I arrive in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital, and rent a room in a large house in a cheerful part of the city north of downtown. I plan to stay for three months or until my money runs out. The cost of the room is one-eighty a month and includes a housekeeper who washes my clothes, cleans my room, does the shopping and even cooks my meals if I'm feeling that much of an oaf.

The housekeeper is a forty-two-year-old rail-thin man, Rabson, who tells me that he's held the same job for twenty-one years. That he's been happily married for the last eighteen. That he lives in the shack out back behind the main house where I stay, and his wife, Tendai, and their three kids live hours away in Makanga just east of Gutu. He gets to visit twice a year on holidays.

He's going home this weekend, he says, and I can come along if I like. We rise at five a.m. and rush down to the central bus stop in Harare. The busses are adjacent to the outdoor market where I linger at the barrel of dried worms the size of your finger and decide on some bananas. We stand in line for an hour, then scramble for a seat when the doors open, only to wait for another hour before the bus makes a move.

The ride to Rabson's village takes ages so I spend the time repeating the few Shona words I've gleaned from the guidebook to whoever will listen. Zimbabweans love Americans, and the only thing they love more is Americans speaking Shona.

Women are holding babies and men are drinking. Some drinking expensive store-bought beers, but most guzzling traditional brew, which resembles a soupy carton of Malto Meal. Costs about twenty cents a jug and smells of turpentine. Compared to the stinky tang of chickens a couple seats back, diesel fumes, and sweating bodies, I hardly notice.

I take whatever's offered and when we arrive I fall out of the bus as it screeches to a stop. Rabson's extended family of twenty people or more come gushing up to me hugging and shaking my hand. I don't know these people but I've been away too long.

Rabson tells me we have a two-hour hike through the savanna to his village. Before we get there, most of the family has pealed off to parts unknown. Finally I see three mud brick huts, one round and two square. All of it surrounded by a hodgepodge of wire fencing to keep the riffraff away. No electricity and no running water.

Tendai ushers me inside the round hut where it's cool and dark. She's twice as thick as Rabson, not fat, but strong like a linebacker and pretty. The round hut, which she calls the kitchen, is twelve feet in diameter, solid black with a pointy thatch roof. A fire burns on the concrete floor in the center. It's smoky as hell.

I'm introduced to Tendai's parents sitting in the shadows. They're ancient. Grampa melts into a low bench built into the side of one wall, and Granny sits on a goatskin on the floor. They live hours away and made this visit to Makanga to renegotiate the bride price.

Around here the groom pays the brides parents for the right to marry. In most cases it's a debt never be fully repaid and turns into a perpetual obligation. Which by Zimbabwean standards is a good thing. The payment can be anything--several years of labor tilling your father-in-law's fields or so many pathetically thin cows. Rabson negotiated a typical deal of eight cattle, twenty bucks in cash, and a hoe.

That was eighteen years ago. He can't remember if he'd ever paid the cash, but he's sure he'd forked over the hoe. As far as the eight cattle, well, you know how it goes. He figures his father-in-law is here for a cow.

They've only got one bull, two ox, and three mangy cows to begin with. And Tendai needs all of them to plow the ten acres. They also need the animals for fertilizer, for all the good it does. One of the cows gives up the milk in my tea.