Trust Mutekwa
Trust was born into a family of twelve children, and, as the fifth child, he enjoyed bullfighting with his siblings and friends from nearby villages. As their mothers met to make clay pots with their daughters, the sons would create clay bulls. "The nicer your bull was, the more other boys wanted to fight it. During the fight, the first bull to lose it horn was the loser." Little did young trust know that this was the beginning of his career as a creative.
As a special needs teacher, Trust's interest in the arts into making batique materials and music. it is his love for music that drew him into working with children with visual impairments. Having been rejected for a teaching post he desperately wanted because he was late for the interview, Trust was walking down a road when someone called to him while he played the Mbira (a traditional Zimbabwean instrument). He couldn't see who it was but knew the voice came from the maize fields. When he walked over to the voice he saw a man with a visual impairment, "He asked to touch the instrument I was playing, and when I gave it to him he said it was like the braille machine her had at home." This further cemented Trust's need to work with visually impaired students and his regret for missing the interview which would have allowed him to do so.
The mbira is still frowned upon by most quarters of the Zimbabwean community and, at some point, in pre-independence Zimbabwe, was banned. A performing spoken word artist himself going by the stage name Ticha Muzavazi, and writer, Trust is a part of St. Giles (St. Smiles) teaching staff where he teaches children with disabilities and in addition to this, the mbira, the marimba and the drums as tools for developing his students.
The outbreak of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe has affected his work in that his students are unable to make it to the classroom and do not have access to the necessary learning materials. Operating one of a handful of braille machines in the country, Trust has taken it upon himself to communicate with his students' parents, installing software that will enable them to support their children through his lesson plans and with some students, he hand delivers printed braille homework and other materials to keep them up to speed. "As the COVID-19 environment restricts movement, I urge parents not to leave my students, their children, behind as they too need to stretch and not confine them."  Trust has been working towards encouraging parents to allow their children to learn life skills and become self-sufficient.
His ngano is about a Mbuya (grandmother) who could not contain her excitement in the face of her foe and at the risk of her life. He likens it to the environment we are in now where we are restricted by the COVID-19 containment measures and how some individuals are continuing to expose themselves, risking their lives.

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