Oh my gawd..i have just spent the last hour and a half writing, and for some unknowable nasty twist, the whole thing deleted...I am aghast. it was good too, descriptive, filled with thoughts, emotions, ideas, insights..gone.
OK..a hasty update, hello from Zimbabwe, Saturday afternoon now, 2pm, been sitting here since 10am..thanks to all the emails coming in from across the world..great to hear news from home..election in Creemore, Johnny sending pics of the twins, he running the NY marathon tomorrow, hope i can get it on the internet...
I can't believe i lost all that..
OK the workshop this week. on art, the first one the ICA has given, i am a bit of an experiment it seems..20 participants some walking 2-3 hours to get there, some coming only for the mid morning snack of at least 6 slices of white bread and juice, lunch: chicken and rice...we eat with our right hand, the national dish Pap, or Pup, a combination of a wheat flour and water boiled and stirred..delicious like cous cous....no napkins, few trees, little paper...community centre, open windows blasting in hot air..the sweet sound of a class of 4 year olds next door singing xmas carols..we begin with an introduction, most absolute art beginners, nervous, quiet, sitting silently, then come the infamous spirit cards a la Douglas Walton..later one devout Christian confessed how worried he was when he saw this on my agenda, fearful of evilness coming into the workshop..but these were a huge hit, 25 cards for their children and grandchildren.....each one different, original, made by themselves, they were ecstatic, and we used them to imagine mountains, bushes, trees, creating landscapes: big land, little skies and the opposite for those who know these workshops...great..it was wonderful for me to watch them grow, the empowerment, the concentration, the sense of huge proudness when they discovered I CAN DO IT!! i am an artist..I can't wait to get home to teach this too my kids, my grandkids... I can use this in my batik...so exciting..wonderful. We finished with a REMEMBERING WALL. I've been trying to figure out how I could incorporate the HIV AIDS issues with an art workshop...and this worked poignantly..a celebration of the lives of those they have lost to the disease..we all put names on a banner in many colours sizes...75 in all, framed at the end with 40 brightly coloured completed paintings done throughout the two days....we took pictures of them in front of the Wall..I would love to share this with you in pics but am technically challenged at the moment..later...
I gave everyone a certificate for completing the Creativity ARt Retreat in Dunedin Canada fine arts workshop....I won't forget this..

Later the community coordinator spoke of three babies which has just come to her, orphans..whose mom had just died, a 5 month old, and twins 1 and a half year old, a boy and girl,with no family, no money, no milk...could we make a project for these kids...yes..good for you to know who helped me with donations, where your money is going directly, straight to these kids...thank you...

thoughts, ideas, experiences...last Sunday on a long walk, cluster of religious people drapped in white sitting in the middle of a scruffy weedy field chanting, praying...during the week old people hacking away at the weeds to prepare for corn planting next month when the rains finally come; sanctions, what good are they doing for the people in Zimbabwe who are most effected by them? I wonder.

things are desperate here in the sense of little food, housing, clean water for so many people..yet you don't get a feeling of anger, despair, stress at all..gentle loving giving, quiet people...you see working together, helping each other, a giving, a huge sense of hope, joy, laughter in what they do have.."we are surviving" we are Zimbabwe, we will make it...but to take away the basics, to withhold money, food, agricultural machinery,how can this country grow, how can it work its way out of the spiralling downward they now experience: fuel shortages, there is no gas. we almost didn't make it out to the workshop with the supplies..electrical brownouts, blackouts almost every night without a storm in sight....when you think that the majority of the world's population live without electricity...reading NO MORE OIL by Paul Roberts, excellent book, a must read....
I am basically terrified that this machine will delete again soon..so i am going to call it a day...
am not going back to edit, delete..make more interesting, you get this one the way it was written...fast....(thanks to my servitude at Shaw U. a million lifetimes ago...)
Oh - before I go...wanted to say a word about Madonna and her child adoption, seen with huge suspicion here, the papers are full of it, the people i have talked with, wondering, whispering "why African children" why AFrica...they confide in me, the issue of child abuse coming up...I am shocked...
So go Johnny go...
I'll be thinking of you...
Have a great weekend everyone...
signing off....Lynn