Kufunda - A Best Kept secret

For many years people have joked that Kufunda is “Zimbabwe’s best-kept secret.” Visitors arrive and say, half amused and often surprised, Why does no one know about this place?

Last week I had a new insight into what may be going on.

Kufunda was created to support the return and remembering of the wealth and wisdom that is already here --- in the land, in the people, in th

e culture. This is wisdom that has been under attack for so long - from colonial history and more recently from a materialistic capitalist culture often measuring value in money and credentials. In this world my Zimbabwean grandmother, with less than 2 dollars a day, was seen as just a poor rural woman. Poor Grandma.

And yet she was an extraordinary woman, connected to her land, keeper of her family, a tough resilient African woman who woke each morning at 5 to tend to her homestead, her animals, her fields, her family. To remember and reclaim a way of being that the world no longer values is not so easy. It requires safety. It requires deep affirmation of what was - and perhaps still is. Reclaiming something that has been belittled for generations requires a profound inner turning.

And that turning cannot easily happen within the same field that caused the loss in the first place.

The event that sparked this insight came from a moment in a conversation, where I found myself losing my own voice. I was in a discussion with someone who was utterly certain that he held the correct view about a particular issue. From where I sat it felt as if the rest of us in the conversation were being told we were missing the essential point. As the conversation proceeded I noticed myself gradually becoming more quiet and still. I simply stopped responding.

I reflected on it later that evening. And I realised that this is perhaps the same movement I have seen in many rural communities. Among the so-called poor. With the many teenagers who failed their high school exams. In the people who have learnt that  they don't count for much in the eyes of the world.

When a dominant field has already decided what is good and true and beautiful, many people who don't fit that narrative simply stop showing up (or they become angry activists, but that is another story and not so much our landscape). 

And so it makes sense that an essential part of this reclamation was to withdraw a little. To step away from fields that have already judged us and decided on our behalf.  Even if we were not fully conscious of the roots of it, we created kufunda away from the limelight.

To create a  space where nervous systems can settle. A space where dignity and worth can return.

At Kufunda we have tried to create such spaces over the years. Kufunda is an invitation to return to the fullness of who we are - people in their wholeness, in community in rural Zimbabwe. A place of return, remembering and mutual becoming.

It is my sense that as our roots have grown strong, it is more and more possible to show up unapologetically for who we are, even as I struggled in that one conversation. The struggle showed the journey we had travelled and strengthened my clarity to keep travelling. 

Kufunda, at its heart, is less about what we do and more about how we be together. And perhaps this is why it has taken time for our work to become visible or even for us to truly value the depths of what we do.

How about you? Which people or rooms or situations silence your voice?

And where do you find belonging that allows you to bring what is uniquely you?

My grandmother and I, with Alice one of my cousins - many years ago!