During the armed struggle for the nation's independence, the Eastern border provinces of Rhodesia became the center of intense military activity. Accordingly, it was from this region that entire villages were evacuated, as families crossed into Mozambique to escape enclosure by the Smith regime into "protected villages." The Tangwena people of the area, long pursued by the white power structure in an attempt to disperse them, moved en masse across the border. It was also from this region that vast numbers of school students and other frustrated youth left to answer the call to swell the ranks of the liberation forces. It was natural then that the resettlement of returning refugees from Mozambique camps between January and September 1980 was concentrated in the general Umtali-Fort Victoria area. It has been estimated that one out of every eight Zimbabweans was displaced from his or her area of residence during the liberation war,1 and that a total of 200,000 spent their years of exile in refugee camps outside the country. The refugees, however, were not merely numbers to astonish and concern the statisticians. They were human beings with everyday common needs, physical and mental, who reacted to this upheaval with very human emotions. It is on this level that I wish to discuss some of the experience of those who were fortunate enough to return to Zimbabwe in 1980 to rebuild their lives. I shall briefly describe the repatriation and resettlement exercise as I witnessed it from my position as director of a returnee transit camp outside Umtali. Thereafter I shall make a few observations about the psychological difficulties involved in rehabilitation, and the response of the receiving communities, concluding with a brief glance at new government policies as they affect resettlement in the Manica