chikomba East although she no longer holds a parliamentary seat.