There is an interesting connection between Florence, Italy, West Tisbury and Livingstone, Zambia. The link is Marsha Winsryg.

This past October, Marsha was host and tour guide for two back-to-back groups who visited the Renaissance splendors of Florence. The tours are limited to six people. Five of this season’s 12 tour guests happened to be West Tisbury residents, as are Marsha and her husband, the cartoonist Paul Karasik. Over the years, half the group is made up of islanders. The rest usually know somebody who has taken the tour.

The locally-based travelers this fall were Libby and David Fielder and Richard Bertkau in the first group. Annie Fischer and Leah Smith joined the later tour. Paul came along, he said, as tour guide in the museums and chauffeur for both groups

These expeditions are the best kind of luxurious. No long lines to have a look at Michelangelo’s David or Botticelli’s Venus. You tickets have been pre-purchased. The program is all arranged for you in advance. No wondering where to dine. No whizzing by in a bus past some interesting-looking site. Marsha will take you there. Marsha once lived in Florence, speaks Italian, has many friends in the city and she knows Florence intimately.

She began hosting the tours in 2013, with a gap during Covid, and she promises they are “very, very personal and flexible.” She adds, “It is a full service tour.”

The Zambia connection? Marsha created the tours to help pay for her sponsorship of the African Artists Community Development Project. She says she must raise $5,000 each month to support the project, which now has a fledgling communal farm in the village of Livingstone, Zambia. The goal of the project is to support and sustain the lives of families in the village, 12 of whom are parents of severely disabled children.

The idea for the project was sprung in 1999 when Marsha was visiting a massive crafts fair in the region. She decided to support these artists by having them create crafts which Marsha could sell in this country. In 2010 she and the group designed a native doll which, along with a variety of African handicrafts, Marsha sells on-line.

Then Covid hit that part of Africa and families went into lockdown. During that time, the project’s director, Sydney Mwamba, realized that the women had indigenous land rights in Livingstone and they began to plan the farm. Now, with a lot of fund-raising help, the farm is operating with a new well for the chickens and goats and crops. Marsha is hopeful and optimistic about the country’s new leadership and prospects for the farm becoming sustainable.

Before and during all of this, Marsha is an artist. You may see her paintings in, for example, the Martha’s Vineyard Hospital hallway. These days there is little time to set up and paint, but Marsha says she always packs a set of watercolors in her luggage, just in case an opportune moment arises.

The Friends of the Council on Aging annual luncheon takes place at 12 noon, Wednesday, Nov. 19, at the Aquinnah Town Hall.

Happy birthday this week to Judy Mayhew on Saturday, Nov. 15; to our daughter Chloe Maley on Monday, Nov 17; to Sam Hart and Hunter Athearn on Wednesday, Nov. 19; and to JJ Sauer on Thursday, Nov. 20.