Hello this is Christine Brautigam and in November 2021 and the first part of December I was a guest, volunteer, and visiting teacher in the village of Kufunda. It is 40 minutes outside of Harare in Zimbabwe. This visit was an extension of my education, as I had recently earned a Masters of Arts in Teaching (MAT) degree at Pacific University. I was very attracted to Kufunda for reasons you will see in Maaianne's answers below.
I asked Maaianne the following four questions and feel quite honoured to share her answers with you.
You are welcome to read them below or listen here: Posted on Patreon (It is worth a listen as Maaianne has an amazing voice and a beautiful way of bursting into laughter.)
You can learn more about current day Kufunda at Kufunda.org. All of the photos were taken on my phone.
“Yes, Kufunda is a learning Village in Zimbabwe. Kufunda actually means learning. We are a community of individuals that are learning our way into a different future. The question that's at the heart of Kufunda is; How do we create healthy vibrant community? Kufunda is the living answer to that question.
There are three main aspects that we work with as part of that journey and lived inquiry. The first is really about ‘how do we live in community?’ so, a lot of it is as members of this Village, but also with Zimbabwean rural communities. What we learning is around participatory process and people each bringing their gifts and their passions and then finding ways of co-creating together out of that.
So healthy community living and healing with the land. How do we grow our food in such a way that we are nourishing the Earth rather than extracting from her? That Journey has brought us to permaculture and, more recently, BioDynamic farming as a way of really being good stewards of the land. What we are also discovering in that is that as we deepening our relationship with the land we are actually deepening our relationship with ourselves and on a journey of becoming more whole.
So Community, Land, and then the third is the Children. Through our work with community we used to run youth leadership programs and we saw that many young people were coming out of education system wounded, not believing in themselves. So we've begun, about 5 years ago, a Waldorf-inspired primary school. For many years we've been working with rural communities with Waldorf-inspired preschool and kindergarten setups.
Everything that we learning is almost, in many ways, its not inherent in the children, but what we see with the young people coming out of the school, we had to do a lot of unlearning to support them in coming into this way of being with each other in more generative and visionary ways.
The school that we've created is to say, actually, so much of it is already in the children, and if we can nourish it, and nourish them, to just continue to believe in themselves, continue to land fully here with confidence and imagination, then they become a part of the bridge into a different future.
So, in terms of ‘what are we?’ as that was at the higher level. We are, practically, a learning village with about 60 people who live here. About 20 adults are working for Kufunda. So we've got the school with the teachers and currently 65 children but growing. We've got a community team that works with rural community development running workshops for neighbouring, but also further afield communities, supporting them to come together in this generative way that I spoke about, and then we've got the Biodynamic team that is growing, not a lot, but learning how to grow and be with the land and working with neighboring local communities to spread this way of working with the land. We just recently started a veggie basket, selling biodynamic vegetables to Harare, small, but hopefully that will also grow.
Those are the three aspects of life at Kufunda, that is having an impact on our neighboring communities… I think when people come here, what they see is, it's almost like we remind them that you can be a Zimbabwean community and not let go of their roots. So many Training Centers they chop the forest and then they build their square buildings with their tin roofs, and we do have some buildings like that here, but the essence of Kufunda is you come in and you see the African village. You see all of these round rondovuls with the thatch roofs, nestled amongs the trees, and with the composting toilets and the wood saving stoves…
So, when people come they step into the lived experience of ‘how can community be, how else can it be?’ Because we live in the rural and in the journey to the modern we're losing so much. At Kufunda we are saying you don't have to lose that, and in fact, we have to build on who we are and what we know and then go forward. It seems to be an important part of our work that rural communities from elsewhere can come and visit and learn with us in this little oasis.”
“Ah yes, where did this come from? So, my father was Danish and my mother Zimbabwean and I grew up in both countries. I went to University in Denmark, but my family was, at that point, living here in Zimbabwe. What I was experiencing was a dissonance, something wasn't adding up. In my experience of Zimbabwe and what I was hearing when I was out, when I was in Denmark and Europe, and also when I was in Zimbabwe here, people's views on the North; it was like it was all good… sort of a sense of North and West all good, South and Africa all bad. I am putting it in too strong of a polarity, but that was my essential experience… as a generalization both sides were actually, somehow buying into it. So, over a few years, I got a stronger and stronger impulse that I needed to come back here and, hmm… it is also wrong to say support people, no, it was to support people, but also to see something that I was seeing from being a little bit outside of both realities. I was seeing that it is not so simple, and there's a lot here that people were not acknowledging and therefore not building upon.
So, the inception of Kufunda came on my 30th birthday, I invited, pretty much, everyone I knew from my work in Denmark and elsewhere to come and celebrate life in Zimbabwe for a week. We had 40 people, friends, fly in from North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia and then we had a week here, this was before Kufunda, on my parents farm and we traveled to my grandparents Village in Mhondoro and we went to Hwange National Park and Victoria Falls and of that whole week the strongest experience was one night, it was just 24 hours in Mhondoro. This rural Zimbabwean Village and 40 foreigner friends and about two hundred villagers, possibly more, spending an evening and night in celebration with African drums and mbira and dance and traditional food and it was such it was such a strong, I don't know, there was so much joy and community and togetherness! and and we arrived at like 5 p.m. or something, we arrived in the African night… it was quite... I think, initially some of my friends were quite scared, like whoa, and for most of them, I think for all of them, yes, it was a deeply moving experience. Several of them said ‘it was life-changing.’ …and I still can’t explain/understand, how is a night in an African Community life-changing? But it was something about this picture we have of Africa ‘the basket case’ to suddenly having this experience of, of what, I guess almost like what true community can be! Like real togetherness, a real, yes, soul connection; the song, the celebration...
The next morning, as we were leaving, so it wasn't in fact 24 hours it was less than that, the chief got up and offered his thank you. Then he spoke and I was like ‘What?!’ and he spoke about… because my friends had brought gifts, there was an orphanage there or orphans that I asked them to bring gifts for… and he started a little bit like, again same old begging bowl… ‘‘Thank you for coming!’ you know ‘thank you for all your gifts’ and my friends were like… and, many of them said they actually felt ashamed that they brought second-hand clothes and second hand toys and what they were given was so much richer!!! …even though you can’t… it was intangible, right?
He was like ‘Without you, where would we be?’ and ‘We still need more support and please help us…’ and I was like ‘oh my God this is terrible’ and an older gentleman who is a friend of a friend of mine, jumped up, a British man, and shouted, “NO!” to the Chief, “No no no! You have no idea what you’ve given us. It was nothing compared to what we brought. What you gave us was so much!” I was grateful he spoke it at that moment cause that was my sense, but as we then left, I just had this real strong… it felt a bit like a lightning bolt, ‘Oh my God, I have work to do here.’ It was just this sense of… a bit like fish in water…, like what I am saying, is you’ve got something; this community, this togetherness… but for them, it is like “I don’t know what you are talking about, because we do not have da, tada, ta da, da, da…” which is also really true.
So, Kufunda came out of this impulse of both being true, that there is so much here, AND that more is longed for. But what if we began by acknowledging and appreciating and celebrating what we have and then building on that to move towards where we want to go? So, not just say, ‘you’ve got everything you need, it’s fine,’ no, no, that you’ve got something and of you are just with the begging bowl, or you are just with the consciousness that you are less than and that you are poor, it is very hard to grow what you want without constantly being dependent on someone to come and give it to you. So, that was the beginning of Kufunda. …
I went back home and wrapped up my life in Denmark and came back a few months later and again went out to communities where we have family, and Mondoro was the first… and asked; “What do you have that you can celebrate and that you appreciate?” and realized it was too big of a stretch of a question, maybe because I came from outside with an assumption of… maybe development, and it was really such an unusual question for them. Normally they would be asked: What do you need?
That was where the clarity that Kufunda isn't simply an initiative that goes out and meets people in community, Kufunda is an initiative that builds something here that is our own learning, our way in to the answer to those questions. A place where people can come and be away from their everyday, be in a different, almost like a cocoon, a place to be nestled in a place and process where they could then be with those questions and then hopefully out of those develop their dreams, their initiatives and then go home and get to work on them.
Yes, so that was the impulse and that is the journey. Yeah... it was a mix from youth programs to community organizer program and then, as I said, more recently in the arc of Kufunda’a history realizing, actually it starts already from the children, 2001, twenty years ago."
"How about I answer, How did we really bring the kids in?
We celebrated our tenth anniversary a year late. So… the impulse came in 2001, Kufunda began in 2002, we had our 10-year anniversary in 2013 (we were late, but we needed to celebrate) and, as you may know 2007, 08, 09… well the end of that 2010 decade, we were in economic crises, almost free fall! We had huge inflation. The government got scared because people were angry, so communities got shut down and you could not go do work in communities because they were afraid of opposition politics… So those were also really challenging years for Kufunda and all of Zimbabwe.
So, the beginning of 2013 everyone is kind of coming out, but still really beleaguered. We switched to a US dollar economy and things are beginning to find their feet again. During all those years of hardship, often when we would gather as a village and ask what is working?, what is not working? and we would look at ourselves and go, “We are not doing very well…” so we were quite critical of ourselves. This 2013 January celebration, it was a week again. We invited our rural communities, we invited our friends from overseas… we didn't have as many as for my birthday, but dear friends of Kufunda from South Africa, from the UK, from Harare that came to be with us again for a week to celebrate the first 10, actually 11, years of Kufunda. So for the first time, in a long time, we didn't point out all we could have done better, it was just a week of celebration. That was actually when the impulse for the Waldorf school was born.
What I learned from that, is when we truly celebrate, and of course you can’t celebrate all of the time, but it has to be a point where you really honor and acknowledge what you’ve done. Out of celebration, the seed of the next can rise. It felt very strong, and now it's too far away that I can’t give you the exact details, but I remember coming out of that… in fact there was a conversation in the Dare about, now it is time for us to really attend to the children.
We already had a little bit of Waldorf coming in, but it was like; school! We need to build a school. Then it was a long winding path but eventually here it is the school growing and it is beautiful.
So, kindergarten was held here in 2010, but then in 2013 a stake was put in the ground. We actually had been doing the school since 2013 in partnership in Harare. It is only the last 5 years that it's been our own school out here at Kufunda Village. It was when we grew to grade 3 that we decided we needed to do it here. So we added a grade and this is the first year that we reached to grade 7, which is the end of primary school for Zimbabwe.
So, for a little reflection on how that's been or changed or enhanced the Kufunda Learning Village, it's been amazing actually. My sense is that the main thing is that it has brought a life to the center. So, my sense is actually that the children, the school, is at the heart of Kufunda. It is interesting, we started with community, and the first community workshops we ran out, of that appreciative inquiry that we would do in every community workshop we would ask; What is your dream? every time the children came in.
So many of the women would always bring in the children, whether it was the AIDS orphans or the the local children, always came in. So the guidance to work with the children came in right from the beginning from the community women.’We have to work with the children!’ So we began, and initially we saw how they worked with the children was this archaic British, like little military school! It was terrible. So, we were like, we’ve got to find something else! Then we met someone who knew about Waldorf and then Waldorf came in and we were like, ‘Oh my god, this is so resonate with the ethos of Kufunda!’
Once the school was happening at Kufunda it's like everyday, because they come to school every day, except for holidays, but before when it was a Learning Village where we were running workshops, you could have long periods where there wasn't a workshop. Then the village would get a bit quiet and we would still be working with the land, but with the school it was like it was a heartbeat that came to life! …and the parents are working at Kufunda and the children are going to school there… it's like it's brought another aliveness, yeah.
We just had the year end festival, we have not been able to have festivals for the whole year. This was the first time in a long time we have been able to do a festival again because of Covid. It was so wonderful and to feel the energy and the confidence of the children! This is what the parents have seen, they have older siblings who have gone to the government schools… No offense to go to schools but if you don’t fit into the box then you gradually gradually have your confidence eroded…
So, for the parents over the years, as demonstrated so beautifully in the festival, is to see their children shine, and glow, and PROUDLY come forth! ...and to actually love school. I think the school and the children are also kindling a sense of hope in the parents, in a sense of belief in the future but also in themselves as Zimbabweans!
One of my colleagues, who I speak with often and has her children at the school, with her older son at the state school says how Kufunda's school is making all the difference in her children. Our schooling is what’s holding us back, so often, and limiting us to step forward with our creativity.
Regarding the first all-school event where each class shared their work with the other classes, it was lovely to see the kids so proudly sharing their work and also so interestedly, like, ‘What are these guys doing?’ I had a sense of, especially from the younger ones, to see what the older students are doing and be like, ‘This is where are we going!’ It was such a beautiful way to recognize the journey of where they have been and where they are going.
Ahh… sure! So, if I start with the school, maybe I speak a little bit on each of the three areas and then I'll see if there's a wider piece. So with the school, we are really seeing the gift and the beauty of Waldorf, and so my vision is both for our school to grow… the parents on Friday were saying, ‘and what about the high school?!’ and I thought, whoa that is a lot of work, but actually if I look out, that would be my dream. The primary school is strengthened, the high school eventually comes to be, the Waldorf kindergartens are adopted across the country, and that maybe even we become a center that can train teachers so that they could be more of this kind of education happening around Zimbabwe.
A part of me is a bit terrified to say that because that feels like a very big vision, but I was saying to someone recently, that of all the work we are doing at Kufunda, I think possibly the school is the profoundest transformative vehicle for change in this country. It allows something not to be broken and for this human spirit of creativity to come forth and bring something of what's needed here in this country.
For the biodynamic farming, I would dream that, again, we could be a center for Zimbabwe, maybe even the region, around biodynamics.
Biodynamic farming came out of anthroposophy, which is also where Waldorf comes from, and came through Rudolf Steiner. So we work with the land in a very careful way… with permaculture we're mimicking the intelligence of nature which is amazing and wonderful! With biodynamic farming, my experience is, we take one step further, at the risk of sounding like I'm comparing it and saying this is better, but we do take a step where human beings are then working with what's in nature to create preparations, it's like homeopathic preparations, to strengthen the vitality of the soil and the plants. We are bringing in, yeah, vitality and elements from the cosmos, as well as from the Earth.
It is a healing agriculture. It really is a healing agriculture and I wish we could spread that here in service of this beautiful land and also in service of the people, because my experience is, you know, we are what we eat.
When I'm eating food that is really alive, not just organic, but really alive!, something more becomes possible for me and so that is what our children, our people, need to be eating.
Then with the community, it's, yeah I'm realizing it's nice to have this conversation… so that we began with the youth and then we brought the community organizers in… and something about… umm… and Kufunda hasn't been working very specifically with youth the last few years, we’ve been working much more with Community organizers… so it's something about, in this reflection with you, that my vision would be that we could become a center that could be much more available to young people. So we've been talking,
in the last 2 years, but not landing it… about vocational training and vocation in the bigger sense of the word.
So, vocational training, we often think of practical skills like carpentry and this and that… and often vocational training centers are for people who aren't doing very well and can’t hack it academically, but when we say that the word vocation, like ‘What is your vocation?’ As a deeper, deeper question. So for me, there is something about, ‘What if we could become, so this is really still future speculation, but a Vocational Center for Young People where they could connect more deeply with who they really are and what they have to bring to the world! Some of that will then show up really in craftsmanship, but also a carpenter is not just slapping together chairs, but are putting them together with care and love and attention and beauty. So, there's something for me around returning to the work with the children, which has been knocking, but we haven't quite brought it in yet… then the community work to continue from that first impulse… yeah, celebrating the gifts and out of that supporting the generative co-creativity that can arise… that was a mouthful!
Just really, thank you for asking for this conversation. It always happens, I don’t know if you’ve had the same experience, but when somebody asks and listens then something more clarifies, you know? So this has been with me, ahh, mmmm, yes it just came in a little stronger, this last piece with the young people. I have this real sense of longing to expand, to integrate them more as well.
Maybe just the one thing I didn’t mention that we are working with it I think relates to all of this, is that we've been doing work with women and women's empowerment, and more recently now also beginning to host circles for men. That part of the question, ‘What does it take to create healthy vibrant community?’ is human beings who believe in themselves and who are ready and willing to serve. The gender dynamic, in this country… there is a lot that needs to be worked through there to move towards that… so that working with the children and with the youth, but also with those young girls and older women actually believing in themselves and believing that their voices, are not the same, but at least of equal value as the men. Then for the men, to be like ‘what does it mean to be a man today?’ I think men are actually quite threatened in Zimbabwe by the women slowly finding their way. So, something about realizing we can't just work at the level of community, but the level of gender, yes, gender work is also important! That is maybe a strange place to end, but that just came through as something key that I hadn't spoken.
Because we come from a history where everything has been separated when we try to bring it together too quickly, it doesn't work, it's not real. So there is that need for women, not with anger… (actually in the first years of our woman's work, I was angry!) but to do this, not with anger and actually, our woman's work has nothing to do with the men. When it is an ‘against,’ it is really more of the same. It is really a space where the question of ‘who am I?’ It is the same questions, exactly the same, but I need my space with my sisters because when we are all together, I do not feel so safe. Later, at a certain point I can find my way and then we can bring it all together. The same with the young people, they need their own space and at a certain point they can join us. We had youth program, then community program and the youth were subsumed under the community programs, as we were like ‘we can just have everyone together!’ but, somehow, the youth, they disappeared. So, there is something about ‘when do we separate and then how do we come together?’ yes, that feels really important. Thank you.