Water-drawing project by Joachim Eckl with 32 members of the Tonga tribe

A River to River project
Within the series "Land in sight - Waves"

April 2009
Sambia & Zimbabwe

The element of water is the primordial element of human interaction. This element and the rivers along which people live play a decisive and connecting role in the River to River projects working as a cultural bridge. Within the habitat of rivers and involved people from Africa, the Czech Republic and Austria different cultures and a mutual relation to water determine the social manners.

Mutual drawing and flowing of water becomes the expression of a common world – and life-spirit.

32 members of the Tonga tribe from Sambia and Zimbabwe grasped the Zambezi River as a creature in a mutual water-drawing action in April 2009. They brought this water to Austria together with Joachim Eckl afterwards and let it flow into the Danube within the series “River to River” on the 10th of May. All waters of all rivers of the world are connected in a global closed water cycle and will merge in the future. Soletting flow the Zambezi River into the Danube showed the Danube its future by drawing a future event by human hands into the present.

The Tongas are river people at the Zambezi River. They have been living on either banks of the Zambezi River below the Victoria Falls (Livingston) - in Sambia and Zimbabwe - for many generations. A dam was built at the end of the fifties which let the river flood to a width of 8 to 15 kilometres. The habitat of the Tonga people was flooded and the tribe torn apart. Since then the Tonga people developed a ritual where they return to the flooded tombs of their ancestors by boat and bail water there. This water is then poured out over the tombs of the deceased onshore.