I am a Zimbabwean in living in the diaspora.

I grew up in Zimbabwe and was shaped by four grandparents who each carried Shona culture in a different way: they gave me the stories that have carried me through life.

None of them called it teaching. All of them were sarungano: the storyteller and the story itself.

The infrastructure that carried those stories to me does not exist where my children will grow up.

I write about the hidden crisis of Shona cultural transmission in the diaspora, the generational countdown that other communities have defied through institutional effort, and what it will take to build the storytelling infrastructure our children need.