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 My name is Jonathan Daniel. I was born in 1965 in Zimbabwe, then Rhodesia. I was born and raised on a farm. Both of my parents were illiterate and are still unable to read or write. My dad has been a cook for a white farmer for over thirty years. He has two wives, and I am the oldest of his nine children. Because my parents were so poor, I literally spent my childhood with no clothes, no money and no toys. Although we were materially poor, my family was rich in values and tradition. Poverty forces you to be adventurous, creative and a dreamer. Sometimes people make poor choices in their poor condition that result in bad consequences, but others make positive choices that form positive talents to last a lifetime. Allow me to explain: I remember as a young boy, when I asked my dad for a toy. He handed me an ax and said, “With this tool, you can create any toy you can imagine.” As strange as it sounds, he was right. I remember carrying that ax over my shoulder, looking at branches and envisioning interesting pictures of toys to be carved. I began expanding my imagination of what a toy should look like, and I enriched my perceptions in creating ideas. I became adventurous so that I started to utilize the environment around me for all my basic needs. On the farm, I had often seen machinery such as a truck or a tractor, but I hadn’t seen the other “animals of the road” when I was young. There was a grocery store, merely three miles away from the farm, which we visited each day to buy bread and milk. When I was old enough to make this trip for the family’s only two food items, I began to see cars and trucks that I had never imagined. I was fascinated by the beauty and strangeness of them all. With each new vehicle I saw, I would run all three miles home and share what I had seen. Because I was unable to describe the kind of vehicle, I began carrying a piece of scrap wire around my neck. That way, when I saw a car of interest, I could use the wire to make the outlined shape of it and take it home to share. Next, I began to add to the wire vehicle, to the point where I had created a completed vehicle out of trash and was able to “push-drive” them everywhere I went. I would even drive my trucks to the store and load them up with the daily bread and milk items. I quickly acquired the nickname “Wire Boy” from those on the farm. The humble artistic beginnings of my wire art blossomed when I came to the United States to study aircraft mechanics. The story of the development of my craft and how it helped me to fund my schooling is an interesting one as well. Although I had my own plans to return immediately to Zimbabwe after schooling, I had to unselfishly decide to use my gifts and talents of working with youth to be a Youth Minister in North Carolina. Although I love working with youth in America, I have never lost my passion for the work still to be done in my own country of Zimbabwe. |
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