June has been Afrobloggers WinterABC Storytelling Festival. Each week of June carried a theme and bloggers were challenged to put on their creative caps and figure out how to interpret and transform the sometimes enigmatic sounding prompts and themes into a story.
Week 1 Stories Of Home
Week 2 Stories Of Africa
Week 3 Stories Of Awareness
Week 4 Stories Of Our World
Week 5 Stories Of Innovation
To check out my WinterABC2022 articles you click on the button below:
I also compiled a Twitter Thread, if you are on the Twitter Streets see you on the other side.
WordPress is such a hype-man… (I almost want to forgive them some of the 1001 ways they drive me up the wall) I published 30 days consecutively even though the Afrobloggers challenge only has a possible target total of 22. I wouldn’t be an uncle of bloggers if I didn’t go a bit extra now would I? I mean can you uncle even?
My top-viewed article in June was Coffee With The Big Saturday Read. A tribute to the late Alex Magaisa; even though we never met, played a huge role in shaping my storytelling and inspirational to my consistency. Every Saturday morning I would await The BSR to see what insights I could get from it.
A key part of the WinterABC festival is in connecting with bloggers from across the continent and seeing the different ways they interpret the themes and prompts. Its interesting to see how some can come up with ideas similar to yours while others take a completely different route. Through it all, one thing remains unifying, our stories are like a mosaic piece telling one story in many many parts, like pieces of a puzzle that are arranged together to complete a larger picture
Here are *some bloggers that for one reason or other stood out for me:
Louise Msiska who adapted the themes and topics to fit into 20 articles on a mummy blog, BecomingAMommy.com
Linda Mchawi a first-time participant from Malawi raked in another 19 articles on Lindani’s Space.
Denzel whose blogging was disrupted by an unfortunate episode when the bedroom ceiling collapsed yet still showed up on The Black Print
Leo came out of a hiatus to participate in WinterABC2022 and put us through our paces on The Leo Nation
Israel Banda posted an article which showed the Africa we never read about in A differen Africa.
Taku Ndangana took me down memory lane with an article about banking and fintech innovations on The Baobab.
Nsatu’s wrap-up post “Home, Africa, Awareness, World and Innovation”: WinterABC2022 was the perfect embodiment of the WinterABC spirit in poetic form as espoused in The African storyteller’s dilemma by Pfungwa.
And of course there were some old favourites to blogging like Josephine Amaoko of Josepyphina’s world, Olivia Byemera who is a part of the team behind Qweshunga
*Note this isn’t an exahautive list but my laptop battery is running out, darn electricity blues but do search out everyone out the tag #WinterABC2022 in the reader and on social media.
June my be over but WinterABC is never truly over, for those wanting to pursue some of posts they skipped or revisit some of the theme- go right ahead. I think the prompt on The Lion Writes greatly captures the essence and spirit of WinterABC “Until the lion learns to write, the stories will glorify the hunter”
Cheers, thank you and shoutout to those who make such events as these possible 😇
~B
Becoming The Muse 
Your thoughts.. if you will?