Towards the end of my Villa Aurora creative
writing residency in Los Angeles last year, I was already thinking where I
could get the next residence where I could try to finish the novel project I
had started there.
I must also comment that it is very
challenging for me to write from my home country of Zimbabwe currently because of the incessant power cuts that
we have been experiencing for the past decade or so ever since our politics
tottered - my writing relies heavily on the computer and online research and if
there is no electricity that becomes a very huge challenge.
Of course when I started writing seriously
all those years back, a solid sixteen of them now, I was using the old
fashioned clickety-clack typewriter, but I cannot deny myself the advantages of
the advances of modern technology simple because our politicians are failing to
get their act right can I?
And so here I was pondering on how and
where I could find another residency when I got an email from the Nordic Africa
Institute saying they would like to have me over as their 2011 Guest writer for
the months of April to June 2011.
Wow! When I got the email it was around
November 2010. I some way this was
an excellent development because I had just started working on the new
manuscript and I was writing slowly, but when I got the invitation I was like a
cat whose tail has caught fire. I
was galvanised.
I set a target. I wanted to have the first draft finished in Los Angeles in
three months from October to December, and then take a break from the
manuscript from January to March 2011, and then go to Sweden in April and
immediately start writing from April to June (Another three months) and then
get back home, sit down another three months from July to September, and then
hopefully work on the manuscript for the last time for another three months –
October to December.
So far everything is on a brilliant
schedule, it is mid September right now as I am writing this document and I am
just waiting for October to come so that I can get to work on this exciting
manuscript again. Yes the
manuscript has got me excited and I can barely hold myself from touching it…
The Nordic Africa Institute is based in the
charming university town of Uppsala in Sweden, where everybody seems to ride a
bicycle. Almost all the streets of the city are paved, and so clean that the
city seemed to me almost surreal.
Of course my city of Bulawayo, which is the second largest one after
Harare in Zimbabwe, once held a continental record of cleanliness, and so
somehow I was almost at home in Uppsala, almost....
I arrived in Sweden in spring, just as the
snow was thawing from what the locals commented had been a very frigid
winter. I do not like the cold and
so one can imagine how happy I was at this news as I had just escaped from
another winter at home.
Of course when I arrived I saw the last
dregs of snow on the countryside on the way from Stockholm airport, and I think
this was good as later I was to see a magical change of the landscapes as the
land suddenly blossomed into full spring.
In Zimbabwe we do not have snow, and so I
guess our winters do not have the devastation on the land that snow countries
have, and the experience of seeing a seemingly totally vegetation dead
landscape suddenly come to green life was so touching.
I had an office at the Institute, but I
preferred writing from my hotel room, a habit I have developed over a long time
as even in my home country I write from home in the mornings, and then go to my
studio at the National Gallery In Bulawayo in the afternoons to do
administration – write emails, discuss writing with other writers, and also
creativity with visual artists.
I guess there is something about writing in
a room that smells of home that is totally different from the scents of an
office – at home you feel laid back, and
for me that is the correct stimulant for a good dose of creative output.
Some writers might wonder about what a
writing residency really is.
I remember before I went to one. I always
thought it would be all stiff and scholarly - well there is a bit of
scholarliness, which from my experience in the USA and Sweden, is about ten
percent of residence time, just like a book royalty - for the rest you are left alone, and literally so – but
are given the resources to make your writing time fruitfull – free internet, maybe
a stipend (depending on the residence), and lots and lots of private space if
you are the lone dog or yoga type.
What you have to do is just make sure that
you leave the residency with your writing batteries re-fired.
There are also rigorous application
processes to get into a residency, and these are based on your writing record.
As part of the guest writer grant at the
Nordic Africa Institute, I was also given the opportunity to attend the
Literature Festival in Lillehammer in Norway, another magical city with awe
inspiring landscapes, and also World Village in Helsinki (Finland), a two day
festival which had about 40 000 people passing through it in on the first
day. Another wow!
In Lillehammer I had a poetry reading,
where I met one of my favourite female singers from Zimbabwe I had almost forgotten
still existed because of this Diaspora thing.
This was Busi Ncube of the ‘I want True
Love’ fame, and she was still singing as brilliantly as I last saw her in
Zimbabwe, and if not more.
Watching her sing and dance I had a pang of sadness – will we ever see
all these brilliant artists who have fled the country coming back home even if
things normalise? But I was happy
for her too, that here she was doing what she knew best, and making people
dance and be happy.
At World Vilage in Helsinki I had two
talks. And during this time I also visited Berlin where I gave a talk at the
Literature House to a packed house which was facilitated by my 2010 hosts in
Los Angeles, Villa Aurora, whose office are in Berlin.
So, in summary, I am back home, back in the
incessant power cuts and a political climate that is at stalemate, but I am
happy to say that my two plays which I wrote during the Nordic Africa Institute
residency have both been taken by two different organisations, Savanna Trust
and the world renowned Inkululeko
Yabatsha School Of Arts (IYASA). The one for Savana Trust is titled Fes’bhuku,
which is a commentary on the impact of Facebook on semi rural life, and the
other one for IYASA, a musical, is titled WE CAN ALL DANCE (Dancing For Peace
And Reconciliation), and it is the story of a young female dancer who wants to
unite the people of her township across all divides through dance and music.
Both plays will be opened before the end of
this year, 2011.
Of course there is also the novel, but I am
still working on that, the title and names of characters and set have performed
so many chameleonic changes, and one never knows when such a project can see
the light of day, but all I can say is that I am still excited by the project,
and am working hard on it.
Thank you.
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