Zimbabweans, I've come to believe, we are very passive-aggressive people. We don't like conflict; we don't like confrontation, so we find all sorts of ways of avoiding that conflict and confrontation. We are not allowed to talk about bad things that go on in families.

The prolific Chinodya has written a number of striking books, most notably 'Dew in the Morning', an exploration of an idyllic rural boyhood; the sophisticated 'Strife,' in which sins from the pre-colonial past cast shadows into the present; and the rich and varied short-story collection 'Can We Talk?'

On April 18, 1980, the last outpost of empire in Africa died. From Rhodesia's ashes rose a country that would take its place among the free nations as Zimbabwe, the last among equals. And men and women leapt to embrace this dream called Zimbabwe.

I'm not even sure that I want to go back... The Zimbabwe that I really loved, the Zimbabwe that I grew up in, just isn't there anymore, and I'm not sure about the country that has replaced it.

I tell my audiences today that I served 10 years in Nashville! That's a joke, of course; I was grateful for the work. Bob Ferguson, who produced Connie Smith, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton, started calling me in.

Stand-up comedy is something that you have to strive to do, multiple times a night, every night, to be good.

I grew up as a very sarcastic person. I was always the class clown, and to date girls, I had to be really funny. I was really skinny growing up. I was so thin, I had to run around in the shower to get wet. That kind of thin. So I always had to rely on humor and sarcasm.

Humor is one of the best ingredients of survival.