#ZongweFM

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Sinazongwe Women Clubs

Following a meeting and interview recording with Mary Mwakoi and Victoria Citalu at the Department of Community Development, we visited four of the Women’s clubs under Community Development, got to know their project work and made many recordings of their presentations.

The interview recording with Mary and Victoria can be found here

We visited Mweezya and Mweka Women’s Clubs, Nsenka Women’s Club and Tusumpuke Saving Group. Our team: Mary Mwakoi (Community Development Sinazongwe); Monica Siabunkululu and Patience Kabuku (Zongwe FM); Claudia Wegener (radio continental drift/ Zubo Trust).

The Women form Mweezya and Mweka Women’s Clubs are coming like in a procession, dancing and singing, carrying their goods and produce in baskets and boxes on their heads…. they put Chitenges on the ground and create a display for us… then the presentations of their projects begin...

A playlist of sample recordings with the Women’s Clubs

Cleopatra of Mweezya Women’s Club gives us an impressively detailed presentation about the women’s production of organic pesticides… this will be one of the recordings , which we later take on-air at Zongwe FM in a show with DJ Mo…

In the Lwiindi grounds meeting two local women groups, the Tusumpuke Saving group and the Nsenka Women’s Club. Mary Mwakoi introduced us to the women; Monica and Patience from Zongwe FM are making recordings for our upcoming live shows. The women present their projects and products; Claudia has brought greetings from the Zubo women across Lake Kariba, and a clash bag woven of Ilala Palm by the Binga women to  introduce some of Zubo’s projects… here, one of the women from Nsenka responds with the wish that Zubo’s women should come for a visit across the Zambezi and teach them how to weave such bags…

...the Tusumpuke Savings group sing a song for us which is something like their sonic signature… in the song, they are calling out for women not to behave like a lizard - that is, sitting motionless and waiting for food passing by… that is to say, use your hands women, and produce something you can trade with and provide for yourselves and your families...

At ZongweFM station, we followed up with two broadcasts. On 22nd August, Claudia and Patience introduced recordings from the Women’s Forum’s of Zubo Trust in Binga Zimbabwe; and generally introduced our subject and interest of women getting together in groups and working as teams. On 29 August, Monica and Patience welcomed representative of the Women Clubs and Mary Mwakoi in studio and engaging in conversation about their projects in the Clubs. The Women of Zubo Trust across the lake were also present – in recordings we played in the broadcast.

Playlist of clips from live shows at Zongwe FM

Zongwe FM is a community radio station in Sinazongwe, Southern Province of Zambia.

Zubo Trust is a women’s organisation in Binga Zimbabwe bringing women together for self-empowerment.

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Tonga women on the way to their own media production

From April - November 2016, Zubo Trust joint forces with radio continental drift/ Claudia Wegener to train Zubo staff and six community based facilitators (CBFs) in audio recording and production. 

“Women documenting Women Stories” is the name of the task and the radio project with Zubo’s women.

The playlist of recordings from the workshop days can document a bit of the journey, which we traveled together in exploring the use of audio recorders among the women Zubo is working with in rural Binga. The playlist showcases a selection of our recordings over three days together, and does so in footage recordings, including our trials to say what we mean, and our giggles.

On the journey, which you can follow in the recordings, we practiced listening, to others, in interviews and, to ourselves; we explored storytelling and the power of detailed description on a listener; we learned how to talk with machines and how to listen carefully to their playback; we explored the tools of communication, how to encourage our counterparts to enjoy themselves in storytelling; we discussed where we come from and where we wish to go to, or not to go to… ; we practiced translation, listened to the strange sounds of foreign, African languages and, again and again, to the curious sound of ourselves as we speak to others.

In July, the women went out in to their communities and captured the work of the Zubo’s women in the villages and the Women’s Forum in sound and voices. They also interviewed their elders, mothers and grandmothers, on BaTonga culture, tradition and history.

The second playlist presents a selection of the recordings which Zubo women themselves made in their local communities and includes some excerpts of statements by the young media women about their experiences as citizen journalists and oral historians in their villages.

DJ Kwe’s music flies like an acoustic beacon over our journey together with the women of Zubo Trust towards their own media work as young BaTonga business women...

“I could stand for my people...” Track 5 of DJ Kwe’s “Radio Remixes Voices of Binga” features Linda Mudimba articulately voicing her wish to represent the Tonga people as a Media Woman  (based on a recording by rcd in 2012 ).

In purchasing the Album “Radio Remixes Voices of Binga”, you’ll support the healing arts of DJ Kwe and the work of women for women across the globe. From the online sales, 50% of proceed go to project work with women in Binga via Zubo Trust and Basilwizi Trust.

Twalumba loko.

Thank you for listening.

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Nosiko Mundia - documenting to share knowledge

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Nosiko is a young woman born and raised in Sinazongwe Zambia. I am interested to hear her story how she got to join the community radio Zongwe FM. Nosiko has completed secondary school and had open ears for a different pass-time. She listened to the local radio in her homestead thinking ‘i can do just as well’. When ZongweFM team was looking for a secretary, she joined. Nosiko tells us that she long since had a dream of becoming a journalist; but now, checking on reality, she’ll soon start training as a nurse. In the Zongwe team, Nosiko also breaks into a rather male-dominated field: football commentary. She describes for us the process, how it’s done at Zongwe FM; even gives us a sound bite.

“can you manage behind the mic…? Yes I can!”

Nosiko was one of only very few young women who came to join our Zongwe training and broadcasts; and she was the only one to stay long enough for us to achieve some work together; such as the “Basimbi Radio” workshops and broadcasts with school girls; and an exchange visit to Zubo Trust in Binga across Kariba Lake which Nosiko got to join and document.

“come to Zongwe FM, join me as your sister!” (birth of “basimbi radio”)

Others came once or twice and vanished. It needed a lot of time, patience and flexibility to find the young ladies and collect them from wherever they were if need be. Reasons for the difficulty are varied, but I could convince myself that it all boils down to women’s endless duties at home and in their families. I found myself negotiating free time for the girls from mothers and fathers…  Memory and feeling told me that my experiences in neighboring Zimbabwe have been better by degrees. I went to and through various statistical records; numbers seem to confirm my impressions. See for example: WEF gender-gap index 2015 (the last year that Zambia is listed) or UNwomen sdg-report

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The second interview with Nosiko Mundia was recorded shortly after her return from Binga where she accompanied Maria Ntandiyana and Cleopatra Nchite, two representatives of Sinazongwe women clubs on a visit to the women’s organisation Zubo Trust. Nosiko is still excited. As for the other two women, it was her very first international journey into unknown territory. She tells us about the different kinds of economic empowerment projects which they got to know among Zubo women, the kapenta fishing, the craft weavers, the soap production from Jatropha.

“my role was to record...”

Nosiko reflects on her role as the record-keeper, the one who documents the event in service for the others to assist memory and for those back home so even they may learn by listening to the recordings. We ask her about any differences in the lives of women she may have noticed:

“women in Sinazongwe don’t cooperate… and they don’t sell what they produce...”

Based on Nosiko’s audio documentation, we made a number of broadcasts for the community where she, and also Maria and Cleopatra reported what they had witnessed and learned. Clips from the broadcasts are already archived.

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