Paper into Pearls

Paper into Pearls by Erina Khanakwa

Some come out to volunteer to see what the tourists never get to or simply don't want to. Others dig in to join in the chorus that is singing Jeffrey Sachs' line, 'The End of Poverty,' and yet for a few others volunteering goes so deep they turn their lives inside out to work for months on end. New Zealander, Malcolm Trevena is one of those long-term volunteering veterans. Malcolm was so inspired by the tough spirit of Uganda's local women that he went on to found GrassrootsUganda.com, the people-friendly organisation and website that empowers African women with the chance to make beaded jewellery, join the international market and make a much needed living. "My big idea was to help the women of Africa; to build them an online presence, GrassrootsUganda.com, from where they could sell their goods. This will help them to reach markets that have been traditionally well out of their reach."

I joined Malcolm and his trusted craft teacher, Rose Ochwo, when they travelled to the village of Buvunya, a small, gentle village deep off Jinja road. The reason for visiting Buvunya was to teach a group of willing ladies how to make beads from sheets of old calendar paper. The bead making technique that Rose uses was originally taught to her by an American Mission group to provide skills and employment for the displaced women of Northern Uganda. The group called this craft, 'Paper into Pearls', an extremely fitting name once you see the long, thin strips of paper rolled tightly into beads. Thankfully unlike many of her peers, Rose was willing to share her trade with another group of women who have as little chance of financial freedom and independence as those in the North.

In the late morning ladies start trickling into Vincent, our host's, house. They're shy, and quiet, whispering between themselves, shifting their small babes to their backs in colourful Chentenges (sarong like wraparounds). It's only when Vincent translates what they will be taught today and they learn they will be employed and earning an income, do they finally open up. That all the profits from the sale of their jewellery will go right back to them, is no small achievement in a culture where women once married are usually solely dependent on their husbands for any money at all.

And that's the crux of GrassrootsUganda.com, it takes on huge problems like unemployment, inequality and complicated trade relations and simplifies them with a 'One Woman One Product' ideology. Instead of being overwhelmed by poverty's sheer numbers, GrassrootsUganda.com, offers web shoppers the chance to 'meet' the ladies who create the paper jewels with a short biography and photograph. There the ladies can share their stories and situation providing the shopper with a face, a connection, a real person.

Throughout the day we get a chance to talk to the ladies and suddenly I see why Malcolm has worked through unearthly hours building the website. Zaina Nalubanga is the petite 22-year-old mother of three beautiful girls. After finishing P7, the last year of primary school, she has been a housewife, mother, nurse and farmer. She tells us her husband works as a bodaboda rider (Moped taxi driver) and earns around US$1.50 per day for his work. This low wage can barely cover all the family needs from Malaria prevention to the medical care needed to get her hernia seen to. She looks around us or at the ground as she tells us, "I would use the money to pay the school fees for my children to go to school…with this I could buy clothes and milk." When asked what making these beads means to her she smiles shyly, holding her youngest on her hip and says, "It makes me happy and gives me hope that I will improve myself."

Jane Mbabazi's story is riddled with the same cultural limitations found with Zaina and women all over Uganda. Having moved to the village after her husband chased her away when she was five months pregnant; she now lives with and looks after her mother, a heart patient at Mulago Heart Institute. She smiles even as she tells us that she has lost everything; her business, her home and her traditional African marriage and becomes amazingly quiet when we ask her what her personal wish would be if she could do or change anything about life in Buvunya, "I would open shops to sell children's wear," she begins, "It would make me proud if someone bought the necklaces, it cures the boredom and we get paid."

It's varnishing time the next morning, and the ladies' delight is genuine and contagious as the beads hang on the washing line out back to dry in the sun. But more than the excitement that they've made necklaces is the new sense of hope amongst them. Hope for the family to have a little more money, for school fees to be paid or maybe even open that shop one day.
Sometime that afternoon when we are sitting down watching the ladies smile as they make another delicately wrapped rainbow bead, Malcolm says quietly, "It's finally happening." And as they collect their beads into small piles of achievement it's easy to see that even here, in a village that most people have never heard of, something special and promising is happening.

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