The Journey to Shangana Village

 As a filmmaker I always got opportunity to explore amazing places in Africa in order to know better about those places. One of the place that I will always 'think' I can go back is The Shangana Cultural Village situated in between Graskop and Hazyview, Lowveld. Shangana is a small cultural village that preserve the Shangana culture. Shangana are known to be the calm and good South African and high population is found at Mozambique. In South Africa, they are found in Limpopo and Mpumalanga province even though there's a contradiction between this culture, at Limpopo they called themselves Tsonga. While is one culture.

 After meeting our guide for the day, she take us to meet the Chief and his family. When we get at the village we kneel and then she ask permission to get inside and the first wife was the one who answered us and give us a permission to get inside and this was a good experience. Therefore, the Chief allow us to do whatever we want to do and we wanted to interview them, our main goal was to understand how they are adapting in this changing world. But the information was so overwhelming, they've not change their ways of doing things but they do have slightly change in order to adapt in our current generation. WHEN someone is sick they consult their own doctor which is a traditional healer, nyanga in Shangana or Tsonga language. They do go to consult medical doctors if only it requires them to do so. 

He share a lot of things have also help us as we are still growing, one of the thing that he emphasis to us is RESPECT in order to become a good husband or wife is to respect your partner and other people because that's where it start. Then he follow by saying we need to LOVE other people and if we can love one another the world can be a great place to be at. They do a lot of things that keep them strong and grow strong.

A place without food is easy to forget. They have offered us a snack that will be always on our heart and minds. They toasted peanuts and mix it with salt, therefore grill impala meat, and mopane worms which have high nutrients and lastly they boil corn. This kind of snack we end up naming it 'African Snack' and we finish everything on the bowls. We then join the Chief and his family for delicious supper that my crew keep reminding me of.

We all know that being African is a blessing, when we come together we make sure that we have fun. We finally dance. A locally group of dancers they join us and dance an culture dance and they also sing for us and it was like we were dreaming as some never experience this kind of events. The lesson we have all learned is that we need to keep embracing our cultures and our heritages. #ProudlyAfrican #ProudlySouthAfrican #Shangana #CulturalVillage #HeritageMonth

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