There will be snacks

Almost finished chicken and chips, quarter avocado peel, top up bottle in a basket.
Empty, thick green bottle of 7UP with a straw.

This is the detritus on my bedside table at Jojo’s Palace. Got stuck at Nile Computers tonight – first the power went. The generator hum kicked in. Fans slowed to a stop and the mosquitoes rushed in, feasting at my ankles while I sat in the blue glow of my gmail screen (mountainscape) and waited out the token dry season storm.

I walked back to Jojo’s in the dark, my flip flops flapping and sucking at the streams of mud from the sudden and heavy rain. It had already passed, yet the wind was still blowing cool and crispy. The moonless night was somehow brightened by the breeze. Silhouettes of royal palms in the Gulu night sky.

Back to K’la on an early bus. Carry-on baggage = optimism.

Cooking Class: bo ki tongweno or gulu frittata

Just before mid-day, Kevin and I set off for Prisca’s house. I tucked my market tote into the basket on the front of Lucy’s shiny pink Smart Lady bicycle and followed Kevin out of town, off the paved road and onto the dirt track to Prisca’s place. I bit it about halfway, in one of the dips in the road where potholes had been filled in with soft dust. I cannot remember the last time I fell off a bicycle, and I couldn’t stop laughing long enough to brush myself off.

Prisca’s youngest, Abey Goretti, was quick to make silent lion roars at me as soon as we arrived, showing me her teeth, pulling on my hands and giggling. Over chai and chapatti, I spoke to her husband, Charles, about architecture. We pored over the plans he’d had made for a tailoring center. He asked me how people in the US get around when it snows.

This being the second visit out to Prisca’s home, I was pulled into the kitchen tukul after chai to help with the cooking. The mid-day sun outside was already beating down, but somehow the kitchen stayed cool. The walls were darkened from the charcoal stove – a curved bump out from the wall with two divots shaped to hold the coals beneath a pot. The embers burned pinkish/coral/hot through a mini-hearth below. We set to work, with Goretti’s giggly help, removing the leaves from the bo or “green vegetables” and putting them into a winnowing basket. Since the bo comes from the earth, it goes outside in the sun for some minutes to let any earthly creatures escape before the cooking begins.

Oil, onions, garlic – we put handfuls of the washed local rice (Kevin and I picked out stones) into the pot to fry it before cooking. Kevin minced the bo and we cooked it with local salt and oil, adding chopped tomatoes and the hen’s eggs I’d scrambled previously.

Prisca took a moment to give Goretti a bath in a basin outside the doorway. Goretti screamed the entire time, furious to have the dust washed from her skin.

We spent two hours in the kitchen, and then feasted in the sitting room:
Bo ki tongweno ki tongweno ki nyanya ki mucele ki layata
(greens with eggs, fried eggs with tomato and oil; with rice and yams)

Next class: cooking chicken.

After eating, Prisca insisted that I bathe before returning to town. She led me to the borehole to fill a basin, and sent me off to a corner of the as-yet roofless house that Charles is building. There is a concrete edge around the wall, and the middle is still dirt, which makes for a nice place to rinse and dump the used bath water.

After bathing, Prisca then insisted on oiling my skin before sending me off to town on my bicycle. Freshly-greased mzungu on a bike in Gulu during dry season. You can probably easily imagine the red dirt that clung to my skin as every car passed by. I arrived in Gulu looking very much like a happy martian with aviators.

Inspiration Pieces

It's the day-before-big-shipment here in Kampala. My new home is currently awash with wax-print and batik. Today's major task is to photograph the new products (check out the new garden theme, below) and start updating the website. FedEx comes tomorrow to box it all up and send it off on a metal bird - to arrive in Boynton Beach, Florida, just 2 days later (barring any customs issues).

I've only been in Kampala for a week, but since I'm used to shorter trips, I have had a hard time dropping the "hit-the-ground- running" mentality. I wonder how long that will take. Do you wake up one day and "wait a second, I LIVE here" is no longer a thought?

In the meantime, the days have been spent on fabric research (primer coming soon). Many of One Mango Tree's newest customers are wholesalers who will buy in bulk. Combining the need for bulk fabrics with an emphasis on an all-African supply chain means that we need a new understanding of the fabric markets here in East Africa.

The fabrics in these photos are indicative of a subtle change in direction. On the right is The Original bag in a Tanzanian batik. On the left, amongst the musa acuminata is the Lunch Bag in a Congolese wax-print that Noela was able to pick up.

There's been a push lately for us to move into clothing - first from the Global Exchange buyers in LA, and now here in uganda with potential fashion design volunteers and a growing global market for beautiful, fair trade clothes. I find myself dreaming of kanga sundresses and wax-print wrap skirts - would people buy them?

Here is the proof - a couple of great finds related to African fashion and ethical fashion:

NY Times - Revealing New Layers of African Fashion
Blog - AfricaStyl

Welcoming our new tailors from Bobi and Unyama

What a great way to usher in the holiday season --

This week Lucy and Prisca held celebrations in Bobi and Unyama IDP camps to welcome our new tailors. After three months of training, they brought their products with pride - so that Lucy could review their work. These women can now look forward to earn an income making products for One Mango Tree - they'll start out with headbands, table mats and aprons. Check out the photos below, taken by Julie Carney - during the celebrations.

Training begins

by Julie Carney
Photos by Glenna Gordon
Our progress so far has been tangible, in the form of sewing machines and liner fabric, thread and hand needles. But the less measurable progress has been more meaningful, and that is the training.

I’ll attempt to explain this progress. It is arriving at our training space at Bobi camp, Prisca reading over the lesson plans she wrote up at home the night before. This is her first time teaching but she is a natural—a quiet, and patient instructor. It is the group of women, many of them coming to the training from miles away, sitting patiently at the door to the training center and scolding us for being a few minutes late. It is one young woman, quiet and focused as she peers at her stitches while Lucy watches closely, providing gentle feedback. It is the occasional laughter that erupts, as the women show each other their mistakes. It is the way they call Lucy and Prisca “teacher”. And it is Lucy and Prisca collecting all the women’s work at the end of the day so they can take it home and grade it.

During the trainings, I sit on the side, just watching and documenting; this is entirely Lucy, Prisca, and the women’s initiative. Being useless has never felt so good.

Selecting the trainees proved more difficult than we’d imagined, as many of the women who were initially selected by GWED-G were too old to learn tailoring, a trying profession that makes severe demands on your back, your wrists and your eyes. But all the initial women were desperate to participate, even if they weren’t strong enough physically. But we had to favor “business” over pity; if they were not going to succeed at the trainings, then it would be a waste of everyone’s time. The wrangling for a seat at the training demonstrated both the desperation of life in the camps and how NGOs can sometimes unintentionally create conflict by privileging some over others in their programs. This is why we asked them to bring their daughters or a female relative with whom they “share a pot.” Everything is usually shared among families, so they would presumably be benefiting if they bring their daughters or daughters-in-law. With some time, and speeches from Lucy, they’ve done so, some more reluctantly than others. Now—at both camps—we have two groups of young, eager and committed women.

While there is a certain divide between Lucy, Prisca—as women from town—and the women in the camps, many of the women have been opening up to Lucy gradually, and over time, she says she looks forward to building their trust. Some of them are now approaching her and discussing their family situations, their children, and in some cases, their HIV-positive status. She explained to me that they tell her they are happy to be participating in the training because it is not as back-breaking as ‘digging’ in their own gardens at home. I am happy that the women are opening up to Lucy, and that Lucy is beginning to counsel them in her own way. Perhaps because Lucy has suffered so much herself, her empathy is genuine.

Lucy has not read the books I have on ‘gender-based development’ or ‘empowering women’. She’s lived these theories. And she makes me believe in the power of good leadership and charisma. I had a very old professor, with decades of experience in development, who ended seminar one day with the comment that so much of development is based on charisma. I think we initially dismissed him as senile, but I think I understand his comment a little bit better in the context of seeing Lucy in action.

Bestowing of Bikes, or Christmas in August

by Julie Carney
Thanks to the ingenuity and generosity of Clif Hayward (One Mango Tree's marketing advisor) and his friends, Lucy and her tailors have shiny new transport. Admittedly, I did not realize the full value that bicycles would bring to the One Mango Tree tailors until I arrived in Gulu, visited some of their homes, and ‘put myself in their shoes,’ so to speak. All of the tailors live outside of town, and walking to and from work takes up much of their time, especially when they each have family to take care of in the morning and night. Bicycles are an excellent business investment, as they cut the time the tailors spend on the road, which means more time at work and more time at home.

It did take some days of negotiation to get the bikes. Lucy, Prisca, Monica, Kevin, Sarah and Frances were intent on making sure they got the right bikes, the bikes that would not break easily. Much time was spent analyzing carefully the bikes of their neighbors and the bikes they passed in town. And we were happy to let them choose the bikes for themselves. They chose well.

It was a Monday, late afternoon, when the bikes were finally ready. They were so excited. We followed Lucy to the bike shop, where there were six shiny new bikes, just in from Kenya, out of their plastic wrap and serviced. Kevin, Sarah, Monica and Prisca were beaming. Each new bike has a sturdy basket at the front, a lock with a key, a reflector, and a sticker that says “Smart Lady.” In Uganda, the word “smart” signifies good-looking and well put together. And these were the smartest bikes I’ve seen in Gulu Town to date. Each tailor picked out their bike, five silver ones and a pink one for Lucy, and walked them down the street toward Holy Rosary Church, where Lucy had arranged to get the bicycles blessed from her parish priest. We made quite a parade of “smart ladies.”

We gathered outside in the church courtyard with Lucy’s priest, and surrounded the bikes, as the priest said words of appreciation and caution. The tailors were laughing, the sun was out, and the priest’s words were inspiring. At one point, he asked the women to be conscious of other passengers on the road – contrary to NGO vehicles’ modus operandi of inconsideration. “These NGOs are supposed to help us, but they drive fast and splash mud on people,” he said. “That is not respect.”

After the blessing, we walked the bikes back to Bora Bora Hotel, where we held a small celebration. We ate cake and drank mango juice and relaxed. Then, as the sun was setting over Gulu Town, the tailors hopped on their new rides, and road home, into the sunset.

On a side note, a few days after our bicycle celebration, I walked past the District Council Office, where UNDP was holding a celebration, doling out a few hundred “Peace Bikes” for some village women. And I am happy to note that the One Mango Tree bikes are much “smarter.”

The Growth of One Mango Tree in just one year

by Julie Carney

The streets of Gulu are wide and well-mapped, and it’s easy to make your way to the market. Follow the loud music, and once inside, pick your path amidst the organized chaos of trinkets from China, second-hand clothing (you’re bound to find a shirt from your hometown or state), clicking sewing machines, roasted peanuts.

If you get lost, just ask for Lucy. Along tailoring row, Lucy is famous. And you will know you’ve arrived when you hear, in that soothing sing-song voice, “You are welcome. Apwoyo Bino!” Almost exactly a year ago, when Halle visited Lucy’s stall, Lucy was working practically alone, with no fabrics hanging up on the wall, and only one sewing machine. Lucy couldn’t afford to eat lunch, and young women she would recruit to work at her stall would eventually leave because of lack of business. She could barely afford to pay her rent, and was soon going to be evicted.

But today, Lucy’s stall is overflowing with colorful fabrics, market totes in the making, yoga bag straps hanging in the doorway—a new order for One Mango Tree being finished—as well as other work Lucy and her tailors have gathered. Lucy now has six sewing machines, and has taken on six tailors-in-training. The stall is too small and Lucy and the tailors are constantly behind on orders. It’s an incredible business transformation and a happy, chaotic workspace. Now, other tailors in the market have attempted to mimic One Mango Tree designs, but none quite match the same quality.

As for Lucy herself, she is pleasantly plumper, and she and the rest of the tailors in her stall can afford to eat breakfast and lunch together. Her life is not without its continued hardships and burdens—the stress of caring for her sick mother who is half-paralyzed from a stroke, and the stresses of school fees for her children, but Lucy now says that she has hope for the future.

When we stop work for a drink of mango juice, Lucy loves to talk about how her business can grow. Her eyes grow wide, as she talks of finding land for a center where she can train more women and have more space. “I want this thing to grow. I need this thing to grow so that I can escape my poverty.” Lucy often prefaces her thoughts by mentioning the fact that she is not well-educated. She is wary of being on the wrong side of business deals because she has been cheated in the past. But she is keener than she thinks. I brought her a calculator, but she is much quicker with calculations in her head. She is saving money in her account and she hopes to learn how to use the computer in order to email her customers in the United States.

I am reluctant to frame this narrative as how One Mango Tree has helped Lucy over the past year, because it is her business and her skills that have helped make the returns so great, but she is a positive example of what targeted, effective investments and strong market connections can accomplish.