"She chose this husband. She has to live with this husband and maybe just die with the virus." — NETTY MACHUKUCHE, NEIGHBORHOOD ELDER

NETTY MACHUKUCHE lives half a block from Ruth's house and has been teaching young brides the secrets of marriage for decades.

She is 66, has spring in her legs and holes in her black sneakers. Her voice is gravelly as dried corn husks, strong as the harvest sun. Her tidy kitchen is a little bigger than a closet, barely lit with a hanging bulb, buzzing with three flies and crowded with neighborhood women sitting on the rough floor.

	BETTY UDESEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Neighborhood elder Netty Machukuche, 66, gathers young women in her kitchen for traditional sex lessons. Teaching women how to please their husbands has long been Netty’s way of keeping marriages intact. Now it is her way of combating AIDS.

Teaching women how to please their husbands has long been Netty's way of keeping marriages intact. More recently, it's been her way of combating AIDS.

Her linoleum counter displays an intriguing array of herbs: a pale red powder to stir in your porridge to dry and tighten your body before sex; fibrous twigs to soak in your bath water so you'll be lucky in love; pink granules to slip in your husband's porridge so he won't be able to have an erection with others; herbs to raise your body heat; strings of colored beads to wear around your waist so "he will be fascinated, play them like music."

Netty no longer recommends the ground bark of a certain fruit tree because she says women who used it to tighten their vaginas have higher rates of cervical cancer. But she still advocates pulling the labia. A tuft of fluff resembling cotton and sage will make this easier.

Women who don't pull their labia to make them long and enticing are like cups without handles, Netty says. Unstretched genital lips, she says, are the No. 1 reason men go elsewhere for sex.

The diaphragm does nothing to protect the labia. The wide opening of the female condom does. Some women say this makes them feel safe, but what about the men? Will they tolerate it? Will men who like dry sex tolerate microbicides, which are likely to lubricate?

Satisfying your man starts with bathing in late afternoon, Netty says, so you're "smart and presentable" when he gets home. Greet him at the door, fix him a cup of tea, have dinner ready.

BETTY UDESEN / THE SEATTLE TIMES Zimbabwean sex secrets shared woman-to-woman: Fibrous twigs to soak in your bath so you’ll be lucky in love; herbs to raise your body heat; pink granules to slip in your husband’s porridge so he won’t be able to sleep with others.

And later, in bed? Netty shows the proper movements with a basket of tomatoes held at her hips, rotating the basket as if winnowing rice and then tossing the fruits in the air a few times. She demonstrates the same movement on the ground, rollicking in a threadbare housedress atop an empty cement sack.

The neighborhood women chime in. They have tried many other things. Magic muti herbs in the furniture polish. Traditional medicine in the floor wax. Smearing cooking oil on their bodies. Smoking sheep fat over hot charcoal in the house. Seeking prayers from religious sects.

Jesca the cabbie, always practical, says she took chinamwari, sex lessons, when she was a young bride, but her ex-husband had other girlfriends anyway.

A slim girl in white bobby socks says she's done everything Netty has told her, but still, her husband stays out all night. "I'm worried," she says shyly, looking to Netty for an answer.

Netty once had 14 children. Seven are gone. Two died of childhood headaches, two of tuberculosis, three of AIDS.