It Takes A Village...

Binga Craft Centre Zimbabwe - African Baskets

2011-12-03T17:58:00.000-08:00

In South Africa today, poverty and unemployment levels are high and xenophobic attacks have sparked a new conversation across the continent amonst the media, advocacy groups and other interested parties. Xenophobia is described by Wikipedia as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". In South Africa, Xenophobic attacks have occured mainly in the townships by indigenous South Africans against other indigenous Africans.

I spent 6 months in South Africa this year and had plenty of time to watch the news, documentaries and television debates on the issue of Xenophobia. What disappointed me most was the lack of solutions presented by the parties on opposing sides of the issue. Some South Africans felt their own people were lazy, therefore immigrants from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other African nations should be allowed to remain while others argued that all foreign owned businesses should be boycotted!! I couldn't believe what I heard.

If you are wondering how the Binga Craft Centre of Zimbabwe and the issue of Xenophobia are connected, let me explain.... I walked into a Mr Price Home store at Cape Town's prestigious shopping mall (Canal Walk) and there I saw an entire section of laundry baskets and other hand woven basket containers for the home. They looked vaguely familiar - very much the same quality you would find in a Walmart, or Target or Bed Bath and Beyond store in the USA... I turned over the label and yes, you guessed it, the woven baskets were all made in China.

What was wrong with this picture? I'll spell it out. Right next door in Zimbabwe, Swaziland, Botswana, Lesotho etc... there are thousands upon thousands of unemployed basketweavers barely eeking out a living selling a quality far more superior than what I saw in Mr Price Home. Why is South Africa importing all the way from China when they could send the business to its neighboring countries?

If South Africa, as an African economic powerhouse, were to create employment on the continent of Africa, the foreigners in their land would follow those opportunities and go home. It's a common fact that most crafts sold in South Africa are brought in by cross border traders from Zimbabwe, Kenya, Congo, Malawi etc... and many have now settled there to make a living selling their products.

Binga is located in a remote part of Northern Zimbabwe close to Zambia but it is not impossible to get there. It is certainly easier than going to China. Conditions are harsh and most people live below the poverty line, but at the same time, Binga is renown for its hand woven basketry which has found itself on display in top notch New York stores such as Anthropologie. In fact South Africa sets a bit of a double standard really, because the Binga Baskets I saw on display in Anthropologie were labelled and marketed as a "South African" product and not Zimbabwean. Not that it matters to me to be honest, I am more concerned about the bigger issues such has crafters being able to earn a living than the country of origin on the label.

The Marketing Manager of Binga Craft Centre, kindly provided the photos used in this blog. They are anxious for business and not hand outs. They don't want to relocate to South Africa to find markets for their products but unfortunately that is what is happening today. I hope this article will motivate us to push for locally produced products regardless of where we live, especially if the raw materials for those products are locally available.

Bees in War Against Poverty

2011-08-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

The Herald - August 11, 2011
By Ruth Bataumochoh

Thirty-eight-year-old Judith Rutsito of Nyajese village in Nyanga was devastated when her husband died in 2002, leaving her with three children to fend for.

With no pension, nor any formal education that she could use to look for employment to sustain the family, her only option was to brew beer for sale, which she did vehemently for a good one year.
However, a visit to one of her brother-in-laws' homestead, Mr Andrew Nyandoro, turned out to be a life-changing experience that was also to improve her ebbing lifestyle and that of her children, who introduced her to beekeeping as a source of livelihood.
Reminiscing over the trying times she went through the first two years following her husband's death, Mrs Rutsito who is known in the neighbourhood as Mai Chifamba believes her fortunes could have turned around overnight.
Beekeeping, which is centuries old in Zimbabwe, has become a well-recognised entrepreneurial activity among small holder farmers with an estimated 50 000 beekeepers engaged in the activity.
The beauty of it all is that the bee farming industry, together with the horticulture industry and the safari businesses, once the preserve of white commercial farmers, is now open to the small-scale farmers, following the agrarian reforms.
And small- scale farmers have found beekeeping as a viable income- generating activity considering that it is done on a part-time basis, allowing farmers to concentrate on other agricultural activities, while waiting to "harvest".
With no heavy capital injection needed to kick-start the project as is the case with a litany of income-generating projects, smallholder farmers can afford to make a financial projection premised on the diverse plant species as well as the ecological and climatic conditions.
Like other beekeepers sprouted around the country, farmers in the Nyajese's Village 14, have witnessed a dramatic and positive change in their lifestyle, since they started beekeeping in the area.
Although most of them inherited the beehives from past generations that relied mainly on traditional technologies, they have been able to upgrade them to hives from timber, used pots and baskets.
Use of brown sugar, beeswax and propolis as baits has resulted in increased yields, undoubtedly doubling farmers' incomes.
Nyandoro (52), who has been involved in beekeeping for the past 19 years, says his flirtation with bees has paid dividends, adding that his lifestyle bears testimony of benefits he has to date accrued since a neighbour introduced him to apiculture.
"I come from a humble background and for 20 years, I slept in a traditional granary until I managed to build a three-bedroomed house from the proceeds of honey," he said.
Nyandoro who started off with 20 hives, now has over 100, a feat he has achieved owing to patience, persistence and determination. Nyanga
"I now have a regular source of income and I am able to plan and buy inputs for my farming projects, while paying fees for my children," he gushed.
Realising that the numerous spin-offs from beekeeping, villagers have since adopted "busy bee attitude" towards honey production.
So intense are their efforts to make money from honey that they have since formed a co-operative made up of more than 50 people - all beekeepers, though in various stages.
They say the co-operative is one of the mechanism they are using to collectively market their produce, and in the process benefit from schemes that are being introduced by players keen on investing in the beekeeping sector.
Already their synergies have yielded results after a private company Savanna Delights entered into a partnership with them that will see the latter training them on beekeeping and later buying their produce.
Savanna Delights is a private company that supplies honey to retailers as well as honey as a raw material to the pharmaceutical and other industries.
The company is not a novice in the industry having trained small-scale farmers in Mutoko, Nyanga, Chimanimani, Hurungwe, Raffingora, Zvishavane, Chipinge, Buhera, where more than 1 000 households have since benefited from the initiative, which Savanna did in partnership with the Swedish Organisation for Individual Relief.
Savanna Delights is already working on an initiative to empower communities in Shurugwi and Makoni in beekeeping.
Executive director for Savanna Delights Mrs Selina Mercy Chitapi said the company was born out of the need to eradicate poverty by empowering communities with special focus on beekeeping as an intervention strategy.
"It was also born out of the realisation that the apiculture industry in the country was underdeveloped, despite the vast marketing opportunities available not only in Zimbabwe but in the region as well," she said.
Mrs Chitapi, however, said although beekeeping was slowly taking shape in Zimbabwe, individuals and organisations involved in the initiative were still not able to service the growing market.
She added that the huge deficit of honey in the country had resulted in Zimbabwe becoming a net importer of honey, despite the competitive advantage it has in producing the product at minimum cost.
"The country produces in excess of 100 tonnes of honey for the formal market, a figure which is way below the market expectations.
"As a result, a lot of people who use honey in production of say pharmaceutical products are now importing from South Africa.
"Demand for honey worldwide stands in excess of 909 million kilogrammes per annum, with Brazil and China being the major producers," she said.
She called on the Government and the private sector to support honey production, as a long-term poverty eradication strategy.
"If support is extended to the beekeeping community the country has the potential to produce three million kilo- grammes of honey from rural communities alone."
However, despite the low production level of honey in Zimbabwe, the activity is quite robust in neighbouring countries like Zambia and South Africa.
In the North-Western Province of Zambia, beekeeping has since expanded from an informal activity to a booming source of revenue, where more than 10 000 beekeepers own 500 000 hives, producing 1 000 metric tonnes of honey per year.
Half of the honey and other bee products are exported mainly to Europe, earning the country the much-needed foreign currency.

Candle Making and Goats in Zimbabwe

2011-07-13T13:34:00.001-07:00

Open Air Candle Making Class

After a tree planting ceremony in Chiweshe the village Chief expressed a need for help with income generating project ideas.

A month later, we had partnered with a local micro finance organization and travelled to Chiweshe to support candle making training and the beginnings of a very promising goat rearing project.

The Chairman of the committee shares their plans for the goat project and enclosure

Together with 2 university iterns from the micro finance organization, we came up with a plan to start 2 projects – one for candle making and another for goat rearing (a world away from New York city for sure). Tashanda did the research on the different types of candles and candle making techniques around the globe and also researched income generating ideas for goat projects.

During our visit to Zimbabwe we took alaptop and shared Youtube videos on candle making with the villagers. The purpose of the video demonstration was to encourage them to think beyond what they imagined was possible (in this case, thinking beyond residential candles for domestic lighting). It was our hope that after they had mastered the candle making technique they would begin to experiment further.

The in-progress goat enclosure

We were also given a tour of the new enclosure built for the goat project. The villagers organized themselves into groups of 11 and 20 for candle making and goats respectively. Each group has a chairman, a vice chairman and a secretary. The secretary took notes throughout the day! A candle making project for 11 villagers costs $600.

It was the most gratifying day of our visit to Zimbabwe. The villagers said a prayer for us before we left and expressed their thanks for the training they received. We can’t wait to see how their projects progress. Below are more pics of the candle making training session:

Candle making Trainer

Training underway - old man sleeping in the background, lol

Back in Harare

The house that books built - Petina Gappah, The Africa Report

2011-06-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Kubatana

Award-winning writer Petina Gappah is working to revive Harare City Library. She explains the importance of the library to the city's cultural life and launches The Africa Report's campaign to help support it.

To get to my office on the second floor of Harare City Library requires a strong stomach. You walk through the main doors of the library, then up the back stairs. There is no lift to the second floor. There was a book hoist once, but it doesn't work anymore. The binding room has been converted into a storeroom that houses exam scripts for Zimbabwe Open University. Next to the book hoist are toilets that no longer work: it is to walk past these that you need the strong stomach - and a clothes peg for your nose.

The library was established in 1902 as the Queen Victoria Memorial Library and Museum - a lending and reference library for the colony's first settlers. It soon built branches in the suburbs of Greendale, Hatfield, Highlands, Mabelreign and Mount Pleasant. Effectively, the City of Salisbury had two racially separated library systems: the Queen Victoria Memorial Library and its satellite branches for whites, and a system of libraries for blacks in the townships, run from the proceeds of Salisbury's beer gardens.

In 1982, the Queen Victoria Memorial Library and Museum separated, and the library portion of it became Harare City Library with its five branches. It still has only the five branches; there has been no expansion. Instead, there has been decay.

The library wears the hardship of the past decade in every torn and broken piece of furniture and in the mismatched curtains hanging askew at the windows. The collection in some of the branch libraries seems made up entirely of large-print books from the '60s and '70s. Some books have not been taken out since 1978. It is not a library for the asthmatic - the dust of years has settled into the books and all the fittings.

Worst of all, the roof is leaking. Above the reference library at Rotten Row are dirty splotches and what look like little white stalactites. There is not a single computer for use in the entire library. An enterprising soul has drilled a light bulb onto a fitting for fluorescent lamps. The telephone has been cut because of a bill that has not been paid for two years. The electricity bill too, has not been paid: like many institutions, the library is making part-monthly payments to keep the lights on.

On the bright side, the electricity is working, and I suspect this is partly because the library shares a grid with the headquarters of the ruling ZANU-PF party - the president's wailing motorcade occasionally silences the traffic on Rotten Row. Indeed, the library exemplifies the extent to which Harare, and Zimbabwe, has fallen in just 11 years, and the mammoth task required just to get things barely running again.

The decline of the library is particularly shocking to me because it is deeply associated with the happiest part of my childhood. When my family moved from the township of Glen Norah to Mabelreign, a modest suburb, I joined the Queen Victoria Memorial Library. Almost all my classmates at Alfred Beit School were members.

There I gorged on Enid Blytons and Malcolm Savilles, on Agatha Christies and on the Moses books by Barbara Kimenye. I became obsessed with exploration and wanted to go to Antarctica. The world came alive for me through that library, an experience that I shared with my friends and the many children who swarmed in and out. Throw a stone into the northern suburbs of Harare and you will hit an adult of 30-plus who was once a child member of the Harare City Library.

Its decline is thus not only a grievous wound to my memories, but also a shocking reminder of how much today's children are missing. I have decided to do something about it. I am currently in Zimbabwe on sabbatical leave from my job as a lawyer in Geneva. I have an office at the library because I now chair the committee that runs it.

The committee's vision for the library is as grandiose as it is simple: to make the library once again a central part of the cultural and spiritual life of the city. We want new books, computers, DVDs. A digital library. Most of all, we want a library that can sustain itself without handouts.

The reality, though, is that the immediate term, we will need such handouts. The library has been fortunate to attract attention of the A-Z Trust, a UK-based charity that recently hosted a fundraiser. The money will go towards restoring the building and repairing the roof. The main library building, built in 1962, is worth preserving for its architectural integrity: in 1964, its architects, Montgomerie and Oldfield, received a Royal Institute of British Architects Bronze Medal Award. If all goes according to plan, the building will be completed refurbished and functional by the time of its golden jubilee in 2012.

The committee has also started its own fundraising drive. We have asked some of the most profitable Zimbabwean businesses to consider the library in their corporate social responsibility schemes. We are lobbying the ministry of finance to remove duties and tariffs on imported books. We have also applied for a grant from the City of Harare - the Mayr is one of our Trustees, but considering the amount of monet that Harare needs to restore clinics, roads and schools, this is tantamount to grasping at straw.

We have already initiated an outreach programme. I have talked to school children to get them excited about reading, and my message has been simple: switch off the TV, pick up a book. We intend to take our outreach to the townships too, and, when the money allows, to invest in a mobile library that will bring books to outlying schools, hospitals and prisons. We have already entered into an agreement with an organisation sponsored by USAID to donate 2,000 books for poor children who could not otherwise access them.

The library has launched a dialogue that goes beyond the tedium of politics and focuses on other issues that matter to people. The first event in April addresses the notion of literacy and asked: what exactly does it mean that Zimbabwe has the high literacy rate in Africa? I have a fantasy that the library will be one of the spaces in which Harare interrogates the many stories of witchcraft that are reported without questioning in the newspapers. It will be the space in which people debate issues around foreign policy, around religion, around science, a space in which people discuss their responsibilities to the environment, where citizens ask just how well served are they by the press, a space in which individuals come alive as their horizons expand.

Information, education and knowledge: these are the three key tools to building a better-informed people, better decision-makers, better citizens, happier citizens.

Socrates is supposed to have said that a library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas: that is my persona vision of the library. I see it as a space that will get Harare reading and get people talking. With the hard work of my committee, the support of the people of Harare and the many friends we are gaining around the world, I am confident the day will come when I can walk to my office without having to hold my breath.

Do you have books to donate to Harare City Library? Contact us here.

How to Carry A Baby on Your Back - African Style

2011-02-20T16:11:00.000-08:00

Here's a fun/interesting blog.....Have you ever wondered how an African woman puts a baby on her back without the use of fancy baby carriers? The young lady in the video below, Kudzai Kachingwe, shows how easy it is. Make sure the baby is secured around the arms first, then wrap the legs. All you need is a towel - $10 bucks at Target, lol!

Volunteers travel to Zimbabwe to help children orphaned by AIDS

2011-02-13T15:21:00.000-08:00

By Leslie Perales of Herndon Patch

After doing a Google search for missionary trips to Africa, Shaun Shugart, who lives in Oklahoma, came across Heart4Kids.

Shugart said after reading about the organization he was convinced it was where he wanted to go.

The Herndon organization, founded by local resident Sandra Denenga, collects toys and other items for children in Zimbabwe. With the help of volunteers and donors, each year a Heart4Kids group travels to the country to visit villages and help take care of children in need.

Volunteers with Heart4Kids travel to Zimbabwe shortly after Christmas, staying for about 10 days. In addition to bringing toys to the children around the holiday season, Heart4Kids also gathers funds to help provide food, clothing and other necessities.

This was Shugart’s first trip with the organization, and his first trip to Africa. He said being a Christian, he felt it was something God wanted him to do. “He has commanded us [Christians] through his word that we are to care for his people who are in need regardless of where they are from,” he said.

Shugart said one of the highlights of the trip was seeing how happy the children and those in need in Zimbabwe were. “They were extremely grateful for what little we gave them and they immediately praised God for what they had received,” he said.

“One of the specific things that really touched our hearts was when we returned to the orphanage the following days,” Shugart said. “When we rolled up in the van the kids would come running out to the parking lot jumping up and down in excitement to see us.”

Shugart said it wasn’t because the volunteers were great and amazing people, but because they were thankful that God would provide them the joy of playing and spending some time with a few caring strangers. “The small amount of time and money invested in these children was very well spent and appreciated,” he said.

Denenga said for this past trip they were able to bring quite a few toys and goods with them. She said they brought five large suitcases full of items, and the volunteers brought two additional suitcases.

One of the highlights of the trip for Denenga was committing to do more. “We took over the sponsorship of an orphanage home,” she said. The orphanage houses 10 children who will get food, medical care, an education and the things they need because of Heart4Kids. “It’s a huge commitment,” she said.

Denenga said the cost of living in Zimbabwe is high and things like fuel, food, medicine and home repairs can be very costly. She said anything brought in from outside the country is expensive because of government sanctions. She said she feels the need to continue on though, “because otherwise these kids are going to be stranded.”

“The kids were very happy,” Denenga said. She said they recognized the Heart4Kids group and were happy to see them back. She said they spent a lot of time playing with the children and had brought soccer balls and musical instruments. She said they held a party for the children with pizza and cake and the children loved it.

Denenga said she spent time listening to the concerns of the children’s caregivers. She said many grandmothers are taking care of young children because their parents have died of diseases such as AIDS. They are becoming near homeless because they don’t have enough support, she said.

On one of Heart4Kids’ next trips Denenga hopes to bring volunteers with home repair skills that can help these caregivers who don’t have the means to do the repairs themselves, she said. She said otherwise, if they can raise enough money, they can hire local workers to make the repairs needed.

Meeting with the children that Heart4Kids helps makes a huge impact on Denenga and the volunteers, she said. “They just want to go to school,” she said. “They still have so much faith and trust in God in spite of their hardships.

Denenga left for Zimbabwe about a week before the volunteers joined her. While she was there she was able to reconnect with her 10-year-old niece, whose parents had died and was living with a family member in another village.

The family member who was caring for her niece was caring for other children as well and was having a difficult time taking care of all the children, Denenga said. She said they would often go nights without food.

Denenga said children like her own niece are the very children whose lives she wants to make better, and now that she has found her niece she can help her. She also brought her niece to her father’s grave to help provide her with closure. “It was difficult,” she said.

The next step for Denenga is to be able to increase the number of children Heart4Kids is providing care for, she said. She said people can help make a difference with the organization with very little effort and sacrifice, just by helping spread the word. To learn how to help, visit Heart4Kids.org.

Village of Hope, Zimbabwe

2011-02-11T17:53:00.000-08:00

Village of Hope supports orphaned and impoverished children in Zimbabwe. On their website they state "The current statistics tell that there are 1.5 million orphans in Zimbabwe today, but places of safety for only 0.5% of this number. They state that the average life expectancy is 34 years old because of AIDS – the middle generation of parents being virtually wiped out – leaving the care of their children in the hands of aging grandparents with little or no means – or with no care at all."

We did some research on Google and we were astounded by the sheer number of orphanages in Zimbabwe. While efforts are being made to rescue these children there are still many slipping through the cracks. By supporting missions such as Village of Hope, more children can be rescued. If you are interested in volunteering in Zimbabwe there are many orphanages who welcome such assistance. While money helps, your skills, your time and your presence are also highly valued.

From Zimbabwe to Santa Fe

2011-02-04T14:39:00.000-08:00

"From Zimbabwe to Santa Fe" is an in-progress 60 minute documentary about crafters in rural Zimbabwe competing for once in a lifetime opportunity to showcase their crafts at the Sante Fe International Folk Art Market in the USA. The film focuses on the three finalists who narrate their daily lives, their thoughts, their hopes and their dreams. While you may root for all of the contestants, the spaces are limited to only one individual per participating village.

I am intrigued by this film and can't wait to watch it. The filmmakers are currently trying to raise $25,000 to fund the remaining part of the journey in Santa Fe. If you can support, please do. Check out their website here, and make your donations here.

Trailer

From Zimbabwe to Santa Fe (work sample) from cristina mccandless on Vimeo.

2011-01-11T02:28:00.000-08:00

Hey Readers,

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ALL PRODUCTS on the Tashanda website yet?

If not, email us at info@tashanda.com and we’ll send you one !! Offer

valid until this post is deleted! So if you are reading this now, YOU

QUALIFY!!

Zimbabwe Artists Project (ZAP)

2011-01-03T19:52:00.000-08:00

When I was living in Zimbabwe in the 1990's I began to come across a new type of artwork in the form of textile art and paintings. I liked the colors and the textures which were colorful and eye catching, but beyond that I had no further knowledge or understanding of the source. Around 2003 I came to know this art as "folkart", and the name of the community which originally created it is Weya, a rural Zimbabwean family of villages in the Eastern Highlands of the country.

A group of women in Weya were taught by the European artist Ilse Noy. Ms. Noy came to Zimbabwe in 1984 as a member of the German Volunteer Service. After working for three years at the Cold Comfort Weaving Co-operative on the outskirts of Harare, she transferred to Weya where she taught local women sewing and painting skills, and appliqué and embroidery techniques. Today the Weya quilts are sold across Zimbabwe, in neighboring countries, and in fact, all over the world.

Dick Adams, a retired sociology teacher from Oregon is credited with enhancing the recognition of Weya art in America. He founded the Zimbabwe Arts Project in the late 1990's and since then he has literally transformed the lives of hundreds of people in the country. I read the newsletters posted to his website and was struck by his dedication to the artists and his committment to true transformation of their lives one individual at a time. He is an incredible human being indeed. Please read and support the Zimbabwe Artists Project website on http://zimbabweartistsproject.org/

Below is a video filmed and edited by Sarah Breidenbach showing the lives of rural women artists in Zimbabwe.

As you may already know, Tashanda also sells Weya art under the brand name Makuti Training Center (location where the women meet to train, create and gather to sell their products). We visited them only once when we were in a big hurry to get to Harare from Mutare and unfortunately we did not get the chance to learn their stories, take some photographs or let alone develop any form of a relationship. They are difficult to access as they are in a very remote (but very beautiful) location off Mutare road near Headlands. However we are very keen to meet them and hopefully one day, we will be able to support them with new business and new opportunities for transformation.

Below is a sample applique from the Tashanda wesbite. Each applique tells a story, a true story. The artist attaches a handwritten note explaining the meaning of each piece. For example below, the story reads as follows (unfortunately the artist did not show her name):

"Two friends are visiting an old woman who stays alone. They have bought some food and clothing in their bags"

In Zimbabwe the primary reason an elderly person is living alone is because their children have either left the country to seek greener economic pastures, or they have died of AIDS. The elderly are revered in our culture and so naturally neighbors and well wishers will stop by to check up on such a person, as is the case in the story. The "food and clothes" indicate they are supporting her financially as well.

Sample letter below:

Kwamsasa - African Pottery

2010-12-05T16:59:00.000-08:00

African pottery varies across the continent but in our opinion some of the best pottery is made in Zimbabwe, Africa.

This African pottery range includes vases, casseroles, tea and coffee sets to dinner sets, cruets, bowls etc and custom orders are also accepted. KwaMsasa pottery is a wholly owned and proudly Zimbabwean entity which makes the most beautifully crafted pottery.

The business prides itself in its ability to use locally and environmentally friendly materials to make its pottery. It employs ten people mainly from the high density area of Mabvuku. This is one of the poor surburbs of Harare, but the staff are full of enthusiasm and love for their work. As you can see the talent is clearly outstanding.

Kwamsasa Pottery products are inspired by and display Zimbabwean culture, heritage, people, wildlife, landscapes and the various tribes in & around our country e.g. the Tonga weave which represents Northern Zimbabwe's heritage from the Tonga tribe located in Kariba or Mixed Hide which is a mixture of hides from different animals namely the zebra stripes, lion footprint and cheetah spots.

Team At Work!

Vivi Fashions Believes in Transformation

2010-11-26T18:20:00.000-08:00

Empretec Zimbabwe was set up in 1992 as a joint initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Government of Zimbabwe as a Non-Profit making organisation. It is part of a worldwide Empretec family of organizations whose mandate is to develop entrepreneurship.

The Empretec concept started in the 1980's in South America where currently there are more than five countries with active programmes. In Africa the programme was first introduced in Nigeria and it has since been established in Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Ghana, Ethiopia, South Africa and Zimbabwe.

For a decade Empretec Zimbabwe has spearheaded the growth of a strong entrepreneurial culture in Zimbabwe through training, information dissemination, business advisory services and acting as an agent of change for SME's.

Below is a video illustrating growth and the success of local business Vivi Fashions, a woman owned enterprise supported by Empretec and the local Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe.
PART 1

PART II

Socially Conscious Music - Tracy Chapman

2010-10-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

My ipod stopped working about a month ago, so rather than replace it I've taken to watching music videos on Youtube. As I was browsing, I came across a Tracy Chapman music video and suddenly all my childhood memories from Zimbabwe came flooding back. It was a great period of my life and even my country's economy was great. Looking back Tracy Chapman's music had a huge influence on me because her songs raised questions about things I had never considered important at my young age. She came to Zimbabwe in 1988 with Bruce Springsteen. Everyone was excited about Bruce Springsteen but no one knew who Tracy was. In fact my parents are the ones who purchased her album which I didn't take to right away. Little did I know I would play it more than anyone else in the family. Without Tracy's music, I may never have deveoped an interest in social causes.

As I listened to all my favorite songs - Sorry, Material World, Fast Car, Freedom Now, SubCity, Behind the Wall and Why, I thought how amazing and underappreciated she is - she's a True Genius....
Material World, SubCity and Behind the Wall mean so much more now that I live in New York City where life is fast and you feel the need to get away, people are lonely yet surrounded by millions of people, people are starving yet fresh food is being thrown away daily, and yes, there is a city underground (SubCity) - it really exisits right here in the most famous and one of the richest cities in the world. Her lyrics are simple but they make you think. Take "Why" for example:

Why do the babies starve when there's enough food to feed the world ?
Why when there're so many of us are there people still alone ?
Why are the missiles called peace keepers when they're aimed to kill ?
Why is a woman still not safe when she's in her home?

Love is hate - War is peace - No is yes - And we're all free (we really are confused aren't we?)

All logical questions with no valid answers........

Africa - The Final Frontier

2010-10-10T12:37:00.000-07:00

The August issue of Barons online magazine discusses how Africa is the final investment target for the global marketplace:

Sizing Up the Real Risks of Investing in Africa

WHAT IMAGES DOES AFRICA conjure in the mind of the average Westerner? Probably skinny children in dire poverty, corrupt dictators and, thanks to Hollywood, blood diamonds. Africa doesn't get much attention in the West beyond that. During South Africa's successful World Cup this summer, for example, many news reports focused on vuvuzelas and few on the capable management of the event itself.

China Raising the Stakes in Africa: China's trade with sub-Saharan Africa has expanded by a factor of about 10 in the past decade. China is importing mostly commodities and exporting infrastructure and machinery, among other things

.Likewise, the noisy financial crises in the developed financial markets appear to have drowned out a decade of impressive and sustained economic and institutional progress in sub-Saharan Africa. (See table: A Decade of Improvement.) To many Western investors who don't look past the stereotypes, Africa is terra incognita. Their ignorance could cost them plenty in lost opportunity.

Take the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which in a survey last summer revealed that "over all, U.S. businesses do not view Africa as an attractive place to invest. The image of lawlessness, corruption, unstable governments, an inadequate infrastructure, uneducated or untrained people and an unwelcoming government attitude toward business serve as major deterrents."

That depiction is increasingly mistaken.

"Africa suffers from misconceptions more than any other area in the world," argues Miles Morland, whom many consider the father of fund investment in Africa. He founded Blakeney Management in the early 1990s, and now is chairman of Development Partners International, a London-based private-equity firm that invests in Africa.

Perceptions based on the way Africa once was linger in the minds of many investors, he says. The U.S. and U.K. effectively have nationalized more companies during the financial crisis (think GM, Chrysler, AIG, Citigroup, Royal Bank of Scotland, Northern Rock) than African nations have in the past nine years, he quips, and national debts are far less worrisome there than in America or Europe.

"Funnily enough," Morland continues, "people wearied by bankruptcies, meltdowns, restructuring and bank bailouts are amazed to learn about a continent that has transformed itself into one of the fastest- growing regions in the world, where banks haven't needed bailing out, no large companies have folded, with no accounting scandals and where the biggest problem businessmen have is getting capital to finance growth."

He is seconded by another investor with decades of experience, Donald Elefson, portfolio manager of the Harding Loevner Frontier Emerging Markets Fund (ticker: HLFMX). Among frontier regions, Africa is the most interesting, he asserts, because it offers strong markets with huge potential, liberalizing policies, good capital flows and undiscovered high-quality companies. And Nigeria is one of his favorite frontier countries. He contends that the giant nation of about 150 million people eventually can fill the same leading role for Africa that Brazil has played for emerging markets.

Like Brazil, Nigeria hasn't liberalized its petroleum and telecom industries yet, and its stocks in those sectors will benefit whenever that happens. Again like Brazil, Nigeria has grown strongly, even though its banks curbed lending last year. Whenever the banks ratchet up lending, that will further fuel growth. (Nigerian regulators recently forced some banks to take bigger-than-expected write-downs on loan losses. That hurt reported earnings, but has removed a nagging issue and will help future profits.)

Indeed, after a big drop from boom highs in early 2008, African stock markets—despite their problems—now offer the long-term investor a number of fast-growing companies with stocks that sell for about 11 to 12 times trailing 12-month earnings per share as of June 30, according to S&P Indices. They look inexpensive compared with price/earnings ratios in most developed markets or even in the broad world of emerging markets, where the average stock fetches 15 times trailing profits.

With many economies on the continent growing 5% to 8% annually, according to the International Monetary Fund, investors can find banks, brewers, supermarket outfits and mobile-phone companies with good prospects, decent balance sheets and relatively low P/Es (especially compared with their growth potential). Some have few rivals, provide important consumer services and boast profits that are growing faster than their homelands' economy.

IF THE WEST HASN'T NOTICED this big change, China has. With relatively little fanfare, it has made a huge foray into Africa. China's rapidly rising middle class isn't just pulling itself up by the bootstraps, but also is creating demand for resources from Africa. That's helping to raise income levels on the vast continent, as well.

Africa's bounty of natural resources, such as oil, iron ore, gold, copper and numerous others, have brought in strong trade flows from the Asian giant, with $88 billion in 2008 in exports and imports between the two, up 10 times from 2000 (see table, China Raising the Stakes in Africa). In return for those commodities, China is building seaports, power plants, roads and other infrastructure projects, which should help sustain the growth in gross domestic product expected in many parts of the sub-Sahara. Africa's economy is growing at a tiger-like 5% to 8% pace, versus 4% for countries like Russia and Brazil. And the IMF has been nudging up its forecasts for Africa.

There are compelling long-term trends on the continent, says Razia Khan, the London-based head of research on Africa at Standard Chartered, a U.K. bank with businesses in many emerging and frontier markets. Political stability and economic policy has improved. Consumption is rising, with the working-age population expected to hit 65% of the total population in 2050, versus about 50% now. And new capital, some from investment funds, is coming in. Africa's debt and foreign-exchange markets are opening up, too, Khan adds, another encouraging sign. Over all, "Africa is becoming more accessible" to Western investment.

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

2010-10-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

Awesome!

African Fabrics (Sadza Batik) For Your Wedding, Kwanzaa Decoration etc..

2010-09-19T03:11:00.000-07:00

You may be struggling with how to incorporate your western wedding with traditional African fabrics like those sold on Tashanda (Sadza Batik / Kudhinda) .

One Tashanda customer has kindly shared some photos of how her family used our sadza batik fabrics for her daughter's wedding, which was absolutely beautiful.

Please note that this was a special order, so you may not see these exact fabrics on our website. However you are free to contact us for custom orders.

Other customers have used our fabrics for Kwanzaa and their Kwanzaa decorations.

Back to school in Africa!

2010-08-26T05:44:00.000-07:00

When you educate a girl in Africa, everything changes...

She’ll be three times less likely to get HIV/AIDS, earn 25 percent more income and have a smaller, healthier family.

Dear Blog Reader,

This September, like pupils in the UK, secondary school girls in Africa are looking forward to going back to school. But unable to afford even $10 of school materials, many will have no choice but to drop out of school. At Camfed, we work to solve this problem by providing girls from poor families with secondary school bursaries, which include books, stationary, uniforms and more.

Cynthia, from the Chikomba district in Zimbabwe, is one such pupil we are working with. Her mother couldn’t afford to pay her school-going costs. Instead of starting secondary school with her peers, Cynthia stayed home. “I was devastated,” she says. “I feared my education was finished, and my dreams were dead.”

But with the generosity of Camfed’s donors, Cynthia’s future changed. “One day, the headmaster told me that Camfed offered bursaries for girls who were struggling financially, and that he had recommended me. He said all of my school costs would be covered until I finished secondary school — fees, uniforms, books, all of it. You can’t imagine the joy and relief I felt! It was incredible.”

Cynthia completed secondary school and is now enrolled in Camfed’s leadership and enterprise programme. “I’m proud of myself,” she says. “My goal of being a successful businesswoman is within my reach!”

In Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Ghana, Camfed is supporting thousands of girls like Cynthia. Will you help one or more girls go to school? Visit www.camfed.org/backtoschool to help. Your action will change her life.

Thank you so much,

Ann Cotton

Executive Director

Why Educate an African Girl?

2010-08-22T14:18:00.000-07:00

Having been born and raised in Africa there is so much injustice I have witnessed in the lives of girls and women around me. Culturally, women play a secondary role to men. As a young girl I quickly became weary and intolerant of the chauvinism around me.

In the late '90's my cousin's husband passed away leaving behind four small children. While I was too young to understand, I do recall discussions around my cousin's in-laws kicking her out of her matrimonial home and taking everything they claimed to belong to their late son. She ended up living with her sister for three years before her case was finally resolved in court. Her in-laws were awarded one third and she, the remaining two thirds. My cousin's son, who went to court with his mother for the verdict, told my mother that his grandmother had cried openly in court because she was disappointment by the verdict; and I remember thinking at the time what kind of monster grandparents would put their grandchildren out on the streets just because they despised their mother??

Tashanda likes...
I Have a Story to Tell: Celebrating Ten Years of CAMFED International
This powerful book centers on the theme of the education of girls in Africa, tackling the poverty that excludes them from it, and the opportunities and improvements in health and employment that can be its consequence.

Tashanda LOVES this documentary... A MUST WATCH...

There are many more injustices I could share. In fact, what I have presented you is just a tip of the iceberg. I think sometimes it happens so much that it becomes the norm and one fails to see the situation for what it is. A good friend of mine argues that one of the reasons for the spread of HIV and "small households" (mistresses & their children) is that there are no consequences for the male in the relationship. In Africa, when a man cheats, their women tend to stay because they are not sufficiently empowered to make it on their own, they don't know their rights, and they fear the stigma of being a divorcee. In America when a man cheats there are consequences. You can get a lawyer and sue him, you can leave him, and you can take his money. This is why it is important to educate an African girl. If you educate a girl, you feed a nation, but if you educate a man (as is the case generally in Africa and other developing countries) you feed his stomach.

Informal Skills to Earn A Living

2010-08-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

Meet an informal vendor who makes nativity sets from the branches of an indigenous tree called Jacaranda. Sorry the videos are so short, I was running out of space on my camera.

Savannah Christian Church in Zimbabwe

2010-08-13T18:05:00.001-07:00

Made in Zimbabwe with Mediocrity?

2010-07-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

Interesting blog contribution by a Zimbabwean living in Zimbabwe who is disappointed by the quality of the workmanship at a low income furniture complex in one of Harare's high density suburbs. It gives a glimpse of one aspect of Zimbabwean life. This blog story is taken from Kubatana (note that spellings are UK English). The book The End of Poverty (on the left) is a fantastic read in our opinon, and our motivation for adding this blog article today:

When a friend suggested that I should go and check out the home furniture industry located in the teeming high density suburb of Glen View 3, approximately eight kilometers out of the city centre, little did I know I was in for a quick lesson on Zimbabwean mediocrity at its most basic level. First things first: I firmly support local entrepreneurship but only if it adheres to high levels of excellence at every step of execution. Suffice to state that my story began after I complained that the prices of furniture in the city centre were simply too exorbitant for the quality of the items on offer.

My friend told me that many of the furniture items being showcased in the city shops were actually originating from Glen View 3. I immediately became curious to check out this goldmine of furniture. So, I jumped on a Kombi at Market Square and headed out to Glen View 3 keen to strike a furniture deal that would not damage my pocket yet beautify my apartment.

Because I wasn’t sure about the location of the place, I constantly reminded the Kombi’s conductor that I wanted to drop off at the furniture joint. The complex, he retorted, to my amazement. Complex is actually what the furniture joint is called by the locals, I discovered later. In recent years, the place where the furniture is being made has grown so much to deserve being referred to as a complex.

Granted, it is a home industry which is providing employment for hundreds of people that may otherwise be out of jobs in today’s precarious economic environment. I could only premise that many of the people that are working at the complex could otherwise be criminals or beer drinking and dagga smoking ghetto thugs. So it is great that such an alternative exists.

The first thing that greeted me when I arrived at the so-called complex was dust. There were dirty plastics strewn all over, and particles of dust swirled in the air. Blades of grass and plants were covered in dust. My concern with the dust was quickly swept away when I looked around and saw magnificent furniture items on display on dusty ground.

There were quite a number of stands, each guarded by salespeople who as was to be expected hassled and harassed me to buy some of their wares. The furniture items looked exactly as what I had seen in the furniture shops in the city. In spite of the bits of dust that constantly wafted into my nostrils, I decided to purchase a bed and a set of sofas.

After the transaction, the salesman commandeered me to a workshop area as he ran around to make transport arrangements at my request. And then there it hit me. In front of me, I saw one young man working on the framework of a sofa. He punched nails mercilessly into the wood. I saw him picking rusty nails and just punching them into the wood as if he was demon-possessed or as if the wood had cursed his mother. After a while, he turned to me sweating profusely and requested my opinion on whether the frame of the sofa was proportional. Not quite sure how to respond, I made no comment, and the next thing, I saw him pick up a piece of wood from the ground and attach it to the frame with a bent nail.

After witnessing this ordeal, I left the complex quite disappointed at the level of workmanship. I wasn’t surprised when the bed I bought broke three weeks later. The stuffing in the sofa was so hard and crooked that my wife and me had to furiously apologize to our visitors to take care when sitting on them. Because I had settled for mediocrity I was going to pay for it. And as the saying goes, cheap is indeed expensive. I felt cheated by my support to my own countrymen’s entrepreneurial capabilities that I regretted having gone to the complex in the first place. After much reflection, I realized that while the spirit of Glen View furniture complex is quite entrepreneurial, the problem is that it is tainted with mediocrity.

As I see it, mediocrity is indeed the bane of Zimbabwe’s progress and development. It’s so apparent in everything we do, the idea of cutting corners, so to speak. The end result is always shoddy, not up to standard products. From our music to our politics, mediocrity always rears its ugly head. Unless we shake off this deep seated mediocrity, we will continue to speak big of ourselves and have little to show for it, at least at a global level. Zimbabweans need to commit to high levels of excellence in all spheres of their lives as part of the rebranding process.

Chief K.Masimba Biriwasha

July 22, 2010

Mediocrity is definitely an issue when it comes to certain Zimbabwean products, especially those made by the informal sector. Not sure why this is the case although potentially it could be due to the need to make money as quickly as possible and the failure to look to the future. The man who purchased the broken bed is hardly going to return to buy another one. I wonder what it takes to instill excellence as a way of life in a people?

A Pram (Stroller) for Paul's Friend - Batsiranai

2010-06-17T13:01:00.000-07:00

About 2 years ago I blogged about a ten year old boy named Paul who suffered from cerebral palsy. Paul was the son of one of the mothers of disabled children at Batsiranai who makes a living by making toys sold on the Tashanda website. I'm sad to say he passed away shortly after visiting him in 2008 but we only found out when we went back to Batsiranai early last year to donate a pram (stroller) we had purchased especially for him. It was terribly depressing and demoralizing to be honest, especially after the excitement of knowing that he would finally be able to replace his hand made (albeit eco-friendly) papier mache chair with a soft well cushioned pram (stroller). It was too little, too late and I felt awful about it for a while. In fact his passing is why it has taken me so long to post this article....it just hurt too much. That day, after pulling myself together, I asked the mothers if any other disabled child needed a pram (stroller) and they all cried "Tafadzwa !!" at the same time. Tafadzwa is another little boy who suffers the same illness as Paul and he is the son of one of the women at the cooperative. They view all the children as their own and it was clear they had been waiting for an opportunity to help Tafadzwa for a very long time. They sang songs of praise as we unwrapped the pram and placed Tafadzwa in it. His mother was especially excited because she carries him on her back to and from Dzivarasekwa (high density suburb in Harare) every day for at least an hour each way.

The picture below shows Tafadzwa (left of picture) in the arms of oneof his carers. His mother, along with another 25 - 35 mothers of disabled children, makes the products seen on Tashanda (site temporarily disabled) such as African dolls, baby bibs, fridge magnets and more

There was so much joy in the room because of the purchase of this very small gift. It pains me to see discarded baby products on New York city side walks because I know they are going to a landfill when they could be put to good use where they are genuinly needed. However I still celebrate moments such as the one I experienced at Batsiranai. Below Tafadzwa's's new pram (stroller) is being adjusted to make him more comfortable. The last picture shows Tafadzwa and his mom on their first journey back home in his new pram (stroller)

I am still sad about Paul, but I am also happy to have eased Tafadzwa's suffering. Did I mention he is only ten years old? Yes, small as he is, he is ten years old! His pram (stroller) was donated by Tashanda from the sales proceeds of the toys made by the mothers of these disabled children, the women of Batsiranai.

"It's customers like you that make all this possible, so thanks, thanks very much!"

Bugaboo,Quinny,Britax,Avent, Bob,Inglesina, Maclaren,Mountain Buggy, Baby Jogger, Rock Stary Baby, Radian, stroller, baby gear, car seats

Zimbabwe's Elderly Population - A BBC Article

2010-06-03T20:28:00.000-07:00

I read an article recently on the BBC website titled "Older Zimbabweans lose life savings", which was about the plight of Zimbabwe’s elderly folks who have been left to fend for themselves during the economic collapse of the country. The photos spoke for themselves and left me completely speechless. I guess I was shocked by the level of poverty and distress that these elderly folks had succumbed to as their children had either died from HIV/AIDS or left the country for greener pastures. The article mentioned how Helpage was helping these folks, but from looking at the pictures it was difficult to determine what, if anything, was being done by Helpage to help these folks. Something just didn't add up, especially since the article claimed Helpage was spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to help Zimbabwe's elderly population. So I wrote to Kate Holt, the journalist responsible for the story to ask why the article seemed to be promoting good works by Helpage when there was nothing to show for it in the images. As I waited for a response I decided to look for the Helpage Zimbabwe website. When I found it I noticed that the same BBC photos were there, except this time, there were ADDITIONAL photos showing the same elderly folks standing in a field of healthy looking corn, or sewing industriously at a sewing machine, or sorting their corn in preparation to grind it into cornmeal - positive images. The Helpage photos were far more balanced and fair than the ones on the BBC.

Why is the BBC so biased? Is this what journalism is today? Take a look below at the BBC vs the Helpage photos and pay attention to your emotions as you review each:

BBC PHOTOS:

As an African I am very disappointed in the BBC's article which is reckless and damaging. I am not against telling the truth but it must be balanced. The BBC images are the ones the world sees, so you can imagine that this is how Africa in general is perceived. The world's reaction is to disinvest in Africa, create an economic crisis, and worsen the plight of these elderly parents and grandparents. Is there such a thing as "socially responsible journalism"? I think there ought to be.

HELP AGE PHOTOS

There is another article written by the BBC about how one in four men in South Africa have admitted to raping a woman at least once. We learned only much later that this statistic was taken from a poll of only 1,000 South African men in a country where 50 million people reside.

Isn't this unethical reporting? Is the intent of the BBC article to build or destroy Africa? Does the article create a desire in you as a reader to reach out and help Africa, or turn your backs and shake your heads at the failure of Africa and walk away? I would love to hear people's thoughts.

Bow Hunting in Southern Africa - A new spin on tourism

2010-05-23T00:10:00.000-07:00

An American colleague recently returned from a trip to Southern Africa where he experienced bow hunting for the first time. Apparently South Africa has become a top choice for bow hunters and professional hunters world wide because a) it is a vastly different experience from most parts of the world and b) it is extremely affordable. While hunting is very popular in this region of Africa I had never heard of bow hunting not that I am a fan of hunting at all.
If you are like me, and want to consider alternatives you can visit safaris and game parks for a day or more. These come with spa services, game drives, and other activities. I think people should consider Africa more when they plan their vacations because it it an unforgettable experience. It's unconventional in some ways, but that's what makes it so thrilling.

Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust

2010-03-17T13:31:00.000-07:00

During a recent visit to Zimbabwe we met the Executive Director of the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust, Farai Mpfunya. Anyone involved in cultural activities in Zimbabwe, should contact the Fund which was established and registered as a Trust in 2006 to contribute to the growth and development of the culture sector in Zimbabwe. Their support includes financial and technical support to cultural practitioners, institutions and activities. The establishment of the fund came as a result of the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and stakeholders’ desire to address inconsistent funding to the culture sector in Zimbabwe.
The Culture Fund supports the following sub-sectors:
- Film & Audiovisual & Multimedia Production
- Cultural Heritage
- Fine Arts and Crafts
- Cultural Industries
- Literature and Languages
- Performing Arts
For more information on the culture fund, go to http://www.culturefund.org.zw/
The Culture Fund supports up and coming artisans such as Richard Kaseke, who specializes in papier mache artwork. Richard's goal is to educate and teach through his art, in addition to conserving the environment by using recycled materials for his work. We met Mr Kaseke's wife who manages their craft stall at Harare's Newlands Shopping Center and she expressed gratitude for the exposure recieved through their connection with the Culture Fund of Zimbabwe Trust.
Papier mache is a hugely popular craft because of its low input costs and limitless possibilities for creative design. If you are interested in seeing some of Richard's work, be sure to let us know! Or contact the Culture Fund.

African Hammocks by Mr Gurupira

2009-08-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

Mr Gurupira & His Wife Above

I met this talented man in Zimbabwe at the Borrowdale Shopping Mall where he was selling his hammocks at the popular Sunday flea market. He is a teacher by profession and makes hammocks to supplement his income. His hammocks are 100% handmade using Zimbabwean cotton rope and fallen branches from hardwood trees. He uses a single rope for each hammock.

Mr Gurupira Stands Outside His Home (above) and Chats to us

in his Kitchen (below)

Mr Gurupira is looking for customers, so let us know what you think of his product. He lives over an hour away from the city where his wife is a nurse at a clinic in an area named Darwendale. We drove to visit him one afternoon so see him at work. Unfortunately it was wet and rainy that day so we had to cut the visit short, but he & his wife unravelled one piece he was working on for us to see as seen in the photos above. Below are some brief videos we shot while we were there:

Zimbabwe: Superwoman Found

2009-08-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

This blog was posted by Nicole Johnston Oxfam's Regional Media and Communications Officer for Southern Africa:

Women Baking Bread

For women in rural Zimbabwe, unceasing toil is no guarantee that their children will eat tomorrow. Nicole Johnston interviews these incredibly hard-working and resourceful women.

Florence Manzu speaks at a women's meeting in Gutu [All photo credits: Nicole Johnston]At a tiny village in Gutu, Zimbabwe, Florence Manzu (21) questions why she works all day but has nothing to show for her efforts. “I am a hard worker. I get up and plough the fields and I work all day. All I need is fairness. I want to buy seeds at a fair price and I want to sell my goods at a fair price.”
Instead, Florence faces the problem many poor people experience: the less money you have, the more expensive services are. The nearest bus stop is a 16km walk, and bus fare to the small town of Gutu costs $US5 each way. But shops in the village charge way over the odds for basic necessities, in a country where prices are already high. “A bar of laundry soap costs US$2.50 here, but in town it is 80c…But what can I do? I don’t have $10 to get to town.”
As we speak, a crowd of women gathers round, all keen to make their voices heard.
“We have no water to drink. We can walk 20 kms looking for water, and it is a job for women.”
“We have no toilets so we are very much afraid of cholera.”
“The clinics have no water or medicine and sometimes no qualified staff. They tell us to bring candles but how can we?”
“Schools are deteriorating but we have to pay more.”
“There is no market where we can sell our goods, so we have to barter on unfavourable terms.”

Women turn their problems into song in Gutu A lack of access to hard currency after the collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar and adoption of the US dollar has meant that most people in the rural areas are forced to barter precious livestock and their meagre harvests to pay for basic fees and services.
Children are expected to pay up to $10 each per month to their teachers, and parents tell of endless demands from teachers, from money for food to bus fare. Some parents sell their livestock to raise the cash. Parents will starve themselves to ensure children go to school.
At the next village we met Emilia and Eustina Nyamandi, waiting for their turn at the grinding mill. Eustina (26) is a subsistence farmer who grows maize, pearl millet and peanuts. But a third of her maize harvest will go to the owner of the mill.
“The food from the last harvest will last until about September, then we will have to buy food or barter our goats and chickens,” explains Eustina. “Sometimes you don’t get much…Last year I had to sell everything.” Eustina painstakingly rebuilt her livestock, but will probably have to sell it all by the end of the year once the “hungry season” hits.
“The rain is getting less and less each year. If we have two bad seasons in a row, it will be too difficult for us to live.”
Emilia and Eustina’s families survived last year because the grain marketing board sold them maize at a reduced price and they received food aid from NGOs. But neither woman is expecting a handout. “We need projects, like sewing affordable school uniforms or knitting jerseys,” says Emilia. “We need to earn money for our families.”
In the neighbouring district of Chirumanzu an innovative project run from the Saint Theresa’s mission aims to address many of these concerns. The mission hospital not only cares for orphans and vulnerable children, and offers voluntary counselling and testing, it also runs an outreach project for people living with HIV which provides home visits, psychosocial support and income generating schemes.

Sister Andrea gives her comments on a women's weaving project in ChirumanzuSister Andrea is deputy matron of the hospital and definitely the coolest nun I have ever met. She takes us to visit one of the women’s support groups, and as we arrive they burst into vigorous song and dance. Without missing a beat, Sister Andrea joins in. She then admires the baskets they have woven and gives advice on pricing, while explaining to me how the women extract fibre from sisal, and use tree bark to dye the sisal in various colours.
Sister Andrea explains that the biggest obstacle the women face is that they have nowhere to sell their products, and no way to get them to the big cities where buyers with ready cash might be found.
At the Takashinga support group in Chengwena, the women proudly display their baking project. Sister Andrea samples freshly baked buns and bread, served with delicious wild melon jam.

Women baking bread at the Takashinga support group in ChengwenaAs the women drum and dance joyously a woman beckons me over to a small fire. I am astounded to realise she is making shoe polish. The women dry pieces of black rubber and grind it into a fine powder, add paraffin and candle wax and cook it up before pouring it into old shoe polish tins.

The group plans to sell the bread and jam at schools “because it is hard for the children to get something to eat at break” and the shoe polish to people who can’t afford to buy it in town. Mary Ngoya (26) explains that even if they can’t shift all of their stock, “we sell to each other. It is cheaper than the shops.”

A Heartwarming Story - Cleft Lip Miracles in Zimbabwe

2009-05-19T02:27:00.000-07:00

I just came across an article about an organization named Operation Hope which is doing amazing things to restore the faces of children with cleft lip and other facial injuries. What suprised and pleased me most is that they were permitted to do their work in Zimbabwe, something we have not heard of in a long while.

According to Medline Plus cleft lip and cleft palate are birth defects that affect the upper lip and roof of the mouth. They happen when the tissue that forms the roof of the mouth and upper lip don't join before birth. The problem can range from a small notch in the lip to a groove that runs into the roof of the mouth and nose. This can affect the way the child's face looks. It can also lead to problems with eating, talking and ear infections.

Read more about Operation of Hope here and see the astounding transformation of one young man named beloved whose face was blown off by a landmine he found in his backyard.

The Zimbabwe you have never seen - Harare

2009-04-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Hi Readers!

I came across this video on Facebook. A friend of a friend made it and I want you to see it. As someone who has just returned from Zimbabwe I can attest to the fact that the winds of change are blowing. There is a new optimism in the air by all people from all political parties. We need international assistance to rebuild what has collapsed over the past 10 years, and as you can see from the video, we're still far ahead of many poor countries from an infrastructural perspective. This would all be lost if we didn't get the support of the international community at this crucial time. Below is what he wrote as an introduction, and I have attached the video at the end of the page. I'd love to hear your thoughts:

"This is the Zimbabwe you have never seen on BBC or ABC. The Zimbabwe that has been tainted (maybe rightfully so) for the last 10 years. But with a new Government the country emerges. It struts with a new swagger on the world stage. Adorned in it's full glory it rises from the ashes to retake it's rightful place as a democracy. With a new unity govt Zimbabwe already has: -3% inflation (down from 231million % just a month ago) projected 2% growth in the economy after 10 years of decline Food is fully stocked in shops. Fuel at less than 90cents per litre. Investment is now flowing once more. All this has been achieved in just 2 months of the unity govt. I'm sure BBC or ABC never told you this. Well here I have assembled the largest collection of high quality photo's of Harare (our capital) that I've seen on-line. Enjoy. and remember...ignorance is not bliss. By Nigel Mabandla "

Forget Me Not Forget Me Not Forget Me Not Forget Me Not

2009-04-10T18:59:00.000-07:00

We spent our last weekend in Zimbabwe touring the Eastern Highlands and visiting family and friends. The scenery as always was spectacular and a much needed tonic for my nostalgia. I took photos of everything I could even though the car was racing at top speed. I wanted to capture every moment including the views, so that when I returned to America I would have something to remind me of home. I photographed images I would have taken for granted in the past such as vendors selling fruits and veggies at a bus stop, curving roads, the mountains, and people going about their business; and of course I continued to scout for artistic talent on the roadside, in small towns, and in the villages.

Approximately 150km away from Harare we drove past a display of toy tractors which I had seen in other parts of the country earlier in the week. I could see that this was the latest wave of crafts in the country. Typically in Zimbabwe once a certain type of craft catches on, others copy and soon the market becomes more or less flooded with the respective craft. All the same, the crafts are well made by amazingly talented individuals.

We stopped the car, reversed a few meters backwards and I hopped out, eager to meet the artist of these colorful toys. The artist turned out to be a young boy named Forget Munhuwepano, aged 17, but looks 14. I explained who I was and asked if I could interview him about his work. He agreed but was a little shy with his answers. I really had to prod him to get information, and this is what I learned:

As mentioned above, Forget is 17 years old and he dropped out of school in seventh grade. He did nothing with his life until about a year ago when his uncle began to teach him how to make these toy cars. He uses Jacaranda wood, used tyres, recycled rubber, wire, scrap metal and oil paint to build his toys. The wheels for example are circular wood shapes covered with a strip of recycled tyre. Each toy tractor sells for anywhere from $10 to $30. The tractors have long wire handles with a steering wheel to control it when it is moving.

He said business was OK although he finds he has to bargain a lot with his buyers who think his prices are too high. We encouraged him to put himself through school. The last time we checked public high schools in Zimbabwe cost $80 a term/semester, and if he could work it out, he could sell toys during school holidays/vacation and go to school during term time. I call his tractors "toys" but they would work well as an artistic display in a home or office setting. You'll notice that Forget has named his pieces after real brands like John Deere and Massey which is probably a violation of copyright laws. Unfortunately someone like Forget has no knowledge of this. Wouldn't it be great if these big companies would order them as marketing gimmicks with a social benefit, rather than threaten to take legal action (as I have seen against wire artisans who make wire Volkswagens)?
Unfortunately time was not on our side, so while we made assumptions that he would be able to put himself through school we really didn't get a chance to ask him about his personal circumstances, and he wasn't very forthcoming with information about himself. It was nice to talk to him anyway. We didn't purchase a toy but we did leave him a donation to purchase more materials like oil paint which he said was very expensive. I've learned the hard way - in the past I would buy at least 2 or 3 samples of artists products and ended up with too much inventory. Now I let my readers decide if the product is good - thumbs up or thumbs down? Let me know!

Meet Dexter Nyamainashe - A Truly Gifted Artist

2009-02-25T20:53:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone! Last week I was in Zimbabwe and as usual I was on the hunt for creative talent and innovation. On several occassions I drove past a man stationed in the parking lot of a shopping area in one of the northern suburbs of Harare. He sat behind a huge contraption which I couldn't figure out from a distance, so finallly after several days I decided to stop and say hello. What I found was a treasure trove of talent, skill, creativity and vision. Dexter Nyamainashe of Chiweshe, Zimbabwe is aged 41 and six years ago he started combining various art pieces he made to create what he describes as a "Global Village of Peace". He uses scrap material to make little figures, minature homes and scenes which come alive when he rotates a piece of wire behind the art piece. The minatures move, they cook, they wash laundry, they play, they smoke a joint, they look for cattle etc... The animals fly, they run, they eat and they kill. Confused?? Take a look at the pictures below. Dexter says the above represents Americans having a barbeque in the Summer

Below are the videos I promised in several parts

VIDEO PART I

VIDEO PART II

VIDEO PART III

Above is a man thatching his hut in Zvimba, Zimbabwe

Dexter says he has had a difficult time promoting his art locally for the following reasons: a) The local city council has called his art nonsense and refused to give him a license to operate. He has been chased away and even arrested for "illegal" vending. b) Locals are spooked by his "Global Village". He says some people think it might be related to witchcraft so he has to explain to them by demonstrating how it works. c) He used to work with the local art gallery but their commission was too high leaving him with very little. d) He managed to gain the support of a local shop owner who tells the city council that Dexter is part of their own store display. This means he can display his work free of charge, avoid police harassment and avoid costly flea market charges. Dexter promotes peace because he is concerned about the direction the world is headed. He says God made us all so we have to learn to tolerate one another and work together for a more peaceful world. What a Guy!

Meet David Kasama, Natural Jewellery Maker...

2009-01-11T12:26:00.000-08:00

Necklace made from water seeds and hand painted bamboo

I met David Kasama at Silveiria House with my mother during my annual visit to Zimbabwe. He was sitting outside facing his friends, the Shona sculptors, sitting on a chair and a small table:

David prepares his products for the local market

From a distance it looked like he was working with a sewing machine, but it wasn't a sewing machine, it was a "bench grinder" which he explained is a tool used to sand/make his products:David shows his machinery

David is a natural jewellery maker. He finds seeds from indegenous trees and uses them to make his jewellery. He started jewellery making in 1980 when he was a member of a youth group managed by the Jesuit priests at Silveiria House. He says he tried many other jobs but he always returned to jewellery making which he enjoyed most of all. David uses necklaces and earings from bamboo, mopane wood (which is a hardwood), peach seeds and water seeds:

Necklace made of Bamboo and Peach seeds
He picks them after they have fallen to the ground naturally so as not to destroy the ecosystem in the environment around him:

Africa, and is more often used to make furniture and African curios, so I was suprised to see a 100% natural oil derived from this tree. As David showed me his jewellery equipment he explained that the machine was purchased for him by a visitor to Zimbabwe who lived in the United Kingdom. The visitor sent him catalog from the UK to choose the machine he needed to do his work, and he hasn't looked back since. I wondered if the benefactor knew what a difference his small gesture had made, for David lives with his wife, his mother and three of the children of his late brother. He is the breadwinner and I wondered how on earth he was managing to sustain everyone, especially after he told me about the volume of business he had lost since 2000.

Sample of "lucky bean" seeds (as we used nickname them ), which David uses to make necklaces.

I was impressed by the innovation he displayed. Due to the scarcity of hooks for his earings and necklaces, he purchases gold plated safety pins and uses his pliers to make the hooks he needs:

Gold plated safety pins he converts into earing or necklace hooks with pliers

He showed me a bottle of the Mukwa oil he uses to polish the seeds until they shine. The Mukwa is a species of indigenous trees native to southern

David shows his work in progressHe opened up a small photo album and showed us all the jewellery he had made for the USA market in the past, which he used to sell through local tourists and NGO employees from Germany, the Netherlands and USA:

David shows us his catalog

He then pointed the parking lot and told me how it used to always be full of cars. I followed his finger to an overgrown patch of land where I had parked my own car not even realizing that I had parked on the official parking lot. Since the decline of Zimbabwe's economy fewer tourists visit and small scale artisans like David are the ones being hit the hardest:

Empty parking lot on what should be a busy work week

It was quite sad to hear and again I felt terribly helpless. I told him I'd purchase a sample of his jewellery to test the market for him. I also purchased a necklace for myself & my Mom. I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts on his work, and if you'd like to see more just met me know. What so sad about this situation is that here is a low income entrepreneur, father to his deceased brother's 3 children, caretaker of his ageing mother and family man in his own right, trying to make a decent living honestly. The least we can do is provide a stepping stone for home to continue his work.

I'll be uploading David's jewllery to our new website when it is up and running early this year. In the meantime, take a look and add your comments good or bad and if you want to purchase any of it just let me know. I'd particularly like to hear design ideas I can take back to David to help him make his products more marketable overseas. I'll be visiting Zimbabwe again soon and I want to be able to give David some feedback on what the American market thinks of his work:

African Interior Design Idea For Sadza Batik

2009-01-02T20:20:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year Everyone! Today I wanted to share a simple way for you to incorporate sadza batik into your African interior design. You'll notice I add the word "African" quite a bit in an effort to get more traffic to this blog, but even if you're not looking for "African" interior design ideas, the batiks add a unique self-defined flavor you will not find any place else. The photograph shows my own kitchen in Atlanta, GA which I decorated with a hand made pelmet covered in a bright orange fabric to warm up the room. A pelmet is a framework placed above a window, used to conceal curtain fixtures, used decoratively (to hide the curtain rod) - aka valance or cornice. I attached a strip of Sadza batik to the groove in the center then overlayed it with this shimmery tassle.

Please share your thoughts and let us know if you'd like to see more ideas for African interiors...

Rwanda Baskets at Macy's

2008-12-17T15:54:00.000-08:00

Last week I received an invitation to meet Janet Nkubana, founder of the Rwanda Path to Peace Basket project at an event to be held at Macy's Herald Square in Manhattan. Since I was in the area that evening, I decided to go and see these baskets that I have heard so much about.

Upon arrival, on the 6th floor, where the event was taking place, there were numerous people all waiting in anticipation for the event to begin. The baskets were simply gorgeous and professionally laid out on one side of the room, and there were waiters dressed in black with trays of complimentary champagne and Godiva chocolates!!I am always amazed at the range of skill, talent and creativity in Africa. Zimbabwe is famous for its Binga baskets, Swaziland for its magnificent Swazi baskets, South Africa for its colorful telephone wire baskets, and now Rwanda with its impeccable and colorful baskets. I felt really proud to be an African woman standing amidst such wonderful work, and I felt justified in what I always tell people, that Africa is a best kept secret for crafts which is slowly coming out.

A representative from the Rwandan embassy said a few words, followed by Janet herself and then finally the CEO of Macy's Terry Lundgren. Janet's speech was by far the most emotional and you could see how moved and overwhelmed she was by all the love and support around her. I'm so happy for Rwanda, the country really deserves this after years of war and loss. Maybe one day when Tashanda has expanded to the rest of Sub Saharan Africa (as is our intention), the people of Rwanda will be our Partners too.

Tashanda Awarded Entrepreneurs Achievement Award by AngelAfrica

2008-12-14T17:38:00.000-08:00

Hi Everyone. On Dec 12th Tashanda's president was presented with the 2008 AngelAfrica Entrepreneurs Achievement Award which is dedicated to persons of African descent who are promoting private sector development by creating and/or managing businesses on the African continent and who are fulfilling AngelAfrica’s mission to improve Africa’s economy through private enterprise. This award shows the depth and breadth of Tashanda Inc.’s mission to fight poverty, support micro enterprise in Sub-Saharan Africa, and achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development goals.“When I think of Africa and Zimbabwe in particular I don’t think of wars, famine, hyperinflation and more recently cholera. That’s not to say I ignore it either. I simply choose to focus on what’s possible for our continent and I always look for the positive. So when I think of Zimbabwe this is what I see…. I see talent, I see creativity and innovation, I see resilience, beauty and phenomenal possibilities.
We wouldn’t be here today if we didn’t love Africa or if we didn’t believe in what is possible for the continent. I’d like to challenge everyone here to think of a way to invest in Africa. Many of you are going there for the holidays, so I challenge you to set aside some money $50 - $100, and figure out a way to make a difference in the life of one person living in Africa today. As a social entrepreneur my favorite ideas are always business related. So just to get you thinking, here are some ideas:
• Donate your old cell phones & some phone cards to get someone started on their own phone shop.
• The cheapest sewing machine at Walmart is $40. You can purchase it online and have it shipped directly to Africa to help someone start their own clothing business.
• You can purchase seeds like beans, pumpkin, tomatoes, maize and other staples. Home depot has them or you can buy them on line and ship them directly to Africa for a market garden business
• Or, if you are feeling extremely generous, you can spend USD$100 to USD$200 to purchase a donkey and cart and set someone up with their own transportation business.
It really is that simple!
• Finally, you can also go to www.tashanda.com to purchase products made by the micro-entrepreneurs of Zimbabwe.”

Simple ideas that really work.

Thanks for all your continued support .

Social Enterprise:

Recycled Paper Crafts in Zimbabwe

2008-11-13T00:37:00.000-08:00

Tashanda attended its first New York City street festival a month or so ago. Since we don't have a retail store this is one of the ways in which we market our products and we meet some interesting people along the way. One of these people is a woman named Janice Ashby, who is investing a great deal of time and effort in Zimbabwe after stumbling across well made paper products in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe several years ago. She has sent machinery and equipment to Zimbabwe and now there is a thriving paper making production facility in one of the high density suburbs. Local women and men have found employment and an opportunity to earn money from themselves.

Zimbabwean Author Peter Godwin reads from his new memoir at a New York City fundraiser for Eco Africa Social Ventures.

Last night I attended a New York city fundraiser for the non-profit arm of Janice's business which is known as Eco Africa Social Ventures. It was very well organized and there were some very interesting people in attendance, all of them there to support Zimbabwe. It was touching and moving to know that so many people cared. Tashanda has added their recycled paper products to the website on this link - Eco Africa Sample paper products by Eco Africa recycled paper being sold by Tashanda

Tichakunda Preschool

2008-11-06T19:27:00.000-08:00

"I Want To Be A Teacher When I Grow Up"

I can't belive it's been almost a year since my friend and I visited the pre-school at Hatcliffe Extension which we have since learned is named Tichakunda.

I'm happy to say that Tashanda has managed to contribute a percentage of Afrobag sales for this year to this cause. The amount has not been a lot but it's a start and we are encouraged by the possibilities we can create for this school and these children.

I have never had to fund raise before so I had no clue how to get people involved in this cause. Eleven months ago I posted 2 of the videos from the original Hatcliffe Nursery School blog (see menu on right) to Facebook. Several months later a friend of a friend saw the video. She was so touched, moved and inspired by what she saw that she decided to set up a non profit organization called Art from the Heart solely to raise funds for the operation of the school. She also built a fabulous website (http://www.artsquad.co.nz/) which describes the school and explains what help is needed etc... There is also a fund raising effort going on to raise $10,000 to build a borehole for the children to have access to clean drinking water and allow the volunteer teachers to grow vegetables for the children's daily meals. I cannot believe the potential of all of this and hope you will support us to achieve our goals.

In this blog I'm going to share some of the e-mails I've been exchanging with my close friend on the ground in Zimbabwe. This is the friend I was with when we discovered the pre-school. She is now actively working with the school to see how they can be assisted by friends outside of the country to help develop the school:

“I can't help feeling that we can do so much more for these kids. They are sitting in the dirt and I felt a bit as if my efforts were not good enough.............How are you otherwise? Don't ever get tired of doing good work, we are needed more than you will ever believe, believe me there are not many like us. Noone seems to have the time or inclination to do something for nothing.”

“i have attempted to itemise these needs as laid out to me in order of priority.

REQUIREMENTS
1) Borehole, there is a deep unprotected well on the premises which is the only source of water. It is very frightening to imagine what could happen to one the children if they wandered off and fell in. Not only that but there is a huge area of unused land that was once a thriving garden but has since died due to lack of water.If we could raise funds for a borehole there could be a thriving garden that would provide lunch for the children.
2) Gravel or concrete floors for the classrooms. Currently the children sit on dirt floors which is a health hazard.
3) 8 Metal Roof Sheets (12ft) for two of the classrooms that currently have no roofs.4) Allowances for teachers, $800 million (USD80) a month, plus anything that may help, laundry soap etc
5)Furniture- Tables, chairs, matresses etcThe kids diet is also very poor, they have one meal of porridge aday which is not sugared and grossly inadequate. We came up with a basic menu for the school at yesterdays meeting which looks something like this:
9am Porridge
11am Banana
1pm Sadza and vegetables
4pm Maheu +bun
Most of these children are orphans or from broken homes and do not have regular meals. So if anyone knows anyway in which we could get these food items please help. Barbara maybe you could do a project proposal for Plan International?I leave it in your hands fellow leaders. I will continue to work with this preschool and I pray that the group thinks this a worthy project to adopt for PANEL.”

“Dear All,

Please find attached donation request letter for the preschool graduation party on 29 November. Whatever you can contribute would be so appreciated. The letter details what is required. Maybe those with contacts e.g Wavell has meat etc can just contribute that information.

Best
Maku

Rita your questions are answered on the attachment Building project 1. It's very rough as I did whilst on the phone with Mr. Hove. If you can't figure it out I will summarise. Thanks and I am sure the building will be fab. A borehole is priority though.”

15 September 2008,

Dear Sir/ Madam

RE APPEAL FOR DONATIONS FOR CHRISTMAS PARTY AND GRADUATION CEREMONY
As the year draws to a close it is once again time to say goodbye to some of our beloved children as they proceed with life and enroll for primary school. We have nurtured them and given them a meal for the past few years and we now hand over the baton to the next lot of caregivers. This is always a sad time for us as we see some children coming back for another year as their parents/ guardians are unable to raise school fees. Our crèche and day care centre has 525 children this year. Three quarters of our children are considered orphaned and/or vulnerable.

We are appealing to you for donations for our graduation ceremony, taking place on 29th November 2008. This is an occasion where we make these children feel special and appreciated. We want the children to leave with confidence and special fond memories of Tichakunda, a place that has been a haven in their very tough environments.

We are appealing for donations mainly in the form of
Food (except alcohol and pork products) Dry and tinned goods are most needed as the crèche does not have electricity.
Goodies Any goodies for the Christmas Party- chips, sweets, cooldrinks etc. Anything that the kids would consider a treat.
Blankets and Clothes. Most of our children come barefoot and have hardly any clothing to speak of. Any blankets, shoes, clothes would be greatly appreciated.
Books and Pencils As we are working on the childrens wholesome development we would also like old books, crayons, pencils etc.

Thank you for your kindness. Any assistance no matter how small will be appreciated. Help us to help these helpless and innocent children

Back in Bloggerville

2008-10-20T22:53:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I blogged or e-mailed any customers & I do apologize for this & hope you will stick with us during these trying times in Zimbabwe. The biggest, most newsworthy event in Zimbabwe relates to the elections, the power-sharing agreement and more recently, the power-sharing disagreementc. Our emotions as a people have soared to hope & excitement, then just as quickly have spiralled downwards to despair & frustration since April 2008. Inflation is staggering at about 250,000,000% (or more by now) and I cannot even begin to imagine how people with no family overseas are coping. Overall it has been quite a horrendous ride & I'll take the so called poor US economy any day with its 2-3 inflation (or is it less??)

Anyway, you may wonder why what is happening in Zimbabwe is affecting Tashanda & I will try to explain. Firstly there were rumors that the international community was planning to ban exports from Zimbabwe - crafts included!! This left us in a state of limbo. What if we imported our products only to have them rejected at US based ports? So we had to wait it out and see.. and we are still waiting because the power sharing agreement is still under negotiation.

Secondly, while we wait things out, we've been developing our plan to develop the website to make it more user friendly and efficient, so we have not added any new products too our pages (sorry!). This is thanks to many of you who responded to our customer survey on www.tashanda.com. Hopefully within a month or so, you will see the new and more permanent Tashanda website.

Thirdly I've been getting creative and designing new products I hope to introduce over the course of the next year or so. Sounds like a long time to wait but given how slowly things move on the ground, this is how it will have to be.

I am stil looking for non-profits, individuals and or private businesses to partner with to carry out some of the initiatives, so if you are reading this and want to be a part of the African Arts & Crafts transformation, please let me know - financiers included!!

Silveira House - Part 1

2008-06-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

Locating talented artisans continued to be a huge challenge for me during my 2 week visit to Zimbabwe. The tight economy had left traders tight lipped about where one could locate artists, so all I could do was ask everyone I met. One Sunday at church I told a family friend that I was looking for artisans and she asked me “Have you tried Silveira House?” Silveira House? I had never even heard of it. She gave me the directions and that same afternoon I took a drive….
I continued to be in awe of the tranquility of my surroundings. This location was no exception. The premises is on several acres and for miles further on, all you can see is beautiful tranquil landscape and plenty of trees like the Jacaranda. I was a long way away from New York City that’s for sure.
Silveira House is located about 8km from a suburb called Mandara in Harare. It was named after a sixteenth century Jesuit missionary and was founded in 1964 by Fr John Dove and a small team of colleagues. During those early days it operated as a training and leadership development education centre. Programs in civic education , industrial relations, agricultural cooperatives and youth training evolved in the pre-independence years. Later nutrition and child care, appropriate technology, craft skills, dress making and commercial skills projects were added. Programs have come and gone over the past 44 years in response to particular needs. Today it is still adapting to the emergence of a new Zimbabwe and is finding that training in civics, peace building, advocacy and research, as well as small scale engineering, together with HIV and AIDS awareness are key elements in their work. The leaders of Silveira House try to practice what they preach by allowing their premises to be used by several small scale enterprises. These businesses are run by some of their course graduates and have become fully independent entities that rent space from the center.
There were three main artisan groups that I decided to interview:
• Art Peace Cooperative – a cooperative of stone carvers from Tafara and Mabvuku (Harare suburbs), which has won awards for its work. They sell locally as well as export their unique work.
• Zuva Rabuda Crafts – produces and sells high quality tie-dye and batik products. The artists also market products from impoverished communities such as Binga.
• Chishawasha granite – this small cooperative makes beautiful headstones for graves from local rock. It’s big business in a nation suffering from the worst AIDS epidemic imaginable.

I introduced myself to the first person I met and it turned out that she is a member of Zuva Rabuda and also does tie-dye training for the local surrounding community. When word got around that I lived in the United States and was interviewing people for my blog I could sense some impatience by others as to when it would be their turn to be interviewed. I loved talking to everyone but at the same time it was a little overwhelming because by interviewing them, I was planting a seed of hope which I couldn’t promise to fulfill i.e, a chance to export their products overseas.... While finding export markets for them was definitely my goal, I still worried about my ability to deliver results, and I worried that I risked losing their trust if I failed to deliver what they expected. So many people do this you see. They interview, they buy, then they promise to return with more business, and it’s the last time they hear from the individual.
I made a decision to try to approach it differently & communicate the fact that instead of buying only what they had in stock, I would challenge some of their designs and in doing so see if we could consider other design options where necessary. They seemed to understand this in the end, which was a relief.

The next few blogs will feature interviews with these individuals and discuss my thoughts on the product quality and design. I look forward to hearing feedback from readers.

Taking a Break to Smell the Flowers

2008-06-06T18:01:00.000-07:00

After one week in Harare I was exhausted because I was trying to accomplish so much in the 2 weeks I had set aside for the visit. One day I decided to just stay at home and enjoy the glorious sunshine, chirping birds and gorgeous flowers. I just sat in one of my hammocks on the verandah (porch) & watched the sun stream through the magnificent Musasa trees gracing the yard. It was so peaceful & dreamy - so typical of a summer's day in Zimbabwe. My poor St Bernard Bruno was huffing & puffing in the shade because it was so hot. Whoever decided this was a good breed for an African climate was sadly mistaken. Then I walked around the yard with Bruno trailing behind me as I took random photos of the flowers in the yard. The rains hadn't yet started to fall during my visit so I was glad to see these - aren't they so beautiful?

Later in the day I drove to the "Borrowdale Village" which is a shopping mall in a neighborhood called Borrowdale. I used to visit this mall a lot as a teenager & it's always my favorite shopping place in Harare.
Below are 2 photos I took of the Village, a rare taste of the Africa they don't show in the media:

Then I went back to my hammock on the verandah...

Afrobag Nominated for Designer Awards "Most Socially Responsible Handbag"

2008-05-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

April is the month which validated some of the work Tashanda has done so far. About a month and a half ago we submitted a photo of an Afrobag to the annual Handbag designer awards under the category “most socially responsible handbag” Well in the first week of April I received a call from Emily Blumenthal, who is the creator of the website Handbag Designer 101 (http://www.handbagdesigner101.com/handbags) to personally tell me that were one of top five finalists in the competition which had in excess of 600 applicants. Now I understand what it means to be nominated for an Oscar. You can laugh but I’m serious. When you see those celebrities on TV saying “it just means so much to be nominated, it doesn’t matter if I don’t win…..” Well finally I can believe that they are telling the truth. Winning is less important to me than the recognition and publicity this event has brought with it. Tashanda was interviewed by the New York Daily News and two e-zines have done a special on our work. It’s been great!
Immediately after talking to Emily I called Zimbabwe and asked that the message be passed on to Max and Maki, the makers of the hand bags. On a personal level, the nomination also went beyond Max and Maki. To me it was an affirmation of something I have always known – that Zimbabwe isn’t just a nation of inflation and political uncertainty and food shortages. It’s a nation of people with real talent, real skills, determination and ability. It’s a country of entrepreneurs which like many other African nations are not yet being recognized enough for their talents. My next move was to e-mail all the Zimbabweans and other friends on the Facebook network who had supported Tashanda to promote the Afrobag brand. Everyone was excited. You just don’t know how good it felt to hear so good and honest news about something originating from Zimbabwe. Tashanda has just scratched the surface. We expect to go way beyond what we have done so far, and even move into other parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Well done Zimbabwe, well done!!
Aside from that not much else has happened. I travelled to Belgium and London for 2 weeks of the month, so activity was somewhat lessened. However as promised in November 2007, I will continue my stories about my visit to Zimbabwe and all the artisans I met when I was there. My next blog will be about Silveria House which is a place where an assorted range of artisans work. I’ll introduce them one by one and give them a voice to speak about their work. Thanks for all your love and support!

Investing in Africa

2008-05-01T03:13:00.000-07:00

Question: How many African stock market indices outperformed the S&P 500 over the past three years?

Answer: Nearly all of them - and that's in US dollar terms.

On Tuesday night I attended the screening of the documentary "Africa Investment Horizons". The event took place at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with a few hundred people in attendance. The documentary was basically about the benefits of investing in Africa. .There is a new Africa out there people and you absolutely have to watch this movie. We're slowly regaining our self esteem after a somewhat battered and bruised past and if you don't invest now, you'll miss the boat.
The documentary said it best, that smart investors know that in order to really make money you have to invest where no one else is investing, and today, that place is Africa - yes, Zimbabwe included!

Please take a look at the website and be sure to watch the other documentaries on Africa on the same site: http://www.africainvestmenthorizons.com/

I

Shona Sculpture at Hartsfield Jackson Airport

2008-04-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

I love Hartsfield Jackson Airport!! Hard to believe with the long security lines being the busiest airport in the world... So why all the love? Well this is where the biggest display of Shona Sculpture from Zimbabwe is displayed in the Western world.

The sculpture is located on concourse T of the airport. It’s the first terminal after you walk through security. If you take the train to your concourse you will miss it, so make sure you catch the train after walking through concourse T.
I couldn’t resist taking photos, and to my surprise & immense pleasure I wasn’t the only one.

I didn’t take photos of all the sculpture because I want you to go and see it for yourself. Isn’t it amazing??

Word has it the display was put up when Andrew Young was mayor of Atlanta and the pieces at the time were valued at an estimated $1 million dollars!

The Birth of the Afrobag - Part 2

2008-04-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

One of my most important goals when I visited Zimbabwe was to find a bag manufacturer to make African handbags called Afrobag. This is something I’ve had on my mind for several years. The reasons behind the Afrobag are simple:
a)create a product with a positive multiplier effect within the grassroots levels of society, & thereby contribute to the elimination of extreme poverty; and
b) take something back with to America to remind me of home on a daily basis.
The first (and currently, the only) line of Afrobags is made using batik fabric which relies on the skills of several types of low income (but not extremely poor) artisans and suppliers. These are batik artists, bag makers, weavers and leather suppliers. These groups are typically still consistently linked to their rural homes where extreme poverty in Zimbabwe is greatest. So for example, during Christmas or planting season, they’ll go to the rural areas to share Christmas festivities or purchase fertilizer for planting season. They can only do this if they are financially able to do so. Mr. Meneyere for example, who is our Afrobag sewer, lives in the city but his wife and family (and extended family) live in the rural areas. He visits them when he can afford to do so, but he is currently the main breadwinner for his entire immediate and extended family. You can imagine what a huge weight this is to carry. So Tashanda’s plan is to find people like Mr Menyere and use them to continue their support of their extended families in the rural areas. If demand for his skills grow, he may even be able to pass on his skills to family members and help them out of poverty in that way.

One might ask why Tashanda does’t go directly to the areas where the extremely poor are located. The answer lies in the fact that they are situated in areas which are so remote that there is unlikely to be any electricity, accessible roads, and/or communication. We have identified some remote locations for other projects which do not need electricity, but that is another long story…
As mentioned above, the other reason for creating the Afrobag was really for personal gratification. I love sadza batik so much that I absolutely had to create something with them. In 2006 my sister came to visit me in the USA & was the first person with whom I shared the idea of making handbags. At the time I was struggling to find a name and in an instant she said “why don’t you call them Afrobags?” Wow, so simple for some…

Mr. Menyere is a really nice, down to earth man. He’s quiet, patient, very respectful and hardworking. He’s also a man with a huge talent that he has managed to maintain in spite of Zimbabwe’s economic decline. He told me that he used to work at a factory in Zimbabwe which made handbags until it was forced to close in the late 1990’s. The owner of the factory liked him very much and left him some of his sewing equipment prior to relocating to South Africa. Today Mr. Menyere is based at the home of his former owner where he sews bags to sell to local shops. I asked him how business was treating him & he shook his head in despair. The price of leather, glue, lining, zippers – everything – has gone up and continues to go up every day. He was referring to Zimbabwe’s escalating inflation rate which is currently the highest in the world. He doesn’t own a car so he uses public transport or a bicycle to carry his products to his customers. He showed me some samples of his work and I was impressed with his workmanship which was very neat. He makes a variety of bag styles using mainly leather and fabric combinations.
I showed him Tashanda’s batiks & asked if he could do something with them & he said he could with no problem. So I left him with as many as he thought he could handle in the week and a half I had remaining. By his estimate he was going to make 30 bags, although in a good week he can churn out up to 100 a week. He told me he works with his brother who also used to work at the factory. His brother Maki is much younger & he too is a great person to know. We showed the two brothers the 2 bag patterns we had designed and wanted him to make. We also agreed that we’d take him to a high density location where he would then purchase the leather he needed for the bags. We also left him a 50% down payment to enable him to purchase other materials / costs for the order.

The next day, we drove to Epworth, which is a low income high density neighborhood in the greater Harare area. The town of Epworth began as a place where displaced people used to live and as a result, does not have much of the town planning you typically see in other Harare locations. Here, it’s not unusual to see a mud hut next to a well constructed, modern brick building coupled with unpaved roads. There was a roadblock along the way and the police stopped me & asked for my license. Due to all the Zimbabwean money I’d been carrying, I’d been having to travel with several handbags at a time and as my luck would have it I simply couldn’t find my driver’s license. As I searched the car I felt a rising sense of panic – not because of anything the policeman had said or done, but more because of the BBC & CNN news articles I’d read about the “escalating violence” in Zimbabwe. When I’d lived in Zimbabwe I never felt this way and fortunately my fears were unfounded because the policeman told me to move along but make sure I had it on me next time. Phew!! Needless to say, when I returned home that evening I saw another handbag under the driver’s seat, and sure enough my driver’s license was in there!

As we proceeded to Epworth, My Menyere explained that the place we were going to was the home of his friend who imports scrap leather from South Africa as the leather costs in Zimbabwe are quite astronomical. While Zimbabwe has about 11 tanneries the shortage of livestock and decline of farming and agriculture has forced prices so high that they are too high. This friend of Mr. Menyere used to sew handbags as well but decided to change professions & become a leather supplier instead. He did have someone sewing wallets on his porch though, which he explained he sells to the local market. The leather was very expensive. The prices were marked on the exterior of each bale and I watched as Mr Menyere sorted the pieces and the colors he wanted for the bags. It was a hot day and the selection process took ages. This man was so meticulous!

As he continued to sort through the leather his friend started telling me how well his leather business was doing and how he had managed to build two houses in the Epworth area as a result. He was also keen to assure me that his leather was imported legally (Zimbabwe has so many punitive laws and regulations which can result in heavy fines if not complied with, especially in the area of import/export) and he showed me his customs documentation. His home looked like it had about 3 bedrooms & it had a large yard which was walled and gated. It was a nice home.
Zimbabweans are into so many forms of employment. When you read statistics telling you the unemployment rate is 80% what that statistic is really saying is that 20% are in formal employment (banks, schools etc..) and most of the rest are working for themselves, and maybe even employing others who are being excluded from the statistics. This leather dealer is a typical example. There were also a multitude of vendors in the area & they were everywhere, selling fruits & vegetables and baskets.
Finally when My Menyere finished making his selections, we drove back home & left him and his brother to start the debut Afrobag range.
At the end of the week I went to examine the samples he had managed to produce and I was pleased with the result. This is the very first bag he made for us:

The biggest challenge faced by Mr Menyere was the power cuts. I would get to their studio in the middle of the day & he & his brother would be asleep because they were up all night working when the electricity was on. Such is the life of Zimbabwe today. These are hurdles we face on a daily basis and I worry sometimes about how Tashanda will overcome this, especially if larger orders start coming in. Right now the only solution is to ensure that orders are placed very early, much earlier than your average factory order. The other option is to consider solar energy, or a generator. I have no clue about the former and the latter is very expensive.

I’m happy to say that the order was completed in time for me to leave for the USA. Not all the bags came out the way we had hoped but we were happy with the initial response from our customers. Mr Menyere is calling me almost daily to find out how his bags are selling. The order for 30 handbags made a tremendous difference in his life and a continued stream would certainly lower the current financial burdens he has on his shoulders. He is keen to get more orders as soon as possible and we are working really hard to find orders for him.

There are hundreds of skilled workers like him in Zimbabwe whether they are shoe makers or natural jewelers or sculptors, who need access to international markets and micro finance, but as far as I can tell there is no financial assistance available for people like him. If it’s there, he doesn’t know about it and even expressed some reservations about approaching a bank for a loan. Why? He’s never approached a bank in his life and feels intimidated and unsure. He didn’t have to say it out loud, I could just tell from the manner of his response. There is so much work to be done. As the old Chinese saying goes, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

So this is the story of how the Afrobag was born!

Zimbabwe Votes

2008-04-13T07:07:00.000-07:00

Zimbabweans headed for the polls in late March, 2008. I was travelling at the time but every second I got, I was watching CNN and BBC news from my hotel room, and scanning all the online newspapers and blogs I could find. I prayed. I prayed really hard. I prayed for peace and I prayed for the country that I love so dearly. I prayed that whatever the result, it would be a true reflection of the will of the people. I also prayed that the winners & losers would realize the enormity of the power in each of their hands, and that they would choose to make the right choices - choices that would keep the peace in a nation on the already on the edge. It’s been 2 weeks since the elections and the results have not yet been announced. Nobody seems to know what's next and most people have already lost hope because of the silence on the election results and are continuing their lives as before. Please keep Zimbabwe in your thoughts and prayers...

The Facts of Poverty

2008-03-21T17:28:00.000-07:00

My three new friends smile shyly at the camera

• 1.2 billion people live on less than US$ 1 per day
• 2.8 billion people live on less than US$ 2 per day
• 75 per cent of the poor live in rural areas
• 60 per cent of the world’s poor are women and girls
• The average income in the 20 richest countries is 37 times higher than in the 20
poorest countries
• Higher inequality tends to retard growth in poor countries and encourage growth
in richer places

http://www.unido.org/file-storage/download/?file%5fid=11092

Africa poverty books:

The Birth of the Afrobag - Part 1

2008-03-15T09:52:00.000-07:00

The primary goal of www.tashanda.com is to contribute to the elimination of global poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, starting with Zimbabwe. I am no expert on poverty and maybe I am somewhat naïve but surely the solution to poverty elimination is to teach people how to help themselves and facilitate the means to do so until they can stand on their own?

Why is poverty still an issue in 2008?

I’ve asked myself over and over again - What can I do? I mean, it’s my country after all and I am a product of Zimbabwe at its best time as bread basket of Africa. Was all that education for nothing? I applaud the countries and organizations that have helped Zimbabwe & Africa, but I also think it’s time that those Africans who are able to do so, do something to lift their own continent out of poverty!! It really isn’t that difficult. Look at nobel peace prize winner Muhammad Yunus and www.kiva.org. It really is that simple. Some African countries are difficult for international organizations to penetrate, but people like you and me who visit home often can enter and make a difference without all the red tape.

I always felt overwhelmed about where to start and how to make a difference. So I spent many years planning, analyzing and researching, then planning, analyzing and researching - just going in circles just like that. Then one day a person told a story on television which finally motivated me into action. I didn't know the story teller but she told the story the way my Grandmother would have told it - in the old African oral story telling tradition known as "ngano" which is typically based on characters in the Animal Kingdom. The title of the story was "The Hummingbird Perseveres" and the storyteller as I later learned was Africa's first female Nobel Peace Prize Winner Wangari Mathaai. I was so inspired that I went on to purchase her book, and today she is one of my greatest inspirations.

The story goes as follows:
"I want to tell you a story because it is a story of "never give up." It is a story of a forest that went on fire, a huge forest that suddenly was on fire. There was a big fire raging. All the animals came out of the forest. As they came to the edge of the forest and they started watching the fire, feeling very discouraged, feeling very disempowered. Every one of them did not think there was anything they could do about the fire except a little hummingbird. The little hummingbird said, "I can do something about this fire. I'm not going on the side to watch the forest burn."

So the little hummingbird ran toward the nearest stream. The little hummingbird took a drop of water, and put it on the raging fire. Then back again and brought another drop and kept running up and down. In the meantime, the other animals are discouraging [the hummingbird]. They are telling it, "Don't bother, it is too much, you are too little, your wings will burn, your beak is too little, you can't do much about this fire." Some of these animals that were discouraging it had big beak that could have brought more water than the hummingbird. But they weren't. They were very busy discouraging.

The hummingbird decided not to be discouraged. It kept going up and down to get the water and put it on the burning forest. And as the animals were discouraging it, without wasting its time, the bird looked back to these other animals and saw how desperate, discouraged and persuaded they were to stay on the sidelines and not get involved. One animal said, "What do you think you are doing?" And the hummingbird, without wasting time, looked back and said, "I'm doing the best I can." "

And this is how I see the work of Tashanda - "we're doing the best we can"

Muhammed Yunus and Kiva, like the hummingbird, started by giving micro loans of about $50, $100 or more to individuals who wanted to start a business. And today the impact has been phenomenal. Don;t get me wrong - I know many of us are already sending money home to send family members to school, to pay their household expenses etc… but let’s think for a minute about what we can do to help them help themselves as well. It’s not hard to find micro-entrepreneurs in Africa – they’re everywhere - just search within your own family.

There is an unfortunate misconception that Africans wait for handouts all the time, and I really want to challenge that misconception. I’ve never known people who work harder than Africans. Africans are so resilient and innovative, and many, many Africans are working against seemingly insurmountable odds to survive another day. A modern day welfare system is more of what I would describe as a “handout” to be honest. I’ve visited rural areas where even under the worst drought conditions poor subsistence farmers living on less than a dollar a day will wake up at the crack of dawn to go and plough their dry, soil eroded fields until the sun sets, in an effort to make a living. So to say people like this are waiting for handouts is somewhat unfair. What they really want is a stepping stone to the next level. Their challenges are not only limited to the climate, but also to infrastructure. The poorest people are often isolated from roads and the hub of their communities whether it is the city or a smaller growth point.

Zimbabweans continue to work just as hard and I'm determined to keep up the hope through Tashanda's support of artisans on the ground. Just today, my good friend and sculptor, Wimbai Ngoma, send me about 21 photographs of his latest pieces (which are totally amazing by the way). If this website www.tashanda.com did not exist, how was he going to show the world his talent?

In Zimbabwe we face all the challenges you can imagine, but I am still very optimistic that the economy can turn itself around. I don’t like to talk about politics in Zimbabwe because I feel there are enough people doing so already, and as a result, the attention has shifted from the positive stories of the possibilities & good things happening on the ground, to issues of all the negativity. While I don’t dispute the negative aspects, I’m one of those who still strongly believes in the strength & goodness of Zimbabwe, so I prefer to leave all the ugly political stuff to those that want to talk about it. I believe it’s better to act than debate all night without reaching a solution; and at this point in time those who can drive the economy (like Wimbai Ngoma) are waiting for orders which aren’t coming because of all the bad news which has driven away investors…Luckily this is my blog and I get to decide what I want the news to be! And I'll show you both sides of the story!

To be continued….

Stone Sculpture - Catalog Experiment

2008-03-01T17:58:00.000-08:00

Bear with me please - I'm trying to figure out the best way to show you all the stone sculpture photos sent to me by the artists in Zimbabwe? Any ideas? Help!

Batsiranai

2008-01-28T16:43:00.000-08:00

I just want to remind everyone that the purpose of the stories I am sharing with you here is to show you the real people behind the products you see on the website http://www.tashanda.com/.
Batsiranai is actually the first producer group I visted on the second day of my arrival in Harare.
For those of you who haven't heard of Batsiranai, let me tell you about it. But before I begin... let me tell you about the stigma associated with having a handicapped child in Zimbabwe. I never really believed it existed because my own cousin was born with downs syndrome. His name was Fadzi and he was the light of our lives. I didn't know he was disabled because nobody treated him as if he were. It was only as I started to get older as he struggled to learn how to walk and talk that I realized something was wrong. Regardless, as a little girl he was my favorite toddler because he was so lovable. I remember sitting on a couch with my sister, Fadzi between us, and he loved to give hugs. That particular day he gave me a hug then my sister pretended to sulk and he turned to her smiling and have her a hug. Then I pretended to sulk and he turned to me and gave me another hug. I don't know how long this went on but he continued to give us one hug after another.. that memory makes me smile. Fadzi passed away a few years ago but he will always have a special place in all our hearts.
So going back to the issue of stigma associated with disability, I do recall attending a mini-olympics for disabled children in Harare and sittling next to some ignorant fools who were laughing at some of the children running on the track... Other than that my personal experience has not been negative. While there are many schools in Zimbabwe for children and adults with disabilities there remains a common fear of the unkown amongst the public about people with disabilities. Fear fuels prejudice and unfortunately this is something from which the whole world suffers... Jairos Jiri, St Giles, and St Catherines are three major institutions for children and adults with disabilities in Zimbabwe. Fadzi attended the latter two schools during his childhood.
If you want to know more about the handicapped in Zimbabwe please refer to the NASCOH (National Association of Societies for the Care of the Handicapped) website at http://www.nascoh.org.zw/
Batsiranai, which means "help each other" in Shona language, started in 1998 as a support group for low income women with handicapped children. I can imagine that it was important for these mothers to share their struggles with one another and develop solutions as a team. Chief volunteer at Batsirania, Lynne Poole, describes it best: "Batsiranai is a member of Zimbabwe Parents of Disabled Children Association (ZPDCA), an advocacy organization registered with the Government of Zimbabwe's Ministry of Social Welfare. Within ZPDCA there are 600 families with severely disabled children living in various townships around Harare. The original Dzivarasekwa group consists of 24 mothers and George (an older brother of a disabled child). The sale of handicrafts has enabled the members to reach out to include additional mothers from various townships around Harare. Today there are 110 mothers working with Batsiranai (November 2007). The dream of this project is to grow and grow quickly, so that all 600 families may participate in the success of Batsiranai."
As always happens when we visit Batsiranai we got a little bit lost. The center is situated in a high density suburb which means there are many narrow roads with street names that are not always visible...We stopped by a group of children aged about 8 or 9 who were playing and asked them if they knew how to get to the center from where we were. One young boy started directing us and a passerby told him to hop in our car and take us there. I tell people that going to Zimbabwe makes me feel grounded again & reminds me of who I am. This encounter with the young boys and the stranger passing by was a reminder. How many parents in a different part of the world would condone a stranger telling their child to get into the car of another stranger? The stranger meant no harm and I have no doubt that the young boy would have gotten into the car, but needless to say, we told them it was ok and that he did not need to get in.
When we first visited the center in December 2006 it was very quiet since it was Christmas and most mothers had gone home for the holidays. This time around it was a completely different scene. As we walked into the yard there were children oustide playing on a swing set, and there were some mothers near the entrance working on their needle work. It was quite a lively and noisy atmosphere. The childrens classroom is the first room you enter into, followed by a play area further ahead with toys and books. On the left side of the room is a napping area as well as a huge mattress where some of the children with hydrocephalus (big heads) lie. Hydrocephalus is caused by not having a shunt put in at birth which is what would happen in the west... the delay in surgically putting in the shunt causes the swollen head which is permanent. It was hard to look at these children because the swelling looked painful to me. They cannot lift their heads up because they are so swollen and heavy so they have to just lie there... all day...It just broke my heart. Just today there was a news report that Britney Spears had been hospitalized. It was headline news on CNN World report! The paparazzi need to leave her alone & stop taking so much malicious enjoyment of her personal problems. Surely these kids in front of me made better cases for headline news...?? Life is so unfair.

Continuing with my description of the center... next to the napping area is a kitchen where all the childrens meals are prepared. To the right is a long hall way with an inventory storage room and another kitchen on the left, and a raw materials storage rooms on the right - includes needles, thread, fabric etc... The hallway leads to a large open space where all the women make their crafts. See the video above.

Most of the mothers have children who are handicapped as well as children who are not handicapped. We met two older (non-handicapped) children as we were touring the premises and one of them asked me to take a photo of them. For some reason they had already decided they wanted a photo at the back of the house, away from the mothers, so we went there. There was one beautiful little girl named Nyengeterai who decided she wanted to be in on the picture as well. She struggles to walk so she was dragging herself on the ground to follow us. She was wearing a pretty blue dress which was getting ruined as she chased after us. The older kids just laughed and told her to hurry as she made sounds that she wanted to come too. They weren't being mean at all, just treating her like she was fully able to follow. And sure enough, within a few minutes she was sitting next to the others with a triumphant smile on her face. Notice in the picture that she is the only one smiling! Zimbabweans don't smile much for the camera, so while here they have a serious look on their faces, literally seconds before they were laughing & joking with me.
I decided Nyengeterai deserved her own photograph for her efforts & here she is!!

About twenty minutes into our visit Lynn Poole arrived. Lynn is an American woman who has dedicated her time, money and efforts to support the women of Batsiranai. She tries to give the women as much independence as possible but I know she works really hard behind the scenes to get the word out about the center. She also spearheads the product design and development amongst other things. She says it took a whole year to get the dolls made right! We sat and talked with her about the center and the challenges they face. The challenges of course are many and she didn't really need to spell them out. I could see for myself that the children needed more equipment to aid them with their disabilities for example wheel chairs and special shoes, and the center needed materials and equipment to make their products.

I could also see that in spite of the positive direction the center was moving, donations were still very welcome. I say this because on behalf of http://www.tashanda.com/, I donated cash equivalent to $2 per doll sold on the website back to them. They ullulated and sang a short song of thanks to Tashanda which was so touching... Their gratitude was so real it made me want to do even more in 2008 to help them. We purchased more dolls which you can see on http://www.tashanda.com/BatsiranaiDolls.html. This time they had a selection of larger dolls known as "mama dolls". Mai Nyegeterai (one of the leaders) told me that when I last came ot the center my friend had suggested that they make dolls with babies on their backs and this is exactly what they did. I was so happy to hear this because it shows how serious they are about growing their business and being more competitive.
I asked for permission to interview some of the women and ended up talking to only two. I spoke with one woman named Rosey for a
few minutes. Rosey is an exception to the average woman at the center because she has no children. She came to the center because she used to take care of her disabled niece who later passed away. She stayed on and has become a permanent fixture at the center. Rosey has had a tough life. She was a "chimbwido" (virgin girl who served the "mujibas" - a messenger and carrier for the guerrillas ) during Zimbabwe's war of independence in the 1970's and also suffers from epilepsy. These issues interrupted her education very early in life. In fact, when I asked her the year she was born, she couldn't tell me and pulled out her ID for me to read for myself. The date was July 17, 1965. This means she was ten years old when she started as a Chimbwido.
I was preparing to find a second woman to interview, when I looked across the room and saw a boy in a short pink chair that looked like a high chair because it had a flat surface to place food. Something about the child, seemed odd so I walked across the room towards him. He was EXTREMELY thin and looked malnourished. He was also crying but no tears were in his eyes. He was clearly in distress so I reached out to hold his hand. His entire hand covered my one finger, he was so small. When he felt my touch he stopped crying for a minute and looked around as if he was more aware that there were people around him. I wondered how old he was because while he looked no more than three or less, his teeth were very mature and well developed. As we waited for his mother to come Rosey told us that they couldn't afford to buy him a special chair so their brother group, known as "Batsiranai - fathers with disabled children" (see http://batsiranai.blogspot.com/2006/04/introduction-to-group.html), made him this chair using papier mache. The chair was strong and I was impressed by the innovation of the fathers who made it.

His mother eventually came and she told us his name was Paul and that he suffered from cerebral palsy and brain damage after a long and difficult childbirth. She said he was ten years old.... The video and pictures below show Paul and his mother as we interviewed her.

This was a hard interview to conduct. You cannot see it clearly but his mother was in despair and tried to put on a brave face. It’s so important for me to show you this interview because I want you see the life behind the Batsiranai product you purchase, whether from www.tashanda.com or from any other website.
Paul’s mum buys medicine and other necessities for her child with the sales proceeds. She's not asking for handouts, as many poor nations are accused of squandering - no, she's walking miles & miles a day to this center, to make a toy, bag or jewellery to sell to you. The product quality is no different from a toy at a mega toystore, she's simply at a disadvantage because she's poor.
Me: “What does he need?”
His Mother: “He needs a pram from me to move him around”
Me: “You’d mentioned earlier that he needs a specific sized pram. What size?”
His Mother: “I am not sure what sized pram he needs”
Me: “How old is he?”
His Mother: “he’s turning ten years old on November 29” (in about 16 days time)
Me: “Ten years. Has he ever walked in his life?”
His Mother: “No”
Me: “So is it just a pram he needs? Is there anything else?” “ Is medicine available?”
His Mother: “Sometimes you can find it and other times you cannot. The name of the medicine is Phenobarbital and Valium ( Diazepam )”
Me: “Is there anything else you want to say”
His Mother: “He also needs special food. These days he prefers milk, popcorn and soft foods.”
After meeting Paul I could not do any more interviews.
Readers, you have to have been there to understand. It took a lot of energy out of me because his situation was upsetting. I don't mean to paint a bleak picture though. The other kids had lesser disabilities, they were vey healthy and could talk, walk and play. Added to this, the atmosphere as I mentioned before was lively and positive. It's just that meeting Paul took away a little something from me that day and I couldn't stop thinking of him for the rest of my vacation. During those remaining 2 weeks I searched all the childrens stores to find a pram and i couldn't find one! Could it be because most mothers carry their children on their backs and the rest can afford to shop for them in South Africa? I don't know but I do know that I've seen many prams in Zimbabwe before & never really wondered where they came from.

Does anyone have a donation they would like to make for Paul and other children like him? Email me PLEASE! Or click on the donation button on our home page http://www.tashanda.com.

To learn more about Batsiranai, or if you want to purchase products wholesale from them, please click their website here: http://www.batsiranai.co.zw/ . You will also find their entire product range here. If you need help contacting Batsiranai, you can also e-mail me & I can put you in touch with the right people.

My final question to Lynn was about the need for volunteers. She said volunteer assistance from anyone with an interest or a background in design would be very welcome. Added to this they would deeply appreciate donations of natural thread such as embroidery cotton, wool or cotton yarn (used to make the dolls hair so should be black, brown, yellow or gray), scissors and sewing equipment. in addition to this any donations of felt, paintbrushes, needles and tape measures would be welcome.

Kudhinda Factory Visit

2008-01-05T15:26:00.000-08:00

Visiting Kudhinda was one of the things I was looking forward to most of all. You have to understand that this is a company started by a woman with a dream. I don’t know if it was her dream to start a business, but I do know that her dream was to make a social impact. Social entrepreneurship is something rarely seen today, let alone in the late eighties when she started… Growing up I had many female role models who were self made entrepreneurs. While I have always loved entrepreneurship, I never really considered that my love of crafts, color and fabrics could become a viable social venture, as I had never really seen such a business model before..at least until I remembered Kudhinda in Zimbabwe.

This was going to be my first visit to the factory because Tashanda’s initial stock was selected for us and mailed directly to the USA by our distribution team in Harare. I had visited their retail stores in Zimbabwe though & I was always dazzled by the gorgeous colors. My mother offered to accompany me to the factory since she already knew some of the staff there.

Upon arrival we were ushered into a gorgeous sales room exquisitely decorated with African themed wall hangings, cushions, pottery and posters. It was so tempting to just pull out my camera and start taking pictures but of course that would have been foolish (not to mention over zealous)… so I waited for Mr Jonas (sales manager) to come and greet us. It was nice to finally meet him after e-mailing one another back and forth over the past year. After chatting with Mr Jonas for some minutes Ros herself (founder of Kudhinda) passed by and we were introduced to her. We did not talk for long though as she seemed to be tied up. It was nice to meet her though.

Mr Jonas was a great host. He introduced us to the staff and talked about the business process from end to end. He has worked for the company for over 10 years and worked his way up to his current position. All the staff seemed to genuinely like him. I could tell right away that this was a well run operation with good internal controls and people management. The premises were very clean, the employees had on protective clothing, environmentally friendly dyes are used and many of the workers had been there for most of their working careers. Mr Jonas allowed us to take photographs of the staff at work. I decided it would still be polite to get their permission & they jokingly answered that as long as I sent them copies it was ok by them - I still need to send those pics!!

As we toured the premises Mr Jonas explained that due to the current agricultural decline the company was no longer using potatoes to stamp their fabrics. Instead they now use rubber stamps. He showed us the dye mixing area, the large stove with a conveyor belt for color fastening and the fabric stamping area. The stamping process was the most interesting. The women doing the work were so skilled - there were no smudges or errors even though at least three of them were working on one piece. They explained that it takes three or more hours to complete one wall hanging. That's a lot of labor, time and patience. At 10 am every day the factory speakers are turned on and the staff can listen to music as they work. I can't think of a better combination - making crafts & listening to music at the same time.

The cutting and sewing area had a huge cutting table and lethal cutting machine, sewing area, finishing area, and finally a distribution area. Kudhinda makes pottery, household ornaments and much more...The company ships its products to retailers and wholesalers all over the world, and I have no doubt that they will be continuing their amazing work for a long time to come.

Thanks Mr Jonas (or "JJ" as his staff call him) for the tour!

Tichakunda School

2007-12-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, November 22, 2007, prior to my departure from Zimbabwe, my friends and I had planned to take a roadtrip to the Eastern Highlands. Our plans had to be postponed when my friend called to say her home had been burgled and she had cut her foot in the process. When I got there her family, friends and neighbours were there to check on her & see if she was ok. We decided to drive to Hatcliffe clinic where her mother is a nurse in order to get her a tetnus shot for her foot (the private clinic she'd gone to earlier had failed to giver her one). I had never been to this clinic before & thought it would be a great opportunity to find out what their needs were. I am a member of a new Facebook group called Yamura Zimbabwe (Help Zimbabwe) - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5353429931, and we are currently in the process of identifying organizations in need of assistance, especially schools or organizations supporting children in Zimbabwe.

Hatcliffe is a low income high density area in Northern Harare & it is located about 2 - 5km from the wealthier northern suburbs. The clinic was was quite impressive. It was spotless, patients were few and were being attended to in rapid succession. I was relieved to note that our standards had not changed in spite of the harsh economic climate the country is currently facing.

The majority were young mothers who had brought their children for the basic injections required for babies when they reach certain ages. I watched as these cute little things smiled & gurgled at the nurses, not knowing what they were in for! One baby was injected on one thigh first then on the other. Poor thing just cried & cried! I watched with interest as the nurses joked with the patients and questioned the mothers about why their baby had a rash and what they had done about it etc...

Nurse Muchemwa also told us about the outreach work performed by the clinic. For example it was recently annonced that our neighbor, Namibia, had just had an outbreak of polio, a disease long eradicated from Zimbabwe. On December 8th, the nurses at the clinic were going to vaccinate the people in their designated geographical area to reduce the risk of the outbreak in the country. The local newspaper had also written an article about the outbreak and all clinics and hospitals were preparing for the outreach program.

After watching the 10th or so baby being injected my friend announced that the clinic used to have a feeding program where malnourished childred were brought and fed a nutritious meal. Her mother agreed but said the program was cancelled due to the introduction of an alternative supplement known as Plumpy Nut. She took out a sample and showed us. It's basically a small foil packet which contains a high level of engery & nutrition. It is given to mothers whose children are malnourished. She showed us how they determined if a child was undernourished too - see photo & video below.

I asked whether there was a need for any volunteers at the clinic and the nurse suprised me by saying no. She went on to say "not here, but at the creche (nursery school)". I wasn't sure what she meant then she explained that there are about 5 nursery schools in the greater Hatcliffe area which were formed by members of the community & with support from local organizations such as churches, and they have a great need for volunteers, equipment etc.. She offered to take us there and off we went. The homes in Hatcliffe Extension are very poor. Structures are made from plastic donated by the Catholic church. What struck me most was how clean and attractive the plastic homes looked even though the residents were living in poverty. There were flowers outside almost every house and the yards were swept clean. It reminded me of a the tin city in Soweto except there were fewer homes with a smaller population, and it was also fairly quiet compared to Soweto.

When we finally reached the nursery school, nothing had prepared me for what I saw. Coming from my temporary home in the West, the land of excess and credit cards, it was hard to reconcile my life over there with this school over here, in my own country!! It was one of those visits with little meaning unless you visit in person..but I will try my best to paint a clear picture.

As we got out of the car and walked towards the structures it still hadn't really registered that we were at a nursery school. A nursery school has a playground with grass and trees, swings and toys. A nursery school has color and cartoons on the walls. We walked into a plastic structure with the sign "Under 6" outside it & low & behold there were about 30 little faces sitting on the dirt floor, some standing. The teacher was beaming! She just seemed genuinely happy. She made the children stand up and sing a welcome song, and they did. Some sat i.e. the younger ones & just stared at us, and 2 of the older ones lead the others in the welcome song.

The kids sang, oblivious to my distress at the condition of their school... which I internalized. Their welcome song was so cute it made us all smile. They were so proud to sing for us. After listening to them for a few minutes we moved out and on to the next class.Below is the picture of the exterior of the classroom and a video of the youngest class, the first class we visited, singing us a welcome song.

After the warm welcome from the first classs we moved next door to another class with slightly older children (about 5years old). Again, the teacher asked them to sing for us which they did with much enthusiasm. The head of the school is also a volunteer and his name is Mr Hove. He is the one who took us around the school to introduce us to the teachers and children. We stood outside the last classroom and surveyed the school yard. The sun and the heat were BRUTAL. In the distance we saw 2 small wooden structures:

"Those are the restrooms for our 400 children here" Mr Hove said in Shona (one of the main languages spoken in Zimbabwe).

I noticed that the kids had no hats on and some of them were not wearing any shoes either. The school yard had no grass and no trees. Can you imagine the health risks associated with sitting in the boiling sun all day, with no hat and feet burning from the heat of the hot soil? When I attended primary school in Zimbabwe (which is 1 to 7th grade) , hats were mandatory and anyone caught without one had to write an essay on skin cancer. Mr Hove pointed out a section where some of the classrooms were torn down to make way for wooden cabins donated by someone. It felt good to know that we were not the only ones concerned about how to help. The eldest group of children (6 year olds) were sitting in the school yard with their teacher. Mr Hove walked us towards them and asked them to recite poetry for us. One child after another took a step forward and recited a poem or a nursery rhyme for us in English. Some of the poems were about their aspirations (eg I want to be a fireman, so I can save lives, be a teacher, so I can teach..etc...); and others spoke about love, family and triumph over hardship and difficulties. It was all very moving but unfortunately as I started to record the poetry my memory card was full!!! I have added what I managed to record before my camera stopped the recording. ALL the children wanted to recite a poem for us until Mr Hove had to say "Zvakwana" (ie "that's enough now"). It was quite amusing to watch and their enthusiasm was infectious. As we continued to walk Mr Hove explained that the children attend school in shifts and this is how they end up with a head count of 400. I am definitely visiting this school again. In that moment (watching the mini-poets), I decided to make a personal committment to help them out. They had nothing. Small donations would make an unbeliveable difference. Mr Hove was given a cell phone by a Belgian visitor (probably from one of the embassies based in Harare) but he does not have a phone line. My friend decided she was going to get him one.

Next Mr Hove introduced us to the kitchen and the two ladies (volunteers) who cook the food for the children on a daily basis. He announced that they were 2 of the best cooks in the world, which made them smile at the compliment. The children are given a meal of cornmeal porridge twice a day - once at 11am and again at 2pm. The food comes with no sugar, milk or anything else. Mr Hove pointed to a pile of sticks outside the kitchen and said that each child is required to bring a piece of firewood to light the fire for the days meals.... Does anyone reading this blog have experience with solar energy or alternative energy? If you look at the pictures you can see that there are no trees to be seen for miles. This means the environment is also being affected. but what can they do? No fuel means no food, and so many trees are being cut down without being replaced. A donation of an alternative energy source would make a tremendous difference.

The final stop was Mr Hove's office. He showed us some of the things that had been donated to the school. Such donations included:

- books (some were too advanced though),

- toys (cloth dolls were covered in red soil due to the lack of surface and grass in the school yard. if you want to donate, plastic toys are much better)

- there were 2 or 3 blackboards leaning against the wall (no chalk, plus their classroom structures are too weak to hold the boards)

- Used A4 paper for the children to draw pictures

If you have children, think of their nursery school/kindergarten and visualize what it looks like. Then compare to this one. If you can't think of something to donate the comparison should help.

Our tour ended in Mr Hove's office. We went back to the classrooms to wave good bye to the kids and they all waved back at us. Some of the youngest kids danced for us & it was hilarious because one of the little boys was quite comical. As I was preparing to reverse our car away from the school I could see little heads poked behind their classrooms watching after us. Eventually they moved from behind the wall and came out into the open to say goodbye.

As we were driving away we heard one little voice shout "please bring us bannana's and oranges" and we all laughed.

We laughed, but really an orange and a bannana to these children, is a real treat. So again, if you're reading this blog, we're not asking for IPODS and Nintendo DX's or barbie dolls. Just an orange and a bannana. This was such a simple request but i knew it would be SUCH a delight to all these children. My time in Zimbabwe was running out so I was barely able to make inquires of fruit suppliers. What I do know though is that fruits and vegetables in Zimbabwe are plentiful and cheap. Every other person is selling seasonal fruits or vegetables. It would just be a matter of finding someone to supply and deliver them, which would be no problem either.

http://www.tashanda.com/ has committed to donate 5% of all Afrobag gross sales to this nursery school. I hope to bring you more pictures and stories of positive changes being made at this school.

So at the end of the day, even though our journey to the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe was postponed, we had a good day. I think this day happened for a reason. My friend may disagree as she is the one who was burgled!!! But yes, I think it happened for a reason because we would never have stumbled upon this school otherwise...

Answer: A Zimbabwean living in New Zealand has formed a non-profit organization to support this school. Shaye Boddington is a talented artist as well and she has donated one of her paintings towards the raffle. Please see more on http://www.artsquad.co.nz/artraffle/raffle.html

Matthew Rusike Children's Home

2007-12-01T12:10:00.000-08:00

Mrs Mashorokoto is one of the house mothers at Matthew Rusike Children's home. She was our guide during our unannounced visit. She says in the video:
"My name is Mrs Mashorokoto. I have 12 children under my care, including the baby on my back. The baby arrived when he was three weeks old and now he is one year, 5 months old. The eldest girl in this home attends secondary school (high school). She is thirteen years old and in form 2 (9th grade). Five of my kids are in grade 6 (6th grade) and one of them is in seventh grade. Next there is a nine year old girl in third grade followed by two children who graduated from nursery school and will be in first grade next year. So I will only have one child, a boy, attending nursery school next year. The child on my back does not go to nursery school."

I took a suitcase of Care Bears and music cassettes ranging from Peter Pan to Lion King for the kids at Matthew Rusike Childrens Home on Monday. I bought these on Craigslist for next to nothing. They were very grateful for this donation. Mr Kupeta, who runs the home, was not available when we arrived so one of the house mothers (Mai Mashorokoto) who has been there for over 15 years took me & my mum around. She was so cheerful and full of energy and you could tell that all the kids loved her. She took us on a tour of her home and some of the other homes – she has 12 kids in a 4 bedroomed home. Her house was one of the first to be built in 2004 and furnished entirely by one local Zimbabwean business woman who refused to be named. I was deeply amazed at the generosity of this one woman, whoever she is. The furniture was good quality & very well maintained & the kids bedrooms had lots of toys. Two of the other houses were fully furnished by the British embassy.

To your left some of the kids pose with the new Care Bears I purchased on Craigslist. I also donated the casettes below with childrens music & stories.

I also learnt that the toddler in this home, one cute little boy, has been adopted by a Zimbabwean couple in diaspora. He was adopted at age 2 months but has not moved in with his parents because they are waiting for his passport! Everyone tries to make him call his house mother Gogo or Ambuya (grandmother) but all the time we were there he was calling her Mama like his house siblings do. Below is his picture. He's so adorable!

As I toured the homes I tried to get a real sense for what was needed by observing & chatting with 4 of the 12 or so house mothers. The recurring request was for food. The Catholic Commission & Methodist church, as it was explained to me, are the only regular donors of food. One house mother I interviewed said her family had not eaten meat in a month. She showed me her fridge and it was empty - she is responsible for 11 kids! I have attached the photos for you all to see. I asked her what they ate on a daily basis & she said for breakfast they’ll eat bulgur wheat which has a high nutritional value, or tea with no milk plus bread if they are lucky, but with no margarine or jam. I arrived there during lunch and the kids were eating boiled chibage (mealies/corn) with nothing else. She said this is typical for lunch. For dinner they may have sadza (like polenta or grits) & veggies with no cooking oil, onions or tomatoes. They have no access to fruits, milk, bread and other staples on a regular basis.

To your right is the house mother's refrigerator. I was completely shocked!

The home used to have a chicken breeding project & a piggery, but this was discontinued due to lack of stockfeed. I’m sure any skills or donations in this area would be very much appreciated.

In spite of this, everyone was very cheerful and the kids seem happy and secure in their environment. The local police station has provided them a policeman to man the gate 24hrs since the Christmas season is when thefts occur. The house mothers have been trained on herbal remedies & each household has a herb garden to treat basic illnesses like a common cold or tummy ache. There is a clinic on the premises which was previously being run by the matron but now a registered nurse has been provided by the Ministry of Health who will also be available to the surrounding Epworth community. Painkillers etc.. would be welcomed too…

Children play after lunch

There are separate dormitories designated for teenage boys and girls. They live on their own and cook for themselves under the supervision of a house mother. They are sent for basic skills training like hair dressing & carpentry, and some have gone as far as becoming doctors and lawyers. Sadly one of their lawyers was killed in a car accident recently.

To your right is one of the girls dormitories. Here they cook for themselves (see 2 plate stove on the left side of the photograpgh) in order to prepare themselves for the outside world when they reach the age to leave the home.

There is a crèche (kindergarten/nursery school) which is open to the public as well as the children from the home. The crèche is on the premises & it has lots of swings in the playground. The playground could be spruced up a bit (paint etc..) but overall the equipment seems to be decent shape.The home continues to build new residences using donor funds. One of the main outside donors is the staff of Quantas airlines who started their relationship with the home many years ago & for which the Home is extremely grateful.

Children's creche and playground
There is a new section for teenage boys & girls but they have not yet moved in due to lack of furniture. The thing that struck me most about the home was how serene it was, how joyful the mothers & their kids were and how clean the place was. I mean ALL the kids bedrooms were amazingly neat & clean, from toddlers to the teenagers!!

I’ve tried to be as detailed as possible but if anyone has any questions please just let me know. If you want to donate money please e-mail me on http://www.tashanda.com/. The fundraising committee typically have a series of fundraising events within the Methodist church. For example a golf tournament or an annual dinner dance. Two or more committee members will go to Makro (mega grocery store) or wherever else to buy food & personally take the food rations, blankets etc.. to each house & make sure it’s in the pantry … If you prefer to send the funds directly please go to the Matthew Rusike website on http://www.domain.com/. The only problem with their website is that they accept checks in Zimbabwean currency only. Tashanda knows the fundraising committee members personally & guarantees proper delivery & accountability of funds or donations in kind.

Based on my own observations during the 2 hours I was there, the home needs the following in order of priority:

a) FOOD, FOOD, FOOD!!!

b) Furniture (ANY) for the new dormitories. Kids bedrooms look like they need new bedcovers.

c) Clothing – the home is expanding outside Harare

d) Penpals and sponsors for individual kids – one teenage girl remained asleep when we walked into the teenage girls dorm rooms. Her sisters claimed she was awake & they thought she was being rude. This girl was probably feeling depressed/sad & had no one to talk to. I felt bad for her & this is why I think mentoring through letters in general could be very effective. The house mothers or the kids take their letters to the office where they are posted free on their behalf. This small investment could have a huge impact on a kid.

e) Anyone with a skill that could benefit the home. This can range from agriculture to sewing, art, soccer, party planners, computer gurus – ANYTHING

f) Books! I saw lots of toys in the kids bedrooms but no books to help further their reading skills.

No appointment is necessary & they welcome visitors with open arms, always. The office is open during the week only but you can visit he house mothers anytime.

Back from Zimbabwe

2007-11-28T09:26:00.000-08:00

I've literally just returned from 2 weeks of vacationing and working in Zimbabwe. It was great to be back home, I enjoyed it immensely. I saw a side of my country I had never really paid attention to before and I believe it was a great experience for me. My e-mail access was limited to dial up when I was home, so daily blogging was out of the question. Instead I'm going to update this blog slowly over the next few months with tales of my arts & crafts adventures as well as some of my other adventures related to issues of poverty, women and land. I'll start with Batsiranai, the women's cooperative for mothers with disabled children, then I'll talk about the sadza batik craft, wire art, shona sculpture, tye & dye, natural jewellery making, woodcrafts, "granite-crafts" - if there is such a word and much more... I'll introduce you to the Association of Women's clubs, Kudhinda, Silvera House, Dangwe Arts and the Menyere brothers, makers of Tashanda's new Afrobag line. Finally I'll tell you about my visit to Mathew Rusike Children's Home, Hatcliff Clinic, Hatcliff Extension nursery school and my visit to a sub-divided commercial farm.

Keep checking this blog for updates!

Bag, recycled curtain fabric

2007-10-31T18:59:00.001-07:00

Bag, recycled curtain fabric
Originally uploaded by SadieandLance

This recycled bag is pretty cool. This is definitely a project I can use in Zimbabwe.

It Takes a Village

2007-10-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

This blog is for all arts & crafts lovers. I am looking for ideas to take to Africa, to the women's cooperatives there, so they can improve their products and be more competitive in the international market.

My next trip is to Zimbabwe in November 2007. There I will meet with the director of the largest women's cooperative in the country to learn a) about the women involved in the projects b) what projects they are working on c) what obstacles they encounter d) how I can help.

I also love stone sculpture, so if you like sculpture, feel free to share. More on this blog later...