Yeah- I'm not one. My Mom will tell you- sewing has always caused me (undue?) stress. And now, as an adult, I can tell you that nothing has changed!
For some odd reason, it does not sit well with me to perpetuate the strange fact that my apparel is fabricated in a far-away land--far and foreign from the fibers that grow near me. Call me crazy, but the practice of companies paying pennies to regular people, but on another continent who feed their families on factory steam, to run machines that construct clothing that "fits" our styles and growing bodies, and then pocketing the mark-up profit seems a little ridiculous.
The truth is that any other way of enrobing ourselves has slowly become unthinkable and totally impractical in our current lives. *Let me add this disclaimer that I grew up with many homemade skirts and dresses due to the patience, creativity, and dedication of my mother. But many of us can hardly thread a machine to make the stuff we cover our bodies with.
To top (pardon pun) it all off, my shirt then needs to be tagged and packaged and shipped or flown over an ocean or two, boxed and driven by semi's, unloaded and unpackaged, inventoried, price inflated and then displayed not only in the store but by radio, TV and ads in my mailbox before I can be certain that this is the shirt for me! This process that has become an acceptable way of dressing ourselves is something that I cannot really "never-mind". I do mind.
So in my preparations for jetting off to Africa (now who's got the carbon footprint?), I put my fair-trade foot down and said dogummit, I can make my own clothes. or at least I can know who made them for me. True to form, I opened my little jaw and squarely bit off more than I could chew, considering the waning weeks of preparation. But bite I did and swallowed a bigger-than-palatable pricetag at the fabric store. I gulped and realized- okay, this hurts but I guess that's what I was trying to prove- that shirts really don't cost $10. (I could branch off here to the truely painful price of fossil fuels, but that's another conversation.)
Next I approached two friends, who have the Skills I lacked, with bolts of cotton, a pattern, and my measurements. I felt a bit sheepish in asking them and I'm not sure why. I guess it's hard to ask for something that could inconvenience someone else. All the same, I felt that I was honoring them; I would love to wear something they'd made- like packing a friend in my suitcase.
With my departure date looming nearer, I decided to check in with the local professional seamstress and have her also start buzzing away on my new wardrobe (and my wallet!). Draped in her own designed garments in her workshop in the fabric store, she exuberantly convinced me that with a little help from their in-house instructor, I could sew those pants up in 2 hours and the result would be cheaper!
Really?! I thought. Can she be serious? Can it be that even I could spin out some cool clothes from a sewing machine? (I'm more comfortable with duct tape, staples, screws and glue.) In a matter of minutes, she had me convinced to try, overcoming the memories of my failed attempts in highschool.
Let me make this story short: There is a pair of pants now hanging in my closet. And no one in China made them. But I have reaffirmed that I am and never will be a seamstress. I'm thinking, just to kick some megacorp ass, of wearing them on the plane, and proving that I can porte my handmade vestiments in public, lumpy and all.
Thanks to my incredibly patient mother, I can sew to save my life and cover my body. But I can assure you, no one in China would pay to have it shipped there.
Here follow some snapshots of the village, corresponding with the previous post of reflections. Enjoy the trip!
Le plateau
walking paths
hills surrounding the plateau (photo taken while I was "lost")
I will follow you
pathside beauty
flower bright spots
Natural beauty outside my room
surgery
nursing school grad ceremony
(they are singing and slowly dancing to the front)
pre-school children and a multi-tasking mother
(this is a photo from Moz)
we lived on the edge of a plateau. "my" mango tree in view.
Village Reflectings
When the MAF Cessna plane landed in [the village], I had no inkling of what I might encounter on a plateau in southwestern Congo
A curious community presses in around the arrivals at the airfield; visitors are laden with enthusiastic welcome throughout the visit; fascination with size and skin color; flirting with the newcomers; laughter at outsider's adjustment to the village; the pace is relaxed here; interpreters absorb much in helping us; locals are patient with French language attempts;
The scent of Plumeria wafting through screens and porches; bright spots of flowers wherever one walked- by hedges, lonesome footpaths, back yards, blooming trees; silence that beckoned me outdoors and cradled the laughter of children, the women's voices in song, the morning bell, the greeting of a neighbor, the call of a bird, the motor of a plane afar off, silence that let us hear the wind rustling palms and mangoes, silence that lulled me to sleep at night; the intriguing geography of a plateau and the crops it affords; the challenge and adventure of transportation; the speed at which word-of-mouth travels and weaves a tight community for better and worse; morning walks to the water source...or the river!;
Churning feelings that boil to the surface during a day at the hospital, during surgery; baffling decline from a bygone era; assumptions exchanged silently across cultures; gulfs of perspective seemingly unbridgeable; many languages layer the communication barrier; paucity of vision; zero stocked supplies; limited treatment; human care for payment only; ubiquitous dysfunction in practice, generators, labs, lights, solar panels, abandoned buildings, refrigerator, land-cruiser, misinformation, data, reporting, leadership, initiative, pro-activity; human service workers focused on material needs; elusive evidence of the sense of ownership in the health of the individual and the community; goals glaringly absent; looking to outsiders for something, anything, everything;
Mishaps and breakdowns taken in stride (literally in stride for 25 km!); laughter abundant; refreshing camaraderie with colleagues; bonding adventures; multi-lingual lessons and jokes; teamwork in new surgeries and topics; sharing the grief of death; breastfeeding back to life; nurse-to-nurse in-depth bilingual conversations;
Graduations celebrated by young and old; exams completed; evening fires tended; meals provided for those who have journeyed; chickens free ranged; tasks dropped for welcoming visitors; laughter carried across the courtyard; original music harmonized; tithes humbled and offered with dance and praise; children valued and cared for and bountiful; playing cards reinvented from worn paper; innovative footballs and fields; an ingenious guitar made from an oil-can strummed along footpaths; gentle smiles shared; hopes expressed; perhaps hopes misplaced; faith shared across gulfs; life connections begun; irreversibly connected.
DRC
I must begin or I never will.
Inconveniently, words seem to elude my grasp during profound moments and experiences. It's baffling how quickly time and space can influence the memory/reality of those intense times. Hmmm. That probably means that I'm human.
I'm thinking right now of some experiences I've had in the last 2 months.
Some of my hesitancy to find those elusive words sprouts from the precarious position we have as citizens of this world. In my particular case, my European ancestors sailed the sea and I was born on land that had become known as the United States of America; I am of the "white" or Caucasian race; and I have also been endowed with amounts and types of resources that land me in "middle class" of the above categories. (I cringe even to inscribe these labels on my name plate because like unsolicited emails, they come attached with sinister "viruses" of ignorance and inequality, but, so be it for this point of discussion.) In addition, I am squarely in a handful of "upper class" world residents who have access to pretty much any and everything I need or want.
Don't even ask me how that happened.
Inconveniently, words seem to elude my grasp during profound moments and experiences. It's baffling how quickly time and space can influence the memory/reality of those intense times. Hmmm. That probably means that I'm human.
I'm thinking right now of some experiences I've had in the last 2 months.
Some of my hesitancy to find those elusive words sprouts from the precarious position we have as citizens of this world. In my particular case, my European ancestors sailed the sea and I was born on land that had become known as the United States of America; I am of the "white" or Caucasian race; and I have also been endowed with amounts and types of resources that land me in "middle class" of the above categories. (I cringe even to inscribe these labels on my name plate because like unsolicited emails, they come attached with sinister "viruses" of ignorance and inequality, but, so be it for this point of discussion.) In addition, I am squarely in a handful of "upper class" world residents who have access to pretty much any and everything I need or want.
Don't even ask me how that happened.
...And yet they did! They asked. They demanded. They begged. With their welcome. With their goodbyes. With their pleading eyes. With exorbitant prices. In their over-attention to our ills or missteps. With their wordless hand motions from belly to mouth. They asked us in private conversations revealing very special requests for urgent personal needs. They asked as they flirted. They asked outright in blunt conversations. We talked as colleagues in an attempt to equalize. They asked among the table full of pastors. They asked as we boarded the tiny Cessna. ..And I ask myself. I demand of the world. I rage at WHY IS LIFE SO UNFAIR????!
*See Editor's Note
That's hardly a new question for me, perhaps for any of us. The essence of the question flashes my memory back to childhood, in color. At a single-digit age I remember wrestling with that question...and many other weighty problems for that matter. (So for anyone surprised at my going to "poor" places in the world, this has been a looooooooooooooooooooong time coming. That's about one 'o' per year.)
The glasses I wore for my visit to this peculiar village in DRC were fitted with lenses of Potential and Respect. In less than a week, I boiled over in the middle of hospital surgery and consultations, unable to absorb the painful realization breaking slowly over my consciousness: that
since I'd stepped off that plane, the villagers swarmed to me and assumed, or understood from prior experience, that the lenses I looked through were for Pity and Rescue, and they interacted with me accordingly.** It felt like they were forcing other glasses on me and plastering me with labels (not the least of which "Mundele!") without inhibition!
Thankfully, the latter P&R lenses are being re-ground to fit a new frame of mind. But the oppressed and manipulative ambiance was too much to bear without having any stabilizing ties and bonds of relationship with the people in whose homeland I was a guest. Without those cords, I am only another outsider to be sacked for all the inequality I'm worth. I realize that connection, trust, interdependence (give and take, and dignity) are as vital as blood. And what do we know from history? That blood and love are perhaps the strongest bonds in the universe.
*Editor's Note: This blog was composed on a full stomach.
**This is my assumption.
Something Cute to Watch
I got to watch my niece Cream Puff last night- her first true "babysitting" experience where the parents left the keys and phone numbers etc with me. She gave her Mom a reassuring giggle as she went out the door (good timing, Cream Puff!) that everything was going to be alright. And it was. We had a little dance party, book and play time, checked the yard and garden and stuffed our faces before a little walk. She never cried a peep! However, I could tell her usual energy waned as her bright little brain was processing " I trust you and you sound like her...but you're not my Mom!"
The reunion with her parents was something cute to watch. Once she was swept into the arms of Dad and Mom, her energy of gushing giggles and flappity wiggles lit up just like the screen of battery-powered laptop when you plug it into the wall.
And today I personally measured her 8-month-old thighs: 10.5 inches in circumference EACH! Yeah baby!
The reunion with her parents was something cute to watch. Once she was swept into the arms of Dad and Mom, her energy of gushing giggles and flappity wiggles lit up just like the screen of battery-powered laptop when you plug it into the wall.
And today I personally measured her 8-month-old thighs: 10.5 inches in circumference EACH! Yeah baby!
Cream Puffs
*Lest the sight of a text-only blog turns you off, fear not- PHOTOS follow*
Cream Puff and her uni-curl
That's what I'm talking about
This past rainy Saturday was the day my sister and family moved to town. I rode my bike the mile to their little apartment and found the unload already in process. Bypassing the stream of friendly and grunting helpers, I promptly made my way to the interior to find my niece Cream Puff desperately awaiting my constant attention. She first melted my heart with her gush of giggles and then we made our inspecting way over to the kitchen for edibles of interest.
Let it be known that without fail, when at the home of M&C one finds oneself to be deliciously and generously well-fed and accompanied with good music. This morning was no exception. Even though the clock had recently struck 8:30 and even though they'd only lived there a total of about 15 minutes, it was already true. Cream Puff and I found a glistening box of...donuts! on the beginning-to-be crowded countertop. And, well, I made myself at home. Cream Puff got her sweets in a processed form, later.
The move-in process was impressive. The pack-job from the night before had been done in flawless reverse order of today's installation. I hardly lifted a finger and well, they did a great job! But hey- I was grunting too. I was lugging a 7-month old who is in 1-yr old clothing, ok?
In a matter of hours and a few meals later, their one-bedroom apartment looked better than my own room, which I moved back into a week ago, which I explain thus: 1) my brain operates differently and 2) I'm moving "in" and moving "out" at the same time. Most importantly, what a blessing it is that we can afford to have sturdy roofs over our heads. Yahoo!
Welcome to town you guys!
Let it be known that without fail, when at the home of M&C one finds oneself to be deliciously and generously well-fed and accompanied with good music. This morning was no exception. Even though the clock had recently struck 8:30 and even though they'd only lived there a total of about 15 minutes, it was already true. Cream Puff and I found a glistening box of...donuts! on the beginning-to-be crowded countertop. And, well, I made myself at home. Cream Puff got her sweets in a processed form, later.
The move-in process was impressive. The pack-job from the night before had been done in flawless reverse order of today's installation. I hardly lifted a finger and well, they did a great job! But hey- I was grunting too. I was lugging a 7-month old who is in 1-yr old clothing, ok?
In a matter of hours and a few meals later, their one-bedroom apartment looked better than my own room, which I moved back into a week ago, which I explain thus: 1) my brain operates differently and 2) I'm moving "in" and moving "out" at the same time. Most importantly, what a blessing it is that we can afford to have sturdy roofs over our heads. Yahoo!
Welcome to town you guys!
That's what I'm talking about
Uncle Jake! What a guy.
Good crew = Quick business
Niece and I on our 7-month reunion, at her birth site
Periscope
I feel like I'm holding a periscope- I can finally see, or at least peek, around the next corner! That's exciting and glaringly soon.
This new landscape in view is temptingly tangible and demands that I organize practical things. Parfait! that's what I like to do. And yet, I've just come through some intangible and difficult-to-summarize experiences in the Congo. The challenge for me this month will be to turn that periscope around...
*Editor's note: Dragonfly has always wanted a periscope. If any readers know how to make one, feel free to inform the blogger.
This new landscape in view is temptingly tangible and demands that I organize practical things. Parfait! that's what I like to do. And yet, I've just come through some intangible and difficult-to-summarize experiences in the Congo. The challenge for me this month will be to turn that periscope around...
*Editor's note: Dragonfly has always wanted a periscope. If any readers know how to make one, feel free to inform the blogger.
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