Swango spent his first night in Zimbabwe at the Selborne, a colonial-era hotel whose wide verandah overlooks the city's bustling central square. The next morning, Mpofu picked him up for the drive to the church's mission hospital at Mnene. Yet Swango voiced no complaints as they ventured ever farther from what most Americans would consider civilization. It lies in the region of Mberengwa in south-central Zimbabwe, in what in colonial times were known as the tribal lands of Belingwe, in the heart of the bush. There are no towns to speak of, scant electricity, almost no telephones.
Most people live in extended family units in clusters of mud-walled buildings with thatched roofs.
Drought and malaria are constant threats, in part because the lower elevation makes the climate more tropical than it is on the high plateau where most of the white population lives. The region is served by three hospitals, one of them also called Mnene, all founded in the early part of the century by Evangelical Lutheran missionaries. Mnene Mission hospital, a cluster of one-story whitewashed buildings with corrugated metal roofs and wide verandahs, is set atop a hill with distant views and refreshing breezes. The buildings look much the same as they do in a photograph taken in 1927, when the hospital was built. When Mpofu and Swango finally arrived, Dr. Christopher Zshiri, the hospital director, hurried out to greet them.