[The following post is from my friend Tamara Jeffries. Tamara suggested doing a post on the Oodi weavers of Botswana. Since she had experienced the weavers and the culture first-hand, I suggested she write about her trip. Thank you, Tamara for allowing us to take this journey. You are a masterful story-teller.]
The Francistown Road out of Gabarone is long and flat and, when I was there, crackling dry. The landscape on either side seemed to stretch for miles with no distinguishing features but for a few low trees. It might as well have been a road somewhere in Texas, except that where you might see a stray dog running along the Texas roadside, here it was stray baboons. This was southern Africa after all. Botswana.
I was riding shotgun in a U.N. standard-issue, white Range Rover (driven by a pleasant guy with whom, by that time, I’d developed an apparently mutual crush), part of a group of journalists in the country to observe and report on the AIDS situation. At the time, Botswana had the highest HIV rate of any country in the world, and when I agreed to go, I fully expected to be bombarded by people dying in the streets and to return to the States deeply depressed.
Given the circumstances, I hesitate to say this: I had the best time. The country was peaceful and prosperous; the people were as easy going as the folks I’d grown up with in my South—the American South where I grew up. On weekend nights, young folks went to the local club to drink and dance to the thump of a popular AIDS protest anthem, “What Shall We Do?” (How could a song about such a deadly subject be so—forgive me—infectious? And who knows but that Botswana’s sense of peace, prosperity and pleasantness might actually have contributed to the HIV problem, perpetuating an “it couldn’t happen here” attitude. But that’s another story.) In between visits to hospitals and research labs and conversations with people who were fighting the disease, we got to see that the country was more than just its AIDS problem.
One of the highlights was our stop in Oodi village, a break in the flatness along the Francistown Road. The small compound of round, thatch-roofed buildings housed the Oodi Weavers cooperative, a group of women who worked together to spin, dye and weave–and make a living for themselves in a country whose economy was supported mainly by diamond mining and now-dwindling cattle herds. It was a simple set up: pots outside for washing, dying and rinsing the South African wool; an open-air weaving room; clotheslines where the skeins of yard, in a rich spectrum of colors, dried in the African sun.
According to the tourist board, the coop was founded in 1973 by a pair of Swedish artists who taught the local women (and a man or two) to spin, dye and weave by hand. Since then, the coop has thrived, and the weavers have earned a quiet, but international reputation for their work. In a country that, like most in the world, is growing increasingly urban, the coop gives Oodi villagers an alternative income source to dangerous mine work or jobs in the cities.
“It provides job and income security for [weavers], who in turn put money back into the local economy and contribute to village improvements. The project's visibility and profile — tapestries depicting daily village life are hung in homes, offices, and embassies throughout the world — has given everyone in the community a sense of pride,” according to one international development group. And that’s without capital investment, marketing or much ongoing training. A small “Third world” cooperative effort that, according to observers, “shouldn’t have worked” has thrived. They say it’s because of the commitment of the workers, the pride they have in their work, the fact that the folks who helped start it eventually stepped away and let the local women run it in a way that made sense for them. But it is at least a little because the work is beautiful. You can’t keep that kind of thing a secret.
I may have been responsible for delaying our small caravan from its official mission that day, pulling through the stacks of shawls and tapestries and mats. I piled the driver’s arms with samples of their work, as the weavers clucked and gossiped over us in Setswana. (Apparently they thought my “husband” and I made a fine couple.) The bulk of my souvenir money was spent in that one stop. I couldn’t resist, though I was taking a chance: wool breaks me out. A garment with even a touch of it itches me to distraction. But this was the softest fiber I’ve ever felt; it caresses me. These days, I often nap under one of the shawls I brought back from Botswana, woven in shades of sand, sunset and clay dust.
Over the course of her career, writer and editor Tamara Jeffries has written about quilters, photographers, writers and artists of all kinds. She traveled to Botswana in 2001, when she was the health editor at Essence magazine.
Comments