Read this Wildlife Art Journal article

From across the room, I would tell Mopho Gonde had trepidation, judging by the look on his face.   

What’s wrong, I asked.

“This is the first time in my life that I have slept in the same room as a white man,” he said, pensively.

We were in the remote Matopos Hills of southern Zimbabwe, occupying the same hostel quarters—different beds—and the circumstances spoke to the kind of cultural apartness with which Gonde had been raised in the country of his birth.

I told him:  “Well, I don’t know if it makes any difference to you, Mopho, but this is the first time that I have shared a room with a mighty Matabele.”

Gonde seemed put at ease.  We chatted long into the night about what it was like for him being a Black African wildlife artist who must navigate a landscape with innumerable cultural divides.  Such fragmentation, he said, is the story of his life.

The next morning, the laconic, bearded sculptor awoke from an abbreviated slumber and met the dawn by venturing outside and sitting on a surreally weathered boulder to await the rising sun.  He told me he had had a powerful dream.

From eyries in cliffs far above, the Matopos signature black eagles screeched and took to flight, their wings casting swoops of shadows across the valley floor.  Echoing into a chasm that separated us from the other side, baboons shouted guttural challenges, informing rival troops to...