I imagine it’s getting cold and dark in the Northern hemisphere, or boiling hot in Australia of course, and you are thinking about Christmas and would love to buy cute little-handcrafted decorations from hard-working deaf children, as described in exciting poll and blog entry a few weeks ago.
How handy, then, that I have now got a nice little production line going and am planning to develop it into a proper sweatshop where children go blind and get terrible injuries, and I am raided by some busybody do-gooders wanting to stop good honest trade. Those children aren’t leaving their sewing machines until they have provided Christmas cheer for everyone I know.
It’s been a right performance, though. At one point, supported by my family over several glasses of delissious white wine at a nice hotel in Zanzibar, I was going to give in and just admit that it had all been a terrible, poncey, middle-class idea. After thinking it would all be really easy and would help the teacher and students develop business acumen and self-esteem and make a profit too, I came across some, er, cultural difficulties. These were:
1) I went to the market to buy materials with only a deaf Swahili-speaker and a hearing Swahili-speaker: no English speaker. Perhaps an overly-optimistic mistake, in retrospect. It was all very painful and I had to get a nice taxi back to recover.
2) I drew a picture of what I wanted – a star with an embroidered edge - and described it (with an interpreter!) but did not realise that once was not nearly enough. I went to check up the next day and the teacher had made several stars with no embroidered edge, but instead a big blob of red embroidery in the middle. I think she thought: “I will sit here and “listen” to you blithering on for a bit about microfinance and embroidery. Then I’ll go and do exactly what I want and look blank while you try to work out what’s gone wrong.” I should have taken a photo, because it now it seems quite funny. At the time I was enraged and had to go and stamp my horribly sports-sandaled foot in the privacy of the cow byre.
3) Then she made them all so big that they flopped over themselves when I hung them on my finger. Even though I’d drawn and cut out a template by this time, on a bit of paper.
Finally, I told Matilda, the school director, (the one who really loves Jizzus) that I had to admit it was a terrible idea and that I was giving up. She administered a sign-language bollocking. Wish I’d seen it. And now it is all good! The teacher is full of smiles. The sewing pupils, to be fair, have always been full of smiles and have worked really hard and nearly fell over dead with joy when I gave them 500 shillings each (20p) for their efforts so far. Sneef. Especially the one whom Matilda described, with typical Tanzanian frankness, as “the quite fat brown one”.
So…..finally. Would you like to buy some? Please do. The money will go a long way here, especially as I will make sure it is Gift Aid-ed somehow. I will give a third to the pupils doing the work and two-thirds to the school.
There are two types: both stars (I gave up the ridiculous Madonna and Child idea. What was I thinking?). You can have a pair of dark blue stars with white embroidery edging and ribbon, or a pair of green stars with red edging and red ribbon. I also decided that they should be cheaper than I thought before, so now they are £3 for one pair, and £5 for two pairs, including postage. And a little certificate of authenticity, so important for Christmas decorations, I feel. One of the kids might be the next Edward Tinga Tinga, although I doubt it.
The photos show a close up and also lots of them hung on some exotic foliage at our idyllic beach hotel, including on my ears. There is a also a kind of artistic Christmas-tree shaped arrangement, put together by my dear mother, who is good at this kind of thing.
If you’d like some, here’s what to do:
1) Email me and tell me how many and what colour. Please, please let me know as soon as possible. Things here move very pole pole, (slowly) so the sooner I know the better.
2) Tell me your address if you think I don’t know it
3) If you would be so kind, transfer the money to my bank account - one of my sensible clever friends has suggested I don't put the account number up here, and after some mulish scowling I have decided to take his advice with only the most grudging of thanks. I will reply to your order email with a big thank you and my bank details! My mother has foolishly agreed to look at my online statements and keep records for me. Hurrah. This would have been really hard work. Or rather it still is, but for someone else. Please could you put your name as a reference when you transfer the money, so that I know who’s given what?
4) If you live in Australia, my sister will act as banker to avoid ridiculous international transfer fees, even though I haven’t bothered to ask her. She’s SO NICE I don’t need to.
5) If you’re my lovely cousin in San Francisco, I should think your ma will sub you up, yes?
6) Wait expectantly for a nice envelope with an exciting looking foreign stamp
I shall post them with the aim of getting them to you by the end of the first week in December, and in the meantime shall work out a contingency plan for the odd few that get stuck in the nooks and crannies of the Tanzanian postal system.
Thank you very much for getting this far, and especially for buying some decorations if you do. I am not sure what we’ll spend the money on yet. There aren’t enough cups for the children to all have their morning drink at the same time, so I might buy cups for everyone. And at the moment fruit is expensive so they only have it three times a week, so I might start a Banana Budget. Or we might build a water tank so that they don’t have to queue up for ages with bottles in front of the single tap to water the school grounds every morning. Or mend one of the broken loos / spider sanctuaries….
I leave you with a little vignette from today when I had my sign lesson. My sign teacher told me that when I thought I'd been doing the sign for "My mother has gone on the aeroplane back home to Europe" I'd got one finger crucially wrong in the aeroplane sign and had in fact said to everyone, for two days, "My mother has gone to have sex at home in Europe". She may well have done, for all I know (she's pretty sprightly for her age) but I was nonetheless glad to be corrected before further damage was done.
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