To kick off Zimbabwe’s Cultural Heritage Month, budding author Chengeto Mayowe has announced a new children’s book series set for release this coming August.
Titled The Adventures Of Nyenyedzi, the series will have a total of 5 books and it has been developed with the ages 0-8 in mind.
According to the synopsis, the series follows a little girl, Nyenyedzi, from Vumba, as she navigates her daily life with her family, whilst traveling around Zimbabwe, learning about familial relationships, the importance of names and fighting the dark!
As a Cultural Heritage Ambassador, Mayowe felt drawn to do something to help with the efforts of preserving Zimbabwean culture which predominantly starts with language. So after finishing the book in August of 2023, she went about getting it translated into 15 languages, 11 of which are indigenous to Zimbabwe.
This will see the author dethroning NoViolet Bulawayo’s We Need New Names, as the most translated Zimbabwean novel. Key to the chosen languages for translation was Mayowe’s belief in breaking colonial bondages.
The reasoning behind the multiple translations is that we often translate works into either into Shona or Ndebele, forgetting that we have 16 official languages and many different ethnic groups. The quickest way to kill a culture is to kill the language and so I had to ensure that most of our languages are captured by stimulating this sense of inclusion.
A TEDx speaker, writer, poet, spoken word artist and storyteller at heart, Chengeto Mayowe’s first publication was a poetry collection in 2019 titled Déjà Vu. This was followed up by another poetry anthology in Souls of forgotten Queens, and the Daughters of Fate series which explored fantasy and Zimbabwean mythology.
