Every morning at 9 a.m., the twenty students of the Amakhosi Arts Academy in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe line up on the stage of an outdoor amphitheater to stretch their physical and vocal limits in an intensive three-hour workout.  Afterwards they sit down to write original songs, choreograph dances, develop ideas for documentary videos, and design their own theater productions.  When classes end at 5 p.m., the exhausted students return to varied home lives.  Some sit down to dinner with their parents.  A few feed their own young children.  Others have no immediate family left alive and turn to friends or relatives for something to eat.

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Tafataona Mahoso told me, “The object of study must interrogate its examiner.” I should have understood.  When I visited his office unannounced five months later in December, his elegant secretary greeted me by name: “Hello, Mr. Bakshi.” I smiled sheepishly at her, but even in my vanity I could not fathom why she still remembered me.  Sitting aboard a British Airways flight one week later on December 30th, 2005, I was again hailed unexpectedly: “Amar Bakshi?”  I nodded yes.  A flight attendant grasped my shoulder and quickened his pace, “Please collect your bags; there are some men waiting for you outside.”  Five men in faded tan suits stood waiting on the causeway and told me I was in their world now.

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