Of Teaching The Future

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Teaching The Leaders Of The Future

I volunteered alongside 8 other members of the Harare WordPress community to go on an outreach meetup to teach WordPress to a young group of pupils at the Centre For Total Transformation CTT

Harare WordPress team at the Centre For Total Transformation CTT

The Centre For Total Transformation is a Zimbabwean Private Voluntary Organisation that seeks to reduce poverty through transformational socio-economic strategies consistent with faith based biblical values. The organization runs a centre which offers non-formal education, youth development, sport & recreation, and a supplementary feeding programme alongside various other community-based social responsibilities such as drinking water and shelter for disadvantaged members of the surrounding community.

Centre for transformational change CTT zim

To find out more about the Centre and how you can help click the button below

Centre For Total Transformation
CTT inspiring lives transforming communities

The internet through mediums such as blogs allow us to share our stories and experiences from our perspectives with the world and there’s limitless potential in the power of reclaiming our own narratives…

“Until the lions learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter”

Those who follow my blog, know I am passionate about blogging and that I love to be known as an “Uncle of Bloggers” always to trying to find ways of expanding and enriching the blogging communities of Africa.

young bloggers at CTT

This volunteer experience stood out the most for me because at the very beginning it partly felt like an uphill exercise in futility, imagine trying to explain WordPress to a group of about 10-12 year olds, who have never really used a computer and those who have, know it mostly as a device for playing games and watching movies, then add words like software, hardware, website, developers, internet, bloggers…

a lighter moment during class

After an ice-breaker session where we asked the kids to introduce themselves and share a little about themselves such as favourite activities and what they wanted to be when they grew up, we had one of them volunteer to tell a story (ngano)

Ngano are our traditional folk tales, normally they are about once upon a fictitious time; when animals talked and usually carrying some sort of moral life lesson.

Gamuchirai’s rendition of a ngano (folktale) was a creatively imaginative story involving literal head-hunters, who dressed up as angels to scam a simple religious community into believeing that they were heavenly messengers sent to tell them it was time. So they meekly had their heads cut off…

I wish I had written down the story so I could remember it better, maybe next time I see Gamu I will ask him to do me the honour of sharing it on my blog, (if we haven’t managed to find a way to have him have his own)

teaching young bloggers

Later the kids were asked to write down a short essay about themselves as a quick exercise and then tasked with typing up the essay as a word document. We encouraged them to write in a language they were comfortable with and not to worry too much about grammar or spelling mistakes.

Zita rangu ndinonzi Gamuchirai ndiri mukomana ane makore 12. Kana ndakura ndinodakuita mutungamiri wenyika. Chikafu chandinoda chinoti rice and chicken ndinoyera Shumba inonzi Nyamuzihwa. Ndinofarira kutamba bhora.
Ndinogara kuSnakePark uye chikoro changu chinonzi CTT kumusha kwangu kunonzi Mozambique
Ndiri mutambi webhora ndinozikanwa zvikuru mudunhu redu ndinotamba panamba9. Team yandinofarira inonzi PSG
ndatenda
By Gamuchirai Rhodesia
School: Centre for Total Transformation CTT

Translation:
My name is Gamuchirai I am a boy aged 12. When I grow up I want to be President. My favourite food is rice and chicken. My totem is the Nyamuzihwa lion,
I live at Snake Park and my school is called CTT. I come from Mozambique
I play football and am well known in my area for playing the number 9 position. The team I like best is PSG

TRUE STYLE by Gamuchirai Rhodesia
One day the weather was cotton covered with sesame seed and the birds where singing sweet shiny songs, it was my first day of the Chimurenga

 Stories written by the other kids will be available on a common blog that was created for them after a brief walk-through on the steps of opening a WordPress.com blog

One of the question Gamuchirai asked me after a brief tour of my blog was so how much do you get from having a site such as this….

I laughed and I laughed and I laughed and I laughed.

Then I told him one doesn’t do it for the money…

All in all it was a fun day all round for the team of volunteers and the kids who opted to come to school on Saturday instead of be elsewhere, and I hope we might have started a spark that will lead to something bigger…

Beaton Mabaso

~B

PS I told them I would write a blog post about the day and now if you could kindly comment with where you are reading this post from so I can share with them the reach the internet has, thanks😆…..

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61 Comments

    1. Thank you 😊
      Well you might have to wait about 28 years, to see Gamu in office, current constitution states candidates must be at least 40
      ~B

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  2. B
    How you keep me humane. You’re such a wonderful person. Thank you for sharing a glimpse of your world. You know that I’m sharing this 😁

    Liked by 1 person

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  3. Hi guys – this looks like an awesome session! I’ve read about your story from Derbyshire in the UK. It’s a rural area in the middle of England. I really enjoyed your story please keep writing and sharing 🙂 Ellen

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  5. I am reading from British Columbia, Canada, in a small community six hours north of Vancouver, in a beautiful land of forestry and cattle ranching. If this is to be a normal winter, these rolling hills will soon be covered in snow that won’t be all melted till April.

    I hope your students go on to create WordPress blogs of their own. Sometimes, when there is nobody else to talk to, a blog can be a great outlet for thoughts and feelings to flow. We need such a place, to connect with ourselves and with others.

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    1. We are in the middle of Summer or rather the hot wet season to be more precise.

      Yes, a blog can be such a wonderful outlet and also connecting with a community of people who might surprise you on how they relate with what you have to share…

      ~B

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      Reply

  6. I very much enjoyed your blog post, today, and reading about learning about what you are doing, the writing and blogging. Best wishes to you in your endeavors. I am retired after thirty years as a freelance writer and academic style editor. My husband and I live in eastern North Dakota, United States.

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      1. That has been one of the delights of the Internet. Before the Internet connections became available, here, [middle 1990s, I think], I advertised my services in newsletters and newspapers. Ran my first web pages/domain off a Linux box in my bedroom and got business connections and social interaction from Australia to Uganda to Western Europe. My mother got her first computer (one I made for her) when she was 76, and she had so many friendships in so many places through Usenet! It’s a new world.

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      2. Wow, you are like the elders of the internet 😂😂😂

        Internet: the final frontier; to boldly surf where no man has surfed before…..

        ~B

        Liked by 1 person

    1. Yes, catching them young.
      I was reading an article on how the future jobs the next generation are going to be working in will be vastly different from the way it seems right now and hopefully this might give them a bit of an insight into new skills
      ~B

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  8. What an amazing class! I hope you kids had a great time, and that you learned something useful. You never know how classes like this can impact your life later on, usually in unforeseen ways. I’m writing and reading from an obscure country that no one’s heard of, on the western side of the Atlantic Ocean and directly south of Canada 😛

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    1. 😂😂😂😂Very funny Josh for half a second I almost thought you might have taken a trip to some obscure location I’m search of jaguars 😂😂😂

      We had a great time and it was a mutually rewarding experience
      ~B

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  9. Pingback: Gamuchirai – CTT Kids

  10. This is fantastic Beaton!
    Encouraging and supporting young people to write and share their unique stories will ensure that they set the positive narrative for the future and not anybody else. Thanks for sharing the amazing work you are doing in Zimbabwe and it’s clearly inspiring people far and wide!
    I’m sure when Gamuchirai is older, he will appreciate the knowledge you have shared with him and the rest of the class even more and that it is in fact priceless!
    Looking forward to reading more ngano via the @Afrobloggers community account on Twitter 🙂
    By the way, I’m reading this from the United Kingdom

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    1. I was actually thinking about how I wished someone had introduced me to something like this when I was younger, so now I am that person….

      Here’s to Afrobloggers
      ~B

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  11. This is a wonderful out reach project. Keep it up. In reading this from the same Teapot shaped country where you are but a total different province Mashonaland West.

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  12. Acknowledged with much appreciation Mr Beaton Mabaso and your colleagues. Teach them young. Regards, Clayton, a Zimbo in Jordan

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    1. Thank you MJ

      Hahaha it’s a labour of love but I am sure it would be taken more seriously if one could be like see this big pile of money ..yeah I got from the blog.
      ~B

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  18. This is what I call today’s future. Keep it up big B. And for you kids I tell you this is a life time experience. Much love from Abuja Nigeria.♥️

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    1. It was a creative story the kind that make you want to ask, how did you think this up but of course it’s easier to come up with the story than the explanation of how you thought about it, for some people, its like breathing…..
      ~B

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    1. I am always fascinated by similarities in our languages shows how we have some common root or something.

      We are not so different
      ~B

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      2. Crazy enough…. We didn’t even start the boundaries between us, someone else came and claimed up a portion of land and called it a protectorate of some distant empire…
        ~B

        Liked by 1 person

  23. I’m a WordCamp/WordPress blogger, advocate, speaker and Organizer. I Love the engagement and the energy in what your doing. Keep inspiring these awesome young ppl. I blog about why African youth teens and young adults need to attend conferences and blog sharing their stories. https://myquesttoteach.com
    I invite any of the youth and teens to
    co-blog on my site!! Keep up the good works.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Thank you William, I was a volunteer and speaker at our last WordCamp Harare too and my presentation was on why we need to be more proactive on taking up blogging.
      I also noticed that you sponsored some tickets for teachers and students… Your support appreciated
      Some how your comment had gone to spam, only seeing it today while spring cleaning …

      Cheers and thanks
      ~B

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  27. This is beautiful Beaton. Hi Kids, my name is Mary from Nigeria and I am happy to read your stories and thankful for folks like Beaton who go out of their way to give back to their communities. In a few years time, you did see how important the lessons you have learnt is. Thanks Beaton, for inspiring me and investing in these kids.

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  28. You are performing one of the most important acts by empowering youth. I love your pictures of the students. They fill me with joy. I’m a retired teacher and I appreciate how much energy and effort goes into teaching these minds. Thank you for the work you do from Kent, Ohio, USA

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    2. Thank you Linda
      It’s a labour of love, I hope in a this will give them a bit of a head start ^_^ to the future in a world where we can everything is going digital….
      Thank you again
      ~B

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