After passing Loan Chairperson Josephine’s house dozens of times without ever stopping, we finally went over yesterday.
Josephine, along with a couple of female family members, gave us a glimpse into a beading business she’s been operating for quite some time.
Though they do some jewelry, the women’s main craft is creating leather wall hangings and scaled-down versions of traditional Iraqw wedding skirts. I realize when haggling for handmade goods abroad, I (and probably many others), don’t realize just how much time can go into them. Josephine and her fellow beaders definitely go through a long, tenuous process to produce even one piece.
After slaughtering their own goats for meat, the women start by drying the skins and then scraping the pelt off with a simple metal chisel.
After watching them whet the tools, Kim and I took turns giving it a go and were surprised at how tough it was to scrape off the hair. When I told them ni mgumu—it’s hard— they all laughed at me.
After a skin is free of hair and washed, the women are able to cut it to size, dye it, and sew in beads of different colors. Various designs represent different aspects of daily life a woman will experience while married, from gourds to mountains to ups and downs as her life continues.
Hand sewing these hundreds of beads can take between weeks and months, depending on the size of the piece, and their relatively low prices don’t really represent that.
Josephine’s daughter-in-law and sister taught us how to make holes and affix beads to the skin, and we got to try that out for a while. They also helped us make a bracelet each, with the colors of the Tanzanian flag, and we found both activities to be a good insight into local culture.
The people here just go about life at a much slower pace than our comparatively rushed, western ways. Extensive greetings are always a must, 30 minutes worth of work might take several hours to complete during a meeting and even the walking pace almost feels like reverse—but Tanzanians methodically immerse themselves in what they are doing and without trying, are really in the moment.
The beading is slow and feels almost therapeutic, and for most people here, there’s no need to speed up the process into hurried work.
We’re always so quick to cut to the chase efficiently during our interactions with the women in our program in order to accomplish necessary work tasks, that we don’t often get the chance to see their knowledge and skills at work in their businesses. After having that opportunity with Josephine, we hope to take the time to familiarize ourselves with women more and in doing so get closer to the culture in which we’re living.
