Most of my two days in London I was solo going around the museums as my wife was entertained in her Dental Therapists conference, a strange thing to be entertained by but as she recently commented to me “I love drilling teeth” you begin to get a glimpse into her weird and quite frankly disturbing mind, The conference drew to a close Saturday afternoon and we had a few hours to kill before our train back to Stoke on Trent.
After all my enthusing about the British Museum Debs decided she would like to see it as well so off we trotted (I lie we took the tube, by now my feet were killing me) I showed her all the sites we had seen before then we went down into my favourite bit, the Africa Galleries and looked again at the artwork made from Guns. The tree made of guns was called the ‘tree of life’ there was a video that went with it and explained how it had come about. A local Bishop had started a project called ‘tools for guns’ villagers who had hidden their guns out of fear and mistrust were given a opportunity to hand in their guns and get something in return, one guy on the video told how he swapped over three guns and got some roofing and a hoe in return. On village pooled all their guns and got a tractor. The guns are cut up into small pieces and are used to create fantastic artworks of which the tree was commissioned by the British Museum to represent Africa.
The Bishop spoke with passion about how he is removing the guns from Mozambique one village at a time. He realises that his actions affect the stories of others.
