Over the years, Congella Park in Umbilo Road, Glenwood, has provided a memorial to the 1842 battle between the British and the Boers, and a stage for urban inner city upliftment. More recently, its also become an inspiration for avian wire art.
Nurse-turned-wire artist Victor Mpofu, produces and sells replicas of female weaver birds inspecting the nests that the male has made.
“I saw them in the park when I used to go and chill there,” he told the Independent on Saturday.
“Then I came up with the idea of creating something unique.”
Mpofu was fascinated by the way the male weaver bird builds his nest.
“Then he invites the females to look at it. She then has the right to reject it if it’s not up to scratch, ” he said.
Mpofu weaves the nests in yellow and orange colours.
His love of birds started while accompanying his father who had the job of feeding birds on a farm near the village of Chimanimani, in Zimbabwe’s eastern highlands.
He learned wire art at high school in Harare’s high density suburb of Chitungwiza. Mpofu later worked as a nurse in the city’s main state hospital, Parirenyatwa.
He sells his wire creations which also includes wire art shaped as red and golden bishop birds, African hoopoes and sunbirds, on a Glenwood street corner pavement.
Mpofu said he had hoped to work as a nurse in South Africa but had been unable to do so because “my curriculum vitae and papers were stolen”.
“It has not been easy,” he said.
But now he’s weaving magic with his wire art.
The Independent on Saturday