By Jennifer Moody
Albany Democrat-Herald | Posted: Thursday, September 4, 2008 12:00 am
Event will raise funds to build village wells, add first grade to a preschool
LEBANON - The music is the language, the culture, the essence of Zimbabwe. To know its intricacies, one must travel there.
That's how Jaiaen Beck, 54, of Lacomb and her brother in spirit, master mbira player Cosmas Magaya, began a program they hope will preserve both the heritage and the future of the Zimbabwean people.
Beck's latest fundraising effort is an afternoon of music and craft sales, scheduled for Sunday in Lebanon's Ralston Park. Money raised from the day's activities will be used to pay for builders and cement for 62 village wells, and to add a first grade to the preschool Beck's work has established.
"I'm needing to raise about $10,000," Beck said.
Beck is founder of Ancient Ways, a marimba ensemble and charitable nonprofit organization dedicated to exploring and preserving the traditional ways of indigenous peoples.
She met Magaya, of Zimbabwe, in 1998 in Eugene, where he was teaching the mbira as part of an artist-in-residence program. The two musicians became friends and talked often about the challenges faced by villagers in the economically unstable area.
When Magaya returned to the states in late 1999, Beck gave him $60 to do something for area villages.
Three months later, in early 2000, Beck traveled to Zimbabwe herself, to steep in the culture and the music and to visit with Magaya. She asked Magaya what he had done with the money. "It's right here," he said, opening his wallet. "I want you to be part of helping me make those decisions."
Their combined efforts led to Nhimbe for Progress, which Magaya directs, and its focus on health and education.
"What we've found is it actually pulled the whole project together," Beck said. "If you're taking care of someone's child in Zimbabwe, you're at the core of their heart."
Today, about 140 children ages 21/2 to 6, from a cluster of villages in southwest Zimbabwe, attend the Nhimbe preschool. The group sponsors another 560 children for the government schools. Of those, 440 are under the Nhimbe banner and 120 are sponsored under a second project begun in 2005 in a separate region that also receives support.
Nhimbe for Progress also focuses on medical assistance; creating and supporting local businesses; building wells, huts and other items to improve living conditions; and creating a community fund to help with widows, orphans and other special needs populations.
Beck relies on donations, fundraisers, her own efforts and support from her godfather Clarence "John" Pare Jr. to keep money flowing to the group.
That region of Zimbabwe does not receive help from other U.S. organizations, Beck said. "We're the first people to reach to them."
Reaching is important for a multitude of reasons, she said, but she believes the most important is that the culture of the area is threatened by poverty, disease, hunger and corruption.
The keepers of that culture will die without outside help, she said, taking with them a way of life the world may never know again. She believes, like the lesson of the canary in the coal mine, such deaths are warnings for the rest of the world.
"If we don't do something actually to help them preserve their culture, there will not be a culture," she said.