Kufunda Learning Village

Latest Update - July 2007

Reflections from the village

Sitting on the porch on a Sunday afternoon. The sun is setting. It is that time of day that I think I love the best. The light is gentle and soft, the shadows are lengthening. In an hour it will be pitch dark and the winter chill will have crept upon us.

Life at the village. May 2007. It is a moment of immense darkness in Zimbabwe. Our country is gearing up for elections in 2008. Our economy continues its downward spiral. Spiralling out of control. A few weeks ago our inflation rate hit 10 000% I think we might already be on to 14 000, but I loose track. What we know is that prices are going up daily, sometimes even doubling from one day to the next.

So how is life in the village against this backdrop of a country in decline? I hesitate to say it, but life is good. That is not to say that we are not affected or touched or part of the chaos of our moment in Zimbabwe, but we are also part of another unfolding. One that makes us hopeful and blessed to be alive.

We are deepening our learning about what it means to be a community, and about what it means to be a village. We are living first hand our experience of what it means to be in the process of co-creating healthy vibrant togetherness - sometimes not so healthy and not so vibrant. We are learning what it means to slow down, to show up, to work through our challenges with each other, to re-learn trust. We are learning to work more closely tuned in to nature, to care for the children, to tell stories around the fire, to give ourselves over to spontaneous joy and laughter, to the depths of grief. I think we are learning what it means to be alive - and to be alive from a place of love, and heart and spirit.

Personally I am in the middle of a transition to this faster world - I will soon be basing myself in Johannesburg, with my partner. In this move I am beginning to appreciate just how much of what we have here at the village is needed and relevant for that other world.

I feel it a great honour to be here at this time, and to be in this learning and deepening with everyone else at the village.

Below follows some small news headlines from all of us,

with love,

Marianne

Deepening our community programmes

In March we hosted the first of a series of one week community programmes aimed at deepening the relationship between Kufunda and our partner communities, and support them in developing their initiatives and projects further.

The most recent one, just ended early June, brought community organisers from Zvimba and Mhondoro to Kufunda. It was an amazingly powerful programme. Somehow it felt less like a programme we hosted FOR them, and more like a deepening of an longer conversation and inquiry WITH them around what is needed to further the work of building healthy community. We used to run these programmes for one community at a time, the bringing together of community organizers from two different communities made for incredibly rich sharing and learning from similar yet different experiences and contexts.

Another new element was the use of the FLOWGAME, a simple dialogical game, that hails from Denmark. The flowgame serves to help people come together to explore their individual questions collectively. Spending half a day as a group from each community going deep into personal questions about community health - led to incredibly important collective learning about what is needed to bring more positive change to life in the villages that we serve

Learning Journey Magic

We have just co-hosted another wonderful learning journey with the Berkana institute. A group of 12, from mainly the US and Canada, and one vibrant Brazilian! recently spent two weeks in Southern Africa, and a little over a week in Zimbabwe, including a stay at Kufunda. It seems that each time we host these journeys, the connection grows deeper and deeper. The meeting between the Kufundees and the visitors was rich and joyful. Already seeds have been sown for future collaboration and engagement: A learning journey for parents and their children (18-30 year olds), a invitation to Patricia and Mathibedi from Kufunda preschool and Lapeng to visit Canada to work with others working with children and their parents, a possible youth camp for US youth to Kufunda, and many more such wonderful elements are cooking. Thank you to the journeyers for your open hearts and curious and generous spirits. For those who wish to join us on future journeys, we will be announcing the schedule in the next newsletter.

Community Planning Workshop

Soon after our own team retreat was over we hosted a three-day workshop for representatives of each of our partner communities. During three days of buzzing, community organizers shared experiences from 2005 - what had worked, and what they had learned that they wished to further in 2006. Through the use of open space technology all the planning and work-grouping was entirely self-organised around the areas and projects that people felt the most committed to and passionate about. Plans for 2006 complemented much of what the village itself is doing. It includes deepening the work with the aids orphans in the communities - through the preschool initiatives as well as through herb and nutrition garden projects. There is great excitement around the spread of the jengeta huni stoves, as well as the continued spread of the compost toilets.

Travelling to learn from other places

As our experience of life at the village is deepening, we are also journeying out into the world. This is a year where many Kufundees have opportunities to go out and share what we are living and learning here. Silas has just returned from the Art of Hosting in Colombus, Ohio. Jackie. Ticha and Sikhethiwe have returned from a gathering of learning centres in Greece, Patricia went on a two week trip to Vancouver with a colleague from South Africa - being in learning and sharing around early childhood development.

Each of the journeys out seem to have brought home an awareness of the importance of the work we are up to here - at the level of remembering what is possible in community, at the level of learning to slow down in a world that is moving so fast, and to be able to bring these lessons and experiences out to a world that needs more slowness, more community, more village.

Just a few days ago, Fidelis and Lorraine participated in the Shambhala Institute in Canada, and are now spending time at the Shire, a sister learning centre in Nova Scotia. And three of our young men have just arrived in Denmark, where they are being hosted by a growing group of friends (an association has just been established 'Kufunda Denmark'). The Danish trip is focused around being in learning around renewable energy, eco-building and organic farming

Learning Journeys

In June Kufunda hosted, with the Berkana Institute, the second group of Barr Fellows - 12 leaders from Boston, all heading up social, cultural or educational organisations in Boston. They joined us for five days, as part of a longer learning journey to Southern Africa. Their time at Kufunda had the purpose of joining in our learning of building healthy vibrant community.

They were powerful days of working in the village, and being together with story, song and shared questions. Once again our work was affirmed, with the fellows sharing the depth of their learning from the village about love of life, patience, joy in the midst of great suffering, community, openness, and much more.

It was also an important opportunity to learn about the challenge of building healthy equal relationship between those who are materially wealthy and those who materially have less, in such a way as to support and encourage the dignity of those with less material wealth, but rich with so many other resources that are often seen as less important. Money can in fact erode our valuing of some of the things that really build a community, and we need to find ways of not, inadvertently, encouraging this trend to continue when we bring two different worlds together.

We are planning a parent-child learning journey with Berkana in August 2008 (including time in South Africa). Visit the Barr Foundation to learn more about the fellowship

Circle Practicum

Two very special women recently spent a week at the village. Christina Baldwin and Ann Linea, who have made it their life's work to share, teach and spread the circle, an ancient tool and practice of coming together in wisdom.

They joined the Kufunda team for three days of circle - of thinking together and experiencing the gift of being in respectful and joyful community. We will be sharing a deeper reflection on this experience in the next newsletter. Visit Christina and Ann's website

News Tidbits

We are extending our first micro-loans to 5 projects from our partner communities. The kind of projects that are being supported included a carpentry project, a herbal processing project and a project making school uniforms. The project teams have just spent two days at Kufunda for them to be in shared planning to further their projects with the loans, and to begin a small network of community projects. In June we ran a herbal processing and nutrition workshop after enormous demand from our community partners. In August we will be working together with local artists to host a Call to Arts a workshop exploring and experiencing the power of arts in community life, health and development. We are finally moving forward with our community currency. Marianne recently met Bernard Lietaer, economist, author and co-designer of the Euro, at the Shambhala institute. Bernard has helped with the initial design of a learning currency for Kufunda and our partner communities (quite different from our original design), which in addition to being a complementary currency will more fully be able to support and encourage the aims of continuous Learning that underpin the village. We will be sharing more on this as it unfolds.