Mavhu Farai Wakatama Hargrove (Mbuya Mavhu) is a first generation Zimbabwean-American full spectrum doula, and educator. She was born in America, in 1972 then, with her family, moved back to Zimbabwe at the age of three where she stayed until after the birth of her first child. 

 

Mbuya Mavhu now lives in Maryland, USA with her husband. They have four children and one grandchild. Mbuya Mavhu has offered “bana chimbusa” (traditional marital skills training) and postpartum doula services in her family and community for two decades. After training with DONA she began offering professional postpartum doula services.

 

Mbuya Mavhu co-created the NOURISH doula curriculum for the Black Women’s Health Imperative, a pilot program bringing preconception education and full spectrum doula training to female students at HBCUs. Mbuya Mavhu has also been an educator and administrator at NationHouse an African-centered school in Washington DC for the past 21 years. She developed the current NationHouse literature course for students aged five to eighteen. The course treats African and African Diaspora literature as the standard and begins introducing European classics as foreign literature once the students graduate to middle school.

Her passion for researching and sharing traditional African solutions to the modern challenges of female adulthood, partnering, parenting led to her the founding of Chimonera Chedu (our wrapping cloth) where she developed and teaches Bhabhu Baby, the art African baby carrying skills; Masungiro, creating a mother-centered postpartum plan and Muzvere, what to expect from our postpartum bodies. Chimonera Chedu also offers online Shona language and culture classes to Shona people born in the diaspora, homeschool students and others who wish to learn the language and culture.  Also offered by Chimonera Chedu is “Wine waist beads and women's stories”, a live reading and beading workshop that combines Mbuya Mavhu’s love of storytelling with her work as Bana chimbusa.  Blactivist, home birth mom and natural childbirth advocate are other labels Mbuya Mavhu embraces.