Uganda part 3 - the Villages & a New Plan

The last week of our trip was spent in the village of Kayunga Kasanna. This is a small and beautiful village outside of the city of Kayunga. It is on the Nile River (if you walk far enough into the village, which we did not do this time, but did last year.) It was wonderful to go back and see familiar faces as well as new ones.
During the first week of our trip Karen and I spent a lot of time refining our plan for the villages. A few things came to our attention that we were not aware of. First of all, with this being such a male dominated society (and abusive) there was concern that the sewing machines could be destroyed or sold if put in the women's homes. This brought on a chain of other concerns and considerations, but finally we came up with a plan. My biggest concern was what we had planned and how much time we had. We only had 5 days at the most and we wanted to teach 2 women how to make shorts, button shirts, and dresses. OMG, under the best of circumstances I don't know that I could teach 2 new beginners to make these three garments well in just 4 or 5 half day sessions. I was really stressing out about this. I knew we did not have access to electricity, pressing equipment, good light or reliable machines (another post about that later). In addition, there was the language barrier. (I do not speak Lugandan and very few women speak English. Those that do, don't understand us and we don't understand them.) Nonetheless, we really wanted to make this work, so Karen and I did a lot of brainstorming. Also, our original plan was to do a basic micro-economics business plan, but after talking to some of the women, we realized this would not work either! I did a lot of praying about all of this. Well, thanks to God, we came up with a new plan.

We knew that the women we worked with (we planned on two, but ended up with three) would need a lot of practice time. There would be no way that we would be able to get them up to speed enough to be making uniforms in one week! We went into the city of Jinja and bought a lot of fabric in beautiful colors. We now were planning on training 3 women. (Actually, I was doing this part and Karen was working with 20 other ladies on hand embroidery.) We came up with a "business plan." The women would each need to make at least 4 pair of shorts (elastic waist), 3 shirts and 3 dresses in order to develop their skills and confidence. These practice garments would then go to children in their villages who needed clothes. This was a perfect solution. Their giving back to their own villages would be their "payment" for use of the machines. The machines would be kept at the church (2 in Kasanna and one at the resource center in Busanna.) After the women completed making clothes for the children of the village, they could then use the machines to make garments to sell. The patterns that we used would still work perfectly for school uniforms when used with different fabric. Also, at this point, if the women wanted to buy the sewing machine so that they could take it home, we made an affordable price (1/2 of what we paid) available to them.


I worked with 3 women from 3 different villages. The first is Kathy. She lives in the village of Kasanna. I have known her the longest and of the 3 women, she speaks the most English. Last year Kathy took us on a walk through her village and we even took shelter in her home (mud hut) during a rainstorm. She has some basic sewing skills, but is still a beginner.




















The next of the women in Florence. We met her last year and she lives in the village of Busanna. She has intermediate sewing skills and does a lot of sewing already. For example, she knows to understitch a neckline, but didn't know to trim corners or seam allowances. How I wish I could work with these women for a much longer period of time. Florence understands some English, but not as much as Kathy. She rarely speaks in English.


















The newest to our group was Phobe (pronounced "Faybee") She lives in a village called Sababu. I have not been to this village, but hope go go there next year. It is more primitive than Kasanna. They do not have a church building there, so she will have to walk to Kasanna to use the sewing machines. It is about a 2 KM walk. She was very shy and quiet, but had such a beautiful spirit and really wanted to learn. I think she knows a few phrases in English, but doesn't understand much. Also, I think she has had no previous sewing experience. Fortunately, sewing is very visual, so she picked up very quickly. I'm really missing these women right now.

While I worked with Florence, Kathy and Phobe, Karen worked with the other ladies (about 20) on embroidery. We had decided before we came that we would do embroidery since this is something that they could all do, each having their own piece to work on. The women loved this and were proud of their work. They also told us that this is something they could do to make items to sell. They were very excited about it.
















The women that did embroidery, also hand sewed a little drawstring bag to keep their supplies in. We also completed 1 pair of shorts, cut out 2 more, 1 dress with two more cut out, and one shirt. Hopefully they can do the rest on their own.
You can see more pictures here and I'll be adding more sometime this week.

Uganda part 1- Jinja

We headed off for Uganda expecting the unexpected, but we didn't expect the unexpected to show up before we got there! We had a number of flight delays, changes, and cancellations, and at one point wondered if we would have to cancel the trip! We did finally make it, but we ended up at the Entebbe airport in the middle of the night when no one was expecting us, so we were fortunate to be able to get ahold of our hosts and get a ride to Kampala. Betty and Moses Odongo are a pastor and wife in Kampala and they were our host for the first couple of days. Of course, we missed the first 24 hours with all of our delays, but we did get to spend a day with Betty. That afternoon we headed off to Jinja where we would be part of a pastor's conference on purity and we worked with the pastors' wives. We knew that domestic abuse was widespread in Uganda, but we did not realize how far it went. Also, it is not illegal in Uganda to have more than one wife, so many men do. Believe me, the wives are not happy about this either.

The first few days in Jinja we stayed at a nice little guest house called "Cool Breeze" and we were actually surprised this trip to have some cool breezes in the mornings. June is definitely a better time to visit than March or April. This was a nice guest house for Uganda, but in the first room we had, the toilet didn't work and the room smelled. None of the windows would close all the way (mosquitos) but they did have wide mesh screens. We asked for another room the next day and they gave us a downstairs room. This room had a window that looked directly onto a mens urinal for "public" restroom use. Great. We also had no light in the bathroom, but I guess that didn't matter since we only had power for 2-3 hours each evening when they turned on the generator. Our room was also near the front porch, so it was noisy when people were talking outside, and the bed was a board with a foam pad on it. I was usually so tired at the end of the day that I didn't have any trouble falling asleep though.
During the day we attended and helped facilitate the Purity conference for the women and got to know some of these pastors' wives. There were also other women there from the different churches and it was nice to get to meet them. Most of these women were from cities although a few were from the villages. Many of the women spoke English, as it is the official language of the country. Most of the women from the villages did not speak English and spoke Lugandan instead. We had one woman who translated for us and it was great to watch her. She was very good.

On Sunday afternoon we worked with these ladies teaching them embroidery. They were very excited to learn it and many said they could and would use this skill to make items to sell to provide income for their families. It was such a blessing to be with these women.

Sewing in Uganda

We finally made it back, safe and sound. It is such a long travel time to Uganda - it was about 20 hours of flying and about 10 hours of driving and layovers. But, we made it there and had a great time. We started our time there with a trip into Kampala to buy fabric. Now, that is taking your life into your own hands! If you've ever seen the way they drive in Italy, just multiply that by about 10 and you'll have the craziness of Uganda. Apparently there are few driving laws, and the ones that they do have, no one adheres to. Everyone drives agressively, and they only leave about 2 inches of space between vehicles, front, back and both sides! Trying to cross the street is like going on Fear Factor, but if you enjoy market style shopping, you would love it. We had a Ugandan lady with us named Betty, and she got us the great prices. If you go by yourself to Uganda and buy anything you pay the "Mzungu" (white person) price. If you have a Ugandan buy, it is about 50% cheaper.



We bought some beautiful wax prints that we cut and used for the ladies to make skirts. Fabric for making Kitenge (a type of Ugandan dress - and the kind of fabric we used) is sold in 6 yard lengths for anywhere from 1500 to 2500 Ugandan Shillings a yard/meter. We were able to get most of our fabric for about $.75 USD per meter. Other cotton fabric with a looser weave that is mostly used for over-skirtss (like we would use an apron to keep our clothes clean) is sold in 4 yard lengths, for about the same price.







So, after we purchased our fabrics, we took them back to our room and cut them into 2 yard lengths so the ladies could choose thier fabric and cut them out to make skirts. Some of the women we worked with had done a little sewing, a couple were fairly good, and some we beginners. Most did not speak English, but a few did and helped translate for us. The official language of Uganda is English, but even when they do speak English, it is hard to understand since they have a different pronunciation and intonation of the words.






They also have a different rhythm to their speech and use different phrases. For example, instead of saying "You're welcome" they say "OK, please" I love listening to them speak in the native Lugandan and in English. We had rented 2 treadle machines to use at the church and did all of our work in one of the rooms that used to be a school room. As you can see in the pictures, the walls are made of mud and have an opening at the top. This particular building had a metal roof, but part of it was thatch. It also leaked. It rained many of the days we were there, but the rain starts and stops suddenly, and dries up quickly.




The women loved the skirts, and most of them made 2 different skirts. On the last day, several of the women made tote bags. We usually started working with the women around 10:00 in the morning and sewed until around 2:00. At that time, we took a break and ate lunch. Other women had been cooking all morning in the room next to us, usually beans, rice, pineapple, and some kind of meat, but since I am a vegetarian, I did not eat the meat except for one day when they served fish. The women cook over a fire in large pots and the cooking, cleaning, and serving ends up being an all-day affair for them.

In the afternoons, we did a bible study with the women for about an hour and a half to two hours. We had about 20-30 women come on any given day. We talked with them about Christian living and worked in the book of Ephesians. Some of the women had Lugandan bibles, some had English bibles, but most could not read. We encouraged them to get together with some of the other women to encourage each other, read God's word, pray, and lift each other up. The women really loved this time and each day we had more than the day before. It was really a blessing to be there and be part of these women's lives. These ladies were the nicest people with the sweetest spirits. I felt like crying when we left because I know how much I will miss them.





I will have more to share later, but in the mean time, you can see more pictures here. Sewing in Uganda Album