By Susan Glairon , Special to JTNews
Susan Glairon
Special to JTNews
KENYA — When the weavers came, I started thinking again about chickens. “Chickens,” I said to my husband a few days before we left for Kenya in mid-June. “Chickens would have been simpler. For God’s sake, we raise chickens. We understand chickens.”
But instead, it’s a weaving project. weaving. None of us are weavers. We don’t know anything about wool. We don’t know how to spin. Still, we are leading a project in rural Kenya teaching impoverished men and women to spin and weave so they can become self-sufficient.
The idea was conceived four months earlier when I was helping our 13-year-old daughter, Lilly, find a mitzvah project for her Bat Mitzvah. I e-mailed a woman with whom I had sat on a plane in 2005 and asked her for ideas.
The woman was Karambu Ringera, founder of the nonprofit International Peace Initiatives, who received a doctorate from the University of Denver in 2007 and later that year ran for parliament in Meru, Kenya. The aim of her nonprofit and her political platform was the same: To raise the quality of life of Kenyan people challenged by HIV/AIDS, violence or poverty.
A group of impoverished men and women, some HIV-positive, wanted to learn to weave, she said.
It seemed straightforward — raise money and send equipment.
But as the months passed and money trickled in, one thing became clear: The project was not straightforward. Where would we buy the loom? Which one would be best? How would we ship it? Where would we buy the wool, and what kind of wool would we choose? Who would lead the project? Who would teach them to spin and weave?
I tried to find an experienced American weaver to teach the group, but it was too late. No one could get ready that quickly.
Despite our lack of experience, we would travel to Kenya; we planned to look for weaving instructors while we were there.
I wanted my daughter to know that kids can make a difference, that hard work can change lives, and that they don’t need drugs or alcohol to feel powerful or good.
Witnessing her project would be powerful. We read books about weaving, and Lilly received a few short spinning and weaving lessons. We would travel to Kenya for five weeks, staying in Karambu’s home, which frequently lacked electricity and sometimes lacked water.
Lilly started raising money, first at her February Bat Mitzvah and later through e-mails to family and friends. Later, she put together a PowerPoint presentation, and I arranged for her to speak at local Kiwanis and Rotary clubs.
From February through June, Lilly raised roughly $2,500 — enough to buy a spinning wheel and loom at wholesale prices, to ship them, and to bring two Kenyan weavers and one Kenyan spinner from Nairobi to Meru (four hours away by car) to train 15 impoverished men and women for five days.
At first, it seemed impossible to find a Kenyan weaver to train the people, even for good pay. Karambu approached three groups of Kenyan weavers, but they declined, saying they didn’t want competition.
Then one day while driving through Nairobi, about four hours away from Meru, I spotted a tiny sign that said “weaver.” It was George Nyajowi, the managing director of Interweave Crafts.
George wanted to share. He had grown up poor and someone had taught him how to weave so he could support himself. He was doing well in his business and wanted to give back to others less fortunate.
Though I felt lucky to see his sign, he later told me that usually he is not at his shop, as he is often selling rugs in the port city of Mombasa, about eight hours away by car.
It was meant to be.
While in Meru, Lilly witnessed the transformation of a group of people who at first came late to the training sessions. As the days passed, they increasingly came early, stayed late and sang with hope.
“I was glad I could make the people smile,” Lilly said.
Although it was my daughter’s project, our family quickly assumed roles. I became the organizer, arranging Lilly’s fundraising talks and working with everyone involved in the project, from the loom-maker to Karambu; my husband Paul, the engineer, spent hours learning how to assemble the equipment and how to use the loom. Our son Eliot, 16, became the Web site designer.
On the day I thought about chickens, the people of Meru were late. During their last weekly meeting at Karambu’s home, they were told the first weaving class started at 8:30 a.m. At noon, no one was there.
Although I knew about “Kenyan time” (everyone in Kenya is always late), even George was restless. I kept thinking how difficult it was for Lilly to raise the $2,500, which mostly came in $18 increments.
At 12:30 p.m., the first women came. Within an hour, a few more came.
As soon as about eight people arrived, George began. As the day progressed, the group grew to 15 students. Speaking in English, which was translated into the local Meru language by members of International Peace Initiatives, he discussed the loom we brought and described how to warp (string) it.
It was complicated. The women complained. “Why should we learn this? How will it help us?”
Some of the women had walked two hours because they couldn’t afford the roughly 50 cents for public transportation.
When George told them he was once poor, they started listening. And when he told them he bought a car with profits from weaving, they believed him. He told them that if they learned to weave, they would be able to buy food, pay school fees and pay for public transport. He told them to work hard and not to wait for more funds to come from America.
George sells his weavings to hotels in Mombasa and Uganda. Often he has more work than he and his weavers can handle. He told the men and women that he would hire them after they were sufficiently trained.
That first afternoon, George built three wall looms (for making rugs). Throughout the five days, he gave lectures on various topics: This is how you warp the wall loom. This is how you wash and dye wool. This is how you weave a rug, and this is how you weave a scarf. In between he would offer words of encouragement.
Between lessons, everyone stayed busy at the three stations, with George and his two helpers guiding the way.
No one complained anymore. Everyone kept working. What we had imagined in our heads had happened.
We had walked two hours to two of the women’s homes and another hour to the third woman’s home one day during the previous week. Although it was winter in Kenya, we sweated in the heat.
While we walked, children and adults pointed at us and spoke loudly in Swahili. Our guide interpreted: “Why are you with those white people?” they asked.
Kids ran after us and were delighted by the candies in my pockets. Women and men shook our hands.
“I feel like an object,” Lilly said.
The women were delighted we had walked so far to their homes. They wanted to show us how they lived.
Cardboard and fading newspapers were tacked to walls to block the winds from blowing through cracks. In one home, a thick line of ants ran through the front room, entering through a huge crack in the concrete floor. No one had electricity. The villagers fetched their water from a nearby stream.
I wondered about the broken furniture and untidy beds — some without mattresses — and wondered how they could sleep. There was no place in their homes to go for comfort when they didn’t feel well.
All three women are HIV-positive. Their husbands died from AIDS. They have no income, except for occasional casual work in the fields, which pays roughly $2.50 per day. Mostly, they live off what they have — a few free-range chickens, a cow or goat, a few fruit trees with papayas — and they get help with school fees from the organization International Peace Initiatives.
Before we left, my daughter told the people she had helped that when she started, she didn’t know what to expect from the project. But it made her feel great to see that it had worked, she said.
“At the beginning, it was just my project” Lilly said. “It was just an idea. I didn’t even think it would get close to what it is.”
After we returned home, I realized that one year earlier, we had placed a small piece of art depicting a weaver on the wall that faced our bed. I had never thought about it before.
Maybe we were meant to be weavers after all.
This piece first appeared in the Longmont, Colo. Times Call. Susan Glairon can be reached at [email protected].