VeKwedu is a publication of Zimbabwean stories — essays, opinions, poetry, and ngano (folktales) that remember, question, and carry forward what endures across time and place.
VeKwedu began, somewhat accidentally, during the fall of my senior year of college. I was, (excuse me as I try to avoid the word broke) financially challenged and badly missing home. Interim was approaching, the month-long January term when students took only one class, and I had decided that I wanted to spend it back home in Zimbabwe. The problem, as previously mentioned, was that I was economically inept. Then I remembered that my college’s career development center offered grants to students pursuing internship opportunities during Interim. Somewhere between homesickness, desperation, and perhaps a little too much ingenuity, I came up with VeKwedu: an online literary magazine that would tell the stories of ordinary Zimbabweans, by ordinary Zimbabweans. I built a website on WordPress, gave VeKwedu an email address, and, for a little while, brought it into existence. That was the unlikely inception of VeKwedu. When Interim ended and life moved on, so did I. I graduated, and VeKwedu became one of those ideas I never quite abandoned but never quite returned to either. Still, I have always yearned for a place for our stories—a place for the ordinary, the intimate, the things we tell each other and the things we are in danger of forgetting. Years later, I have returned to the idea. VeKwedu (lit: Our Own) is a home for stories, poems, essays, folktales, memories, and voices from Zimbabwe and its people. Some will be deeply personal. Some will be inherited. Some will simply be worth remembering. The hope is to make a small corner of the internet where they can remain.