I have been here 20 months. Two YEARS in October. It seems like forever, it seems like yesterday. Here is this weeks' update:
Fran came and went and three weeks of my life flew
by. I have had numerous encounters I have wanted to share with you and written
them down in my head. But they are all gone now and I am not sure where to
start.
I could restart by telling a little about how we
got to this place, a sewing school. I’ve told it here in pieces. One of many
things I have learned here is that creativity is…well, important. It is a
powerful way to express emotion, it’s universal, it’s timeless, it’s innate. I
am living in a very survival oriented culture. A country that has known slavery
and war. Crayons and finger-paints aren’t on their Kindergarten supply lists.
Monet and Rembrandt aren’t in glossy books on their coffee tables. There aren’t
any coffee tables. And there isn’t any coffee. It’s different. Of course there
is beautiful self-expression here all over the place and incredibly artistic
ingenuity. But poverty and survival have overtaken. All my students are little
creative creations dying to get out.
I have simply seen the sewing school as a place
for them to come and create, to make something out of nothing. A place for them
to take an everyday item, a capalana. They were wrapped in them the second they
were born and carried in one until they could walk. Women wear them every
single day. The bundle them in neat donuts and plop them on their heads to
carry heavy things. They are one of the most common items that exist. But to
take a common item such as this and make something more, something creative,
something beautiful, something that can make a profit, is new to them. I wish
you could see their faces as they see their little creations take shape.
Everything here is the same. There are no fashions or creations or designs that
are outside the box. But we are slowly showing them new things and giving them
the skills to make them and they are in awe. Maybe I am crazy but I believe
that this is helping them in finding out who they are. I believe that watching them create
something that didn’t exist before that is serving to sustain them and empower
them and is beautiful and unique and different, is….powerful.
Someone once told me that I would “take
dead/abandoned research and bring it to life and it would feed the hungry”. I
think this may be a tiny part of it and I honestly had forgotten that until I
sat down to write this. My goal is to feed the hungry; body and spirit. I want
to bring life to the living dead. I want to see these women and children
equipped with what they need inside and out. And somehow sitting at a sewing
machine helps to show them, they are powerful, unique, creative, and able.
So, I am doing that. And my weeks have been filled
with that. We just launched our online store and officially hired 3 beautiful
women and of course, Amilcar. All this is being funded by you. We’ve invested
mostly in fabric and one sewing machine. Pastor Lee Smith of The Way Church in
Hartwell sent us a fantastic serger and now we are in business! I, of course,
am anxious to start making money and at getting back our investment so that we
can invest more! I have to go to SA in July to renew my visa and hope to get
another machine. (A beautiful lady I met back in November had offered to buy us
one, lost my information and just two weeks ago, found me again and gave us the
money!) We are still in very beginner stages, with all things and are taking it
slow.
Meanwhile, I am doing computer courses in the
evening and starting next week, TEN of our boys will start an internship at
Kauri (a local restaurant and hotel). I am elated that they have this
opportunity but also wondering just what in the world they are going to do that
could possibly go wrong or get them fired. I am a proud mom but also worried
that I have not prepared them enough, that they are going to skip work, steal
the silverware or get caught smoking behind the kitchen.
Those are our big stories over the past few weeks
and the reason for my absence. I’m exhausted. I keep thinking that I have never
been so tired and that I simply cannot keep functioning at this level of work,
and then another week or month goes by and I am still alive and still working and
still thinking that I must rest. I get sleep at night it is just the waking
hours that are so exhausting. Maybe it is all those years as a state employee
that didn’t equip me for this job so full of hard work and long hours, but
either way I am so tired. Last time I went to Cape Town, I admitted myself into
the little house in Simon’s Town and simply tried to recover. I have until July
24th and then I can do it again. Until then, pray for strength and
energy to do each day and for Henrique to show up to work on time and in
uniform.
