The Search for Self with Virginia Chihota

I think for me, it really has a lot to do with relationship to me, relationship to self.

Of course, the surroundings come or if you look at plants and then you sort of also relate to self.

I think for me, it's really mainly about relationship to self, how I take steps on daily basis, how I see things, how I can question also my relationship, to people around me? Or if there is an argument, what is my response? But also in my thoughts, I'm not like a one-sided person.

I tend to spin these things in my head.

It's like, I mean, for me to say like specific questions, I think it really has to do with relationship to myself, relationship to people around me, questioning things that I've seen when I was growing up, what we were allowed to talk about, what we were not allowed to talk about.

There's this self-censorship that happens because of the way you have been brought up.

And then one time you realize, no, I'm an adult now.

You know, I'm also in my own territory or space.

Should I still continue living in that thought process, in those thoughts? Or, you know, you start to question culture.

You start to question a lot of things that really has a lot to do with identity of self.

Just thinking about growing up in Zimbabwe and a time of immense turmoil and what that was like for you growing up and what particular aspects of that time and culture you find yourself questioning, which you're getting at here.

But how has your relationship to where you grew up changed? You've been all over the world.

Do you return often? What is your relationship to it like?

The best moments in my life have been in Zimbabwe.

Growing up there, having family surrounding me, and I lost my parents.

My father passed away when I was 10, and my mother when I was 21.

I still had people that I could depend on.

The moments when you lose both parents and you feel that, like, of course nobody can replace them, but I still have a head family around

me.

That sort of fit in a lot of gaps that I could communicate with.

And this relationship with Zimbabwe for me, people are different.

But for me, Zimbabwe remains a very warm place despite the problems, the challenges that we go through.

But I have never been in that space where I sit and talk about those problems.

I am already in my own thoughts and I need to solve what is within me more than what I see outside.

Because there are a lot of things within me that I don't understand, you know, imagery or could be dreams that I encounter or experiences that I encounter or things that I see happening within families, you know, that tend to repeat themselves.