The CHIPAWO 'fleet' consists of a Toyoace truck, a Ford Transit minibus, a Toyota Starlet, a Toyota Corsa and a Mazda 1000 pickup. None of them are younger than 5 years old. There had been of course the Yellow Bus, the late lamented. Incidentally the Ford Transit is also a Yellow Bus, for the simple reason that CHIPAWO's corporate colours are yellow and green.

Like the Renault, the Ford Transit has been off and on the road ever since we bought it - it its case, with perennial gearbox problems. These were recently at last sorted out and it is now a runner - but an extremely noisy one - and it was discovered that most of the noise is being emitted by its water pump. After a long search a new water pump has been found and awaits funds with which to buy it. The Mazda 1000 is basically a chicken roost though a number of people have expressed interest in buying it. The Corsa rose from the dead a week or so ago and is serviceable though still not hale enough to engender confidence.

While most of these vehicles were either languishing derelict, holding thumbs for a long rest in the scrap yard or going up in smoke, the little Starlet and the Toyoace were flogged to death. With CHIPAWO Day coming up at the end of a week that was busy even by CHIPAWO's standards, all hope still rested on the Starlet, the Corsa and the Toyoace - and of course the bank balance.

On Thursday night the news came through that the Toyoace had finally given up the ghost. It had been reported that among many other things that need attention oil was mixing with the water in the radiator and it had begun smoking like my favourite childhood puffabilly, Gordon. However with the Ford Transit still not on the road all one could say was: "Nyengerera. (Put up with it.)" Now the redoubtable Toyoace, the only vehicle left that could transport marimba, drums, PA System, staff and children, was grounded.

On Friday morning we held a meeting where we received the news of the Toyoace with far sincerer sorrow than Swift imagines others receiving the news of his own death in that memorable couplet:
Received the news in doleful dumps The Dean is dead - pray what are trumps? 'Trouble comes not in single spies/ but in battalions' writes the English Bard. Unfortunately we discovered at our meeting that the doleful dumps were not reserved for the Toyoace alone. We had no money - or rather more precisely we had US$60 and the CHIPAWO Day the following morning, with expenditure cut to the bone, required at least US$105.

Mufakose is one of Harare's euphemistically called 'high-density' suburbs. Once called the 'locations' or the 'townships', these are the segregated urban sprawls of matchbox houses in which the colonial governments penned the labour they required for the white community's houses, shops, municipal services and factories.

On the way to Mufakose from the various CHIPAWO sites one passes through three other 'high-density suburbs' - Warren Park, Kuwadzana and Kambuzuma. Mufakose is the end of the line. Yet in the first two decades of independence Mufakose, like Alexandra Township in Johannesburg, was an acknowledged powerhouse of the arts. Traditional dance groups like Mufakose Mbakumba and Zvido Zve Vanhu and theatre groups like Batsiranai and Zvido Zvenyu not to mention the children's performing group, Zvido Zve Vana were only a few of the many that sprouted up from its dusty pot-holed streets. The municipal facility, Rutendo Hall, saw many a performance of all different kinds and it was one of the few places in Harare where one could count on an appreciative audience for dance and theatre.

Mufakose's dynamism has not been confined to the arts. Almost the entire national women's football team is drawn from the Mufakose Queens - or so the Headmaster of Rusununguko Primary School told me on Saturday morning as we sat together at the 'high table' watching the children commemorate CHIPAWO Day and the Day of the African Child.

'Rusununguko' means 'independence' and Rusununguko's headmaster is perhaps a pointer to why Mufakose has been so artistically productive. He told me he considers such events, this festival of children's voices and children's creativity, 'part of the curriculum'. Without his support and the support of the school, the CHIPAWO Day celebrations would have been a dismal affair - for after all what could we do with our resources strained to the utmost with the Participatory Theatre Communications demonstration on Tuesday, the Born Free conference on youth in the arts on Wednesday and a workshop on developing an AIDS Policy in the organisation, run by SAfAIDS and paid for by HIVOS, from Wednesday to Friday.

And what could we do when at our final planning meeting the day before we find that we are broke and have nothing to transport equipment, staff and children?

But I would like to coin an aphorism, derived from experiences like this: "The less money you have, the sweeter the fruits!'

In terms of money, we took the time-honoured way out for cash-strapped NGOs - we decided to 'virament'. This means in NGO parlance taking money from one budget and using it for another, basically using money for something it was not intended for.  We 'borrowed' a bit of money from cash reserved to pay for invigilators and exam marking in the Academy, promising of course to 'pay it back very soon' - not having any idea when that might be.

As for transport, we did not forget 'Nzou" (the Elephant). When I first came to Zimbabwe from Ethiopia in 1984 I had a one-year-old Ford Cortina station wagon sent up from South Africa. In the 25 years that it has been on the road in Zimbabwe - not to mention Botswana, South Africa and Zambia - it has transported everything - literally everything - that one would associate with the performing arts, both inside and on the roof, sometime piled as high as house.  Once it brought back from Durban in South Africa a whole set of steel drums, including the four bass barrels. Hence its name - Nzou.

So Nzou it was, virament it was and we were in business. Not that a single child that attended the day's festival of dance, drama, song, poetry and sheer fun knew a thing about it.

The Headmaster had invited all 10 primary schools in the suburb of Mufakose. Incredible for a Saturday morning 8 of them turned up - with their teachers. The entire teaching staff of Rusununguko was there! From CHIPAWO there was SOS Children's Village in Bindura, St Eric's in Norton, Waterland Crëche from Chitungwiza, St Michael's from Mbare, Alfred Beit from Mabelreign, Girl Power and of course from the CHIPAWO centre at Rusununguko itself.

A word on Rusununguko  CHIPAWO Centre - as part of CHIPAWO's Bringing CHIPAWO to More Children Programme, bursary centres were established with the help of the Swedish International Development Co-operation Agency (SIDA). These were centres established in disadvantaged communities for children who could not pay fees. In 2006, when SIDA decided not to renew any of its agreements with cultural partners, the funding for the Bursary Scheme fell away. Since then, though a number of centres collapsed, CHIPAWO has tried to keep some going on its own resources. Rusununguko is one of them.

The children who came on that sunny, fresh Saturday morning, brought with them and expressed their consciousness that they were the African Child and that they were proud to be an African Child. They portrayed and spoke out against the way they are sometimes treated as children. Rape of daughters by fathers came up in two plays and the Headmaster intervened to counsel them on what they can do if such a thing should happen to them.

Very exciting for the children was the fact that Farai Kuzvidza, the director of the increasingly popular CHIPAWO Media children's television show, 'Nde'pi Gen'a', was there filming the event for CHIPAWO archives and for the news on ZTV and they had a chance afterwards to be filmed themselves for a forthcoming episode of the television show.

The event got off the ground at about 10.20am - 20 minutes late - and finished up at about 12.30. After it was all over I came away just saying to myself: 'What a wonderful day' and maybe along with Louis Armstrong: 'What a wonderful world!'