Beautiful Voices

The Chikumbuso project operates a school for orphans, and includes many other projects, one of which helps widows earn an income.  Sewing and crocheting projects help turn found (free) or inexpensive materials into a higher value product.  The sale of those products sustains the widows and also helps to support Chikumbuso’s projects.

Important lesson learned today: generosity is an action that creates an equal and opposite reaction, always and no matter what people have to give.

Raissa and I walked into the store at Chikumbuso, trying to look casual. Elizabeth had warned us and wasn’t sure how women working at the store, would receive our gift we brought along. We walked around slowly, as the rest of the group came in twos and threes. The bags on display, crocheted by women at Chikumbuso, were as unique and beautiful as a hundred desert snowflakes. We marveled at the simple ingenuity that brought them about. Using plastic shopping bags as “yarn” to crochet handbags, purses and messenger bags, bringing a whole new meaning to sustainable production.

I didn’t even see Elizabeth come in with our contributions before I heard the shouts and whistles. The women clapped their hands, and smiled at us openly for the first time. Through the language barrier came astonishment, wonder, and thanks in a thousand fragmented sounds, like rainbows scattered from a prism. I was overwhelmed by the immense warmth that two bags of recycling had produced.

The vice president of the project thanked us formally in English on behalf of the widows and Chikumbuso as a whole. She didn’t need to translate—there are some sentiments that completely transcend language—but it made us feel work important, and our presences appreciated.

By this time, the contents of the bag were spread out on the carpets where the women work. Women threw the plastic bags up in the air letting it rain down on their heads, laughing and talking very quickly. Then, one of the women began to sing. It was a call-and-response song. Her voice was strong and warm. When everyone else joined in, the effect was increased exponentially—it felt like the room itself would lift up and float away. There were at least three parts to the song, and the harmony was so wonderfully complex and yet reassuringly stable. It sounded complicated than it actually was, because I found myself singing the middle part. Some of the women danced on the carpets, tapping their feet and moving their hands and hips to the beat of fifty hands clapping in unison. They mirrored the beat of our hearts. That is where they came from, and it is also what they spoke to.

-Emma