Weekend getaway: Chimanimani Festival

Last weekend, right after my Bulawayo trip (6h busride), Thomas and me had planned to go to Chimanimani with Caroline and her husband. Chimanimani is in the east of Zimbabwe, about 6h drive from Harare, and they hold an annual festival that has become quite reknowned. Now, we have to admit, though it gives a pleasant vibe to the village, it's definitely no HIFA and we haven't watched that many groups perform. 

However, the scenery here is really splendid, rugged mountains, so plenty of possibilities to go hiking, swim in waterfalls, etc. But as always, it's just really nice to get away from Harare for the weekend, though the fact that this one falls between work related trips to Bulawayo and Kariba makes it a bit less fun...

A week in Bulawayo to develop artistic self expression tools there

Now, in our Volens programme, several tools have been developed to work with children and have them open up, or talk about certain issues. For that, we've used arts like puppetry, poetry, capoeira, theatre or hip hop. Now, most of this has benefitted the partners from Harare, but not the partners in Bulawayo. 

So, last week I went down to Bulawayo together with two of the artists we have been working with to develop some of the artistic self expression tools, Rahim and Chiyedza. It was, as always when I go to Bulawayo, intense and busy, but also very rewarding. On the Monday, we had a meeting with counsellors and artists that were interested in our approach of using arts as a tool to counsel, and the following three days, both artists rolled out their tools at one partner. At HOCIC, Chiyedza did Theatre vs. Oppression, and at Thuthuka 

Rahim did puppetry and hip hop with some of their street kids. It's hard though to sh

ow a tool in three days, the time children are getting used to it and starting to open up, it's already finished.  The Friday, we had another meeting with the 

same people, and wanted to see if, after what they witnessed during the past three years.  

Besides that, we also networked the entire week, meeting up with artists or interesting institutions, such as a theatre group that is already using theatre forum to work with youngsters. Also, and which I personnally felt was a great success, we met with some organisations for and of people with disabilities. Now, disabilities is a cross cutting issue for Volens and the Belgian government, so we are supposed to work on that theme, but so far we haven't had many ideas on how to go about it. 

Now, we started thinking that since we involve so many artists, why not get one that has a disability and have him/her teach the artist skill, thus exposing the children to a person with a disability but that has still managed to do something successful and inspiring with their lives. Might be a good starting point. 

So, it came as quite a shock for some I think when three people in a wheelchair also came to participate to the Friday workshop, which might indicate it is a necessary step... 

Anyway, we identified some artists, including one guy in a wheelchair who wants to do comics with the kids, three guys that do hiphop, one acrobat, slam poetry, and now we just have to be able to get it off the ground.

the BnT Hostel

The Harare festival draws quite a crowd, and this was also reflected in the amount of CouchSurfing requests we received. Where during the entire past year, we only hosted about 5 people, of which a couple were journalists, now, we got flooded with requests to the point we didn't really knew who was who anymore. Eventually, we hosted about 15 people in our little flat, with about 8 nationalities, from Lusaka, Germans driving to South Africa in a minibus, two Danish fact finding guys... 

Our place got very crowded but honestly, it was a fun feeling. A bit like a hostel, where you catch one playing the guitar, another two are swimming in the pool, some chatting or chilling. A relaxed atmosphere and we had copies of the keys made so everybody sort of went their own way. Bit of traffic jams for the bath room, but hey, that's why we had the pool filled up.