Valerie Hearder, Founder of African Threads, journeyed to South Africa earlier this year. She visited nine different women’s sewing groups to talk first-hand with these remarkable women who struggle everyday with the devastation of AIDS on their families and villages. Here Valerie tells about the women, their creative and meaningful art, and their determination to support and educate their grandchildren.

Valerie Hearder:

Earlier this year I went on my long planned trip to South Africa. Six busy, beautiful weeks visiting 9 women’s sewing groups in various areas of S.A. I’ve built up relationships with various women’s sewing groups through my small fair-trade business African Threads, as described in my previous blog posts here. I was keen to visit them, hear their stories and share the huge suitcase of embroidery threads donated by women in Canada. I’ve come home with so many rich memories and images and I’ll try and share just a few with you.

The early winter weather in the southern hemisphere was exquisitely warm and dry and perfect for travel. Our first visit was to an embroidery group called Intuthuko, which means To Make Progress. It’s near a sprawling squatter camp about 3o miles from frenetic Johannesburg. Intuthuko provides the only income for 35 embroiderers, all of whom are single mothers and grandmothers. We talked, shared tea, stories, laughs and tears. The group presented me with an enchanting embroidered hanging – a portrait of themselves in their sewing group. They sang to me in 5 part harmony that gave me shivers and tears. Intuthuko’s charming renditions of both traditional and township life is hand-stitched with hand-dyed silk on black squares of African cotton. Quilters buy the squares to stitch them into quilts, cushions and bags.

It was a hot, early winter’s day when we drove out to visit The Winterveld, desperately poor a rural area north of Pretoria. Mapula, which means Mother of Rain, is an embroidery group begun by the Sisters of Mercy about 16 years ago and supported by Soroptomists volunteers in Pretoria. Mapula provides the only income for 80 embroiderers who create exuberant village and social scenes on black cloth. Mapula creates economic empowerment, social stability and is a vital support for women. We brought in boxes of oranges, school supplies and cookies for the extended families and of course gave bags of embroidery threads to the stitchers. It was fascinating to visit their homes including this brightly painted house.

We visited an extraordinary embroidery group in beautiful Limpopo Province close to Kruger national Park. This group was started 18 years ago by Irma van Rooyen, a farmers wife who wanted to create employment for the desperately poor farm families. Irma’s first group had 8 embroiderers who embroidered brightly coloured Shangaan tribal designs onto black cloth. Today employment is provided for a staggering 1,000 embroiderers! The spin-off economics for the entire region is significant as there are no employment opportunites. I was particularly impressed with the consistent quality of the handwork and it was explained that the women are paid by the weight of their stitches. Their cloth is weighed before they stitch is and once it’s returned – and that is how their payment is calculated. Brilliant. What it encourages is extremely rich embroidery.

I was thrilled to find a large group of Zulu bead workers who were employed through an AIDS centre near Durban. Zulu women are renown for their bead prowess and the jewelery they make is exciting and contemporary.

My encounters with women crafters all over South Africa were all equally impressive, heart-warming and often heart-wrenching as well. I learned when visiting an AIDS Centre in Ixopo, a poverty stricken area of Kaw-Zulu Natal, that their exquisitely embroidered note cards were the only form of income available for the women. There is simply no other way to make money. The desperation of this was driven home when I was told that a young mother had recently gone off her ARV (anti-retroviral) medication to force her CD4 count to drop to dangerous low levels. Shocked and confused by this I pressed for more understanding: how could a mother risk dying? Well, it turns out that in S.A. when an HIV positive person’s CD4 count drops they are given a small grant for basic food and put on ARVs. However, people get better quite quickly on ARV’s their CD4 count goes up, and then the government takes away the grant, on the assumption they can work. This mother had no other way to feed her children than to stop her medication, drop her CD4 count and get on the grant again. This simple embroidery project is a desperately important link between life and death. This desperate high-stakes game of life and death is played out daily by tens of thousands of people through-out South Africa.

(Please contact me if you know of a group that would like to order bulk cards to support this particular group. Email me at val@valeriehearder.com)

The simple truth is that we all desire the same basic things: we want to feed out children, to have the dignity to make our own money and not survive on charity. I learned that the sewing groups – often called women’s empowerment groups – serve as a sole source of income for entire families. This ripples out into their communities. Equally important, the sewing groups sustain the women spiritually and emotionally. They gather together in their sewing circles as a community of women, facing their hardships with poverty and AIDS with shared solace and empowerment. Purchasing their stitchery, beaded dolls and bead jewelery is putting income directly into their hands. This is the most dignified and significant way we can show our support.

Find out more at http://www.threadlink.typepad.com/Africanthreads/

Tags: AIDS, Bonnie Samuel Designs, South Africa

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 2:29 pm and is filed under African Threads, Art, Artists, Fiber Arts, Fiber in Cultures, Fiber uses, Valerie Hearder, textiles . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.