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 
Thank you for the shout out! The diversity in interpretations were quite interesting and I learnt from you and others as well. Great initiative, will participate again. This challenge gave me the boost to start blogging consistently. Thank you once again.
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You welcome looking forward to seeing the season of poetry that comes after – Balding Poet, we call that wisdom beyond your years 😂
~B
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Not wisdom beyond my years lol
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Thanks a lot for the shout out and ping back.
It has really been a good first time experience in this festival. Tonight has a title – “Of Catching Up On Reading”.
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You are muchly welcome
June is always such a rush each year we expand our horizons as new people join in
~B
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Thank you the shout out Uncs. The challenge was really; a challenge. I loved every second of it, I’ve never blogged this consistently and it felt so good. I’ll definitely do it again next year. I also reached 200 likes recently 🤗.
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100 I mean 😅, my first 100 likes.
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Soon it will be so 😂
~B
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It’s actually 200 😂, for the record. Now working on 50 posts.
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You are welcome
Going through a challenge such as this is a great way to figure out what drives your consistency.
Congratulations
~B
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How did I miss this interesting festival? This is good ✨
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Its not too late you can tap into some of the topics that were set for this and also look up some of the bloggers I mentioned.
~B
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please what is the aim of AfroBloggers
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This should answer everything you want to know about it:
https://afrobloggers.org.zw/about-afrobloggers/
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The 30 posts instead of the 22 surely makes you the Uncle of the Afrobloggers. I loved how the bloggers were able to tackle the weekly topics differently.
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Its always fun, each year when I do this challenge, I am constantly amazed with the diversity and the community and of course getting to know bloggers whom otherwise I might have skipped over.
~B
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Thankyou so much for the shout out Uncle B! The challenge was very interesting and I loved how it brought out different approaches but still had an invisible string that tied it all together. I agree with the essence of the challenge being very well captured by the “Lion Writes” prompt. Looking forward to what next winter will bring our way. 🙂
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