Mazwi

Being a Crossing Borders Creative Writing Fellow

Tinashe Mushakavanhu

In 2004, I was selected to take part in the British Council and Lancaster University programme Crossing Borders Creative Writing Project. Crossing Borders, now known as Radiophonics, was a cross-cultural distance learning scheme which linked young African writers with experienced UK mentors and developed their work through e-mail tutorials.

I remember the first meeting, held at Corner House in Harare, when I walked into the building to be greeted by a small group of accomplished individuals – university lecturers, school teachers, marketing executives, a school bursar, and me, then just a college student with oversized ambitions, a faded pair of jeans, an old T-shirt and a pimpled face. Crossing Borders was good in so many respects.

Crossing Borders equipped me with the gift every writer needs: to distinguish between confidence and pretension. Confidence is being comfortable in your own skin and pretension is forcing yourself to be what you are not. Through the Crossing Borders experience, and with the support of the British Council, I became the first African writer to receive an MA in Creative Writing at Trinity University College in Wales, an experience that has forever changed my worldview.

The course was formatted in email tutorials over a nine-month period. The interaction was always illuminating and refreshingly honest. It was the sexiest thing ever to have someone you have never met, will likely never to meet, intimately engage with your work and offer their opinion in good faith. The other lesson I learnt was that the best education for any writer is to read other writers. As Charles Mungoshi once asked a group of budding writers, ‘How can you write as if no other writers have existed?’ Crossing Borders project broadened my perspective and made me aware of the contemporary world of writers outside Africa. It also gave me an effective understanding and appreciation of internet technology and it just lit the fire of my imagination.

I believe that initial exposure gave me confidence to face the world. In 2007, I had the privilege of attending the Caine Prize writing workshop at Lake Naivasha in Kenya together with Petina Gappah where the title story of her acclaimed collection, An Elegy for Easterly, was penned during three weeks of creative incubation. In the same year, I was lucky to be the African Literature Coordinator for Hay Festival on its 20th anniversary inviting writers such as Nobel laureates Doris Lessing, Wole Soyinka, Wangai Mathari as well as Ngugi waThiongo, Helon Habila, Biyi Bandele, Chimamanda Adichie Ngozi. Since then, writing has been my travel ticket within Southern Africa, East Africa and Europe.

With the support of Ignatius Mabasa and Sekai Mpisaunga, as Crossing Borders participants we were encouraged to meet and share experiences, something we continue to do via email or through organized get-togethers (for those who remain in Zimbabwe). Even though the act of writing itself is a lonely affair, spending time with other writers is enriching. The Crossing Borders Literary Circle became an organic family. One writer’s success became group victory. I am a better writer and a better person because of each one of the writers I met through Crossing Borders, who include Blessing Musariri, Farai Mpofu, Chris Mlalazi, Fungai Tichawangana, Raisedon Baya, Masimba Biriwasha, David Mungoshi and many others.

I think the British Council, through its various projects, is a necessary cultural conduit between Africa and the West and it has played and continues to play a legendary role in that pursuit. As the world is increasingly becoming what Marshall McLuhan predicted years ago, a ‘global village’ in the true sense, the cultural interaction between nations and continents should continue to make all of us aware of each other’s cultures. After all, we are citizens of a shared world.