Every month bundles of beaded products are brought in to the Wild Hope team here in Arusha. But Wild Hope's artisan-made products begin to take shape miles and miles and miles from where they end up on display. Carefully threaded onto the stiff wire and bent by the strong, skilled hands of our Maasai friends, the products first take shape in the remote villages where our friends live.
From the village, the product is loaded onto the backs of donkeys and walked for half a day to connect with a friend who has a Land Rover. The Land Rover delivers the product along dirt trails to the closest "public transport vehicle" which travels along the paved road to Arusha. It can be a 2 day process just to bring the product in to town.
Each month, Peter Ole Kukan and 2 or 3 of the Artisan women deliver the wares to Tammy, Grace and Philemon. Together, they now begin the 3 day process of sorting, counting, scrutinizing for quality control, paying, making new orders, assisting the women as they supply with new stock, and sending the little party of Maasai friends back out. When the delegation gets home, the process begins again with 80+ women launching into the work to fill the new orders.
The lovely ornaments and decorations move along to buyers. Some of them end up in high end tourist shops in our town. Some of them end up in Europe, New Zealand, Australia and the U.S. All of them provide a fair trade for traditional artisans who would not necessarily find employment otherwise.
We love the story of how the product gets from village to town. Even more, we love the stories of families provided for by the faithful work of these skilled women. Proceeds go back into the project, building communities in far away places.
3 comments:
Thanks so much for posting this! It's so good to know where (and who!) our products come from since they don't just come from the trucks that deliver them to our stores! Would you mind if I post a link to this on my blog? I love to share other people's handiwork and not just my own!
Feel free to link from your blog to this blog. Our product is not yet available on the open market since we are a small non-profit that is doing things through the proper channels and can't yet cope with just opening up with a web shop. But the story of the ladies and their work is still an encouraging one so feel free to share :-) Thanks for your interest.
Wild Hope, I too thank you for posting this...knowing the whole story is part of what makes the beaded products so precious. God has blessed these women with a skill and you have taught them how to make a living from it. Plus knowing they are sharing their testimonies and stories with the other women as they work side by side is beautiful.
Post a Comment