What is Kufunda and why did we come here?

By Jacqueline

Kufunda Village is a community of people living on a 30-hectare piece of land about 25 km outside of Harare, the capital city of Zimbabwe. Our journey to live in Zimbabwe for a few months as a family came about after seeing a beautiful opportunity emerge through my work, then finding the courage to take the plunge and make it our new temporary home. 

 

Stephen and I had been playing with the idea of moving our family to a different country for a few years. Living in Cape Town, and being privileged enough to experience so much beauty, biodiversity and wild spaces on a daily basis is not something we take for granted. Not far from the doorstep of our home in Lakeside we have family, and a wonderful community of friends,  pristine mountains with endless hiking and running trails, gorgeous beaches and infinite possibilities for immersing ourselves in nature in the city and the immediate surrounding areas. Not to mention the Great African Seaforest that we have grown to love and appreciate in recent years. All of this made it harder to leave, but it did little to stop our yearning to make a change, and to have a different cultural experience. 6 years after the initial idea sprouted we still did not have any real idea or plan of a specific city or place we wanted to go… We could quite happily have gone to Madagascar, Scandinavia, Lusaka, Scotland, or even a smaller town in Chile that Stephen had visited about 20 years before. Anywhere seemed appealing, and we really wanted our children to experience a different culture and way of life to what they have become used to in Cape Town. So over the last few years, we have both been looking for work opportunities in other places, so that our move to a new space would be meaningful and not just a random choice. We were quite excited about the possibility of Mexico, as a close friend has a sibling living and working on a farm there, but that didn’t quite pan out.

Filming seed planting with a biodynamic farming trainer in the community surrounding Kufunda

Looking at my current work, I realised I could combine a project very close to my heart that I have been working on for the last 2 years, and incorporate this vision for our family. As a documentary filmmaker I have been creating social and environmental projects for around 20 years. 2 years ago I connected with an experienced producer, and we shared some ideas we had both been thinking about. One of these ideas was to produce a documentary series on the climate crisis and how it is playing out in southern Africa, and how people in this region are creating solutions, building movements of activism, and drawing on indigenous knowledge to generate a new vision for the future. Over the last 18 months, I have been researching stories, speaking to people, collectives, organisations, and grassroots-led movements in a number of southern African locations. Because of Covid-related travel restrictions, most of this research was online, except in Cape Town, where I’ve been following (and filming) a few amazing activists and scientists. The project is now in the early stages of production, and we have characters for our documentary series in Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa. Zimbabwe is the 5th country in this production. 

 

After some months of research on ideas and projects related to food security in Zimbabwe, I connected with Kufunda Learning Village in late 2020.  I had a few discussions with Maaianne Knuth, the co-founder, and was quickly convinced that this village and community could be a great model for showcasing sustainable farming and healthy communities in the doc series. I also thought it would be a unique place to find a story about shifting old systems and possibly unearthing a new vision for small-scale farming in Africa. 

 

So I looked at the possibility of a filming visit to Kufunda combined with a new adventure for our family. It was around the time when Stephen’s work role at C40 Cities shifted from being in Cape Town to remote, and we were all working from home anyway with Covid restrictions. From that point the idea grew wings! We also discovered that Kufunda has a small Waldorf-inspired primary school which our children could attend, Stephen could work remotely, and I could engage with the community to find the story and characters for the doc series. It seemed like a good plan!

 

Morning assembly at Kufunda Village School with teachers and children

Azara and Gabriel with the resident Welsh pony

When we floated the idea with Maaianne and her family, they were keen to support us to make it work. Their family were planning to move to Cape Town so that their twin 13-year old, Victoria and Joseph, could attend high school, and we discovered they had enrolled in the same school that Azara and Gabriel had been attending. We discussed the idea of a house swop with Maaianne and Paul, they could have a soft landing in Cape Town and move into our our house, and we would move into the guest cottage at Kufunda. Everything seemed to be serendipitous! 

Stephen and our neighbour Stan exploring rocks near the river

 

Kufunda is a space of learning. “ku Funda” in Shona means just that - to learn. Here the Kufundees have been learning about permaculture and now biodynamic methods of farming; they offer a beautiful individualised learning environment for children using the philosophy of Anthroposophy, with thatched classrooms nestled in the cool shade of Msasa trees; and the generative leadership and healing work with surrounding communities has had a huge impact on local people and their well-being, even through the dark years of economic crisis and political instability in Zimbabwe. Whoever lives in and visits Kufunda is immersed in the continuous learning journey, which we have found to be rich, alive and very inspiring. We feel as though we are learning so much by being here, and hope that somehow we can make some kind of useful contribution to the world by absorbing and then sharing snippets of the emergent wisdom of this community. That’s the medium to long-term goal. In the short-term we get to trade our immersion in fynbos and kelp forests for the magic of rural Zimbabwe with its miombo woodland, granite boulders and afternoon thunderstorms. While we are missing our friends and family in South Africa, we have made new friends at Kufunda and have been touched by the welcoming, warm-hearted nature of the Zimbabwean people.

Gabriel and his new friends show off their potato chips they cooked together on an open fire

Azara spends most of her time with the 5 horses!

[Intro photo: Our new friends, Mathias and Fidelis on some of the granite boulders]