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Thursday, November 3, 2005
Dancing for the AIDS orphans back home in Zimbabwe
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Tawanda Chabikwa is using his knowledge of African dance and art to raise money to help AIDS orphans in his native Zimbabwe. Chabikwa, 20, is a student at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. This Friday he'll put on a concert of a African dance and open a show of his own African art. Proceeds from both events will got toward funding a nonprofit organization, Ndini Wako, which Chabikwa started to help at least some of the 1 million AIDS orphans of his homeland. Chabikwa is majoring in human ecology, with a focus on social entrepreneurship in the arts. Q.: What brought you to Maine? What brought you to College of the Atlantic specifically? A.: After (studying in) Hong Kong I was looking for a place more quiet and sparse. A place that would allow me the space to develop and explore possibilities in the curriculum. I was also looking for a holistic ecological mindset in the frame of my education, and COA was the perfect place for that. Q.: What prompted you to start a non-profit group to help AIDS orphans? Does someone in your family have AIDS? A.: The biggest prompt was my mother who has been involved for many years in work with non-profits focused on all aspects of HIV/AIDS. So having volunteered and worked with her it became clear that this is a horrendously large problem in Zimbabwe. I also have a soft spot for children and have volunteered and worked with orphans in my own country and in Hong Kong, Sri Lanka , Cambodia and mainland China. And because there is a good quarter of the Zim population affected by AIDS just about everyone in the country knows a relative that has been lost to the epidemic. Q.: How much money have you raised so far? A.: In the first fundraiser I did I managed to raise close to $5,000 with the much appreciated help of Café Bluefish and the Alternative Market in Bar Harbor. After being invited to Foxcroft Academy, George Stevens Academy, Orono and a few other places in the state, more money was raised. Most of this has been used on the first group of 10 students. Q.: How do you determine where the money goes? Do you visit with any of the orphans helped by your efforts? A.: There is a single school we focused on which is in the Gutu region of Zimbabwe. This primary school has about 500 pupils. Through the program coordinator Mr. Nyemba and the schoolıs headmistress, Ms. Mufandaedza, we found 10 students, AIDS orphans living with relatives unable to afford fees (education is not free in Zimbabwe) and at times meals. So the money goes into the fees, and school uniforms of the children. It also provides for any hardships they may be having at home, and the counseling and career guidance services for the children, and empowerment workshops. We try to cover all aspects of their lives in order to alleviate their circumstances. I actually visited them over the summer and met the children, a very touching experience. Q.: Where did you find people to dance in this performance with you? Is it difficult to teach them the African dances? A.: All the dancers, to whom Iım very grateful, are COA students who volunteered their time to the performance and have been working on a tight timeline rehearsing the performance. It is not too hard to teach them the dance since it is not traditional African dances. It is an Afro-fusion genre. So it is not what people would expect. It is dance theater with an African twist. The narrative of the performance will actually deal with experience of immediate colonial to postcolonial southern Africa tied together by a love story. Q.: Why are AIDS orphans shunned sometimes in Africa? Is there some sort of stigma attached to them, simply because of how their parents died? A.: Indeed there is a stigma attached to the orphans which makes a target. This is because, though the occurrence of HIV/AIDS is high, people are still afraid and resistant to the idea. At time people assume that someone who died was somehow immoral. The orphans therefore suffer as sometimes even the family is reluctant to take care of them and see them as a burden. They are therefore prone to being uneducated, child laborers, child prostitutes and young children who will have to take care of their fellow siblings. It leads to a vicious cycle of AIDS orphans dying of AIDS and leaving more orphans. Given that there are already an estimated 700,000 of them in the country, something needs to be done about it. Q.: What are your plans for after college? Will you go back to Africa? Will you continue to work at helping AIDS orphans? A.: I definitely hope to continue working with AIDS orphans as part of my future. If possible (i.e. if I get a scholarship) Iıll move on to grad school and get a masters along the lines of entrepreneurship in the arts. Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at: rrouthier@pressherald.com |
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