From 21st December 2006 to 9th January 2007, my colleague Vivian Shalua and I facilitated a theatre workshop for orphaned children. The workshop was organised by the Dar es Salaam Museum and House of Culture in Tanzania with the aim of involving children in exploring the rich tangible and intangible heritage in the Museum and House of Culture, this in the end would, it was hoped, create a sense of belongingness, ownership and full utilization of the place. The participants were 48 children from 5 orphanages in the Dar es Salaam region, namely; Hananasif Orphanage Centre (HOC), Tanzania Widow Women Association (TAWIWO), Ukonga Yatima Waathirika Elimisha Kote (UYAWEKO), Hiari Orphans Centre and Tukolene Youth Development Centre (TYDC).

Children and facilitators toured different sections of the Museum and House of Culture. This includes The Hall of Man, a room for hominids findings which tells man’s cultural and biological evolution as illustrated by the evidence from Olduvai Gorge (Tobias, P .V 1965; Msemwa P n.d )  The collection of Zinjanthropus boisei excavated by a British archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Douglas Leakey (Leakey 1971) among other man’s evolution substances is displays in this hall.  Olduvai Gorge which is in Tanzania is one of the famous hominid sites in the world (Fernández-Jalvo, Y at el 1999). The hall tries to address the bi-pedal nature of human through Laetoli Hominids Foot Prints of 3.6 million years ago.[1]  The Biology Hall is another hall which children visited. The Hall presents the richness of Tanzania’s biodiversity and importance of environmental conservation by exhibiting the highlights on the diverse life forms in aquatic and terrestrial environments.  Among the exhibited objects is a dugong specimen that attempts to answer the question whether a dugong is an animal or mermaid. The Ethnographic hall was a third hall; the hall has permanent displays depicting the diverse rich Tanzanians’ tangible and intangible cultures.  Themes interpreted in this hall include traditional healing, initiations, ornament and fashion, household utensils, recreational objects, traditional music instruments and symbols of authority (http://www.houseofculture.or.tz).

The purpose of the tour in the Museum and House of Culture halls was to allow the participants to familiarize themselves with the environment in the ground which we will be accommodated for 15 days. It was also supposed to form a part of formative research towards creation of a theatrical performance (Taylor 2003). Formative research is one of strategies also used in applied drama. The tour was occasionally done for the entire period in the ground of Museum and House of Culture for the purpose of more understanding and getting more information for the play.

After the tour children and facilitators came together and shared experiences of their tour. Participants were free to use any form of arts in sharing these experiences, the sharing was through improvised dance, rap music, drama, poetry and drawing based on individual or group choices. This approach is very useful for group facilitation because apart from sharing experience, it allows cooperation between facilitator and learners; it gives equal opportunity, power sharing and personal responsibility (Hunter 1995).

Through different art forms children expressed themselves and said what they thought and felt about their tour. Most shared stories based on ethnic groups and their culture, which ranged from languages, weapons, healing rituals to political issues.

From their presentation we learned that among other things children learned from their tour how art served the society, how it acts as memorial or tribute to honour a special persons, places or events, how it recorded the images and expressed the feelings and imaginations. Moreover they learnt that art tells stories about events in history, myths, and religion. Children demonstrate understanding of the art objects which were often used in rituals and ceremonies by different Tanzanian ethnic groups. They demonstrated that ritual performances were done for the purpose of appeasing the ancestors for protection against illness fertility and also for help in controlling natural forces. The sharing experience reflects what Slade noted that one of the significant ways of learning is by encouraging children to find imaginative responses to problems through drama (Slade 1995).  Though children did not use drama only in their presentations, but I believe that in negotiating on how well they could express what they learned, they were directly engaged with problem solving.

In this exercise facilitators were not concerned with expertise but the interest of each individual child. In this sense participants’ knowledge was recognised, and valued.   This is to say that the children were at the centre of the workshop process. Thus, the sharing exercise helped the facilitators to identify, and respect participants’ knowledge and thus direct the participants into groups of their preference, which were theatre arts, music and fine arts.  The workshop resulted in a theatrical performance entitled Kwetu Wapi? (Translated into English as; Where is our Home?) . 

Children have right to learn, explore and understand their culture and heritage and theatre enables.

[1] Though I visited the site with children for the academic purposes and authenticity of the source,  I retrieved the information  about all halls and exhibition from http://www.houseofculture.or.tz/exhibitions.htm on the 3rd October 2008 at 6: 50 am