Our idea is to find some zulu women willing to teach us
their handcraft. Elodie is interested in the weaving of zulu baskets and I am
keen to learn anything really, they make so many beautiful things… We have an
idea of the area where to go and after asking one person who sends us to
another person who suggests us to go to another place, we find exactly what we are
looking for: Zamimpilo market! Zamimpilo is a community of 144 women. They
manage the market 24-7 where they sell fruits and vegetables in the front and
handcraft in the back. Behind the market there is a huge space where they
prepare the fruits and those women who don’t work from home have a workshop
where they make their craft. Some are making baskets, others ceramics, beads,
shoes, mats… They sing and dance for us to welcome us in their community. We
can start from Monday and one of the women, Bhekiwe comes up to us to ask us if
we would like to stay with her and her family during these days. You bet we
will!
During the weekend, the women all go to church, either
Saturday or Sunday. Mrs Thusi, the manager of the market, invites us to her
church, a Christian Lutheran church, in a huge tent filled with a congregation
all dressed in white. She has previously dressed us up in traditional zulu
skirts, necklace, bracelet and hair band. When we arrive, the archbishop
invites us to come in front, so we can photograph and film the faces. The scene
is hilarious. Mass lasts for more than three hours and we witness preaching in
zulu, crying, screaming, zulu dances, drumming and even vuvuzelas. What an
experience! The following day we also attend mass, but on a smaller scale, in a
small gospel church. We are still dressed up in zulu costumes, we are getting
used to that now. The rest of the weekend goes by with washing of our clothes
and spending time with our host family. Nothile shows us her school and we even
get to meet her teachers.
The first thing we experience when showing up when they told
us to come Monday morning is that time is quite different from our time. Nobody
is there! We wait. The women in the front ask us to help them to sell. We can
do that. Each woman manages her own little stand, but they take turns selling.
We take the payment from the customer and put the named price tags in a huge
basket. Twice a day, the money and the tags are counted and the pay is distributed
among the women, minus 10% for the running of the market.
Finally some of the women arrive and they start showing us
different crafts. I start with beadwork. Ritta shows me how to make a round
zulu necklace with lots of colors. I realize how long it actually takes to make
it. She also shows me a bracelet. Suddenly, one of the women gets up and starts
dancing, two others swing a rope and soon we’re three jumping in it. It is
quite tiring to sit all day and this is nice distraction.
On my second day I can finally start with ceramics. The zulu
women make beautiful big black clay pots with different designs: ukhambas.
Gladness gives me one of her aprons and I can start. I enjoy making these big
clay pots. We form the pot by building up coils of clay and smoothing them down
with the back of a spoon and an old telephone card. Then the pot is left to dry
and only after we decorate it with little lumps and thin coils on which we roll
a wheel with a pattern. In total I make three of them, but they are too big to
carry, especially because they are not fired.
One day we visit a Sangoma, a traditional healer, with our
guide friend Xolani. She lives in a traditional zulu village, surrounded by her
children and grandchildren. She was chosen to be the next Sangoma when she was
very young. She treats all sorts of different illnesses, from stroke to less
serious cases. She also talks to the spirits and predicts the future. We spend
some time with her where we ask her all sorts of questions.
On Friday we do the firing of the clay pots. There is no
kiln; the fire is prepared on the ground, with old wooden pallets and dead
trees. The pots are placed in between the wood and the fire is then lit. They
do two firings like this: a small one to start with, then a bigger one. Each one
takes about one hour to burn down. The last firing is to give the pot its black
color. Before we start, one of the women paints my face with red clay, to
protect the skin against the sun and the heat from the fire.
On my last day I learn how to make the traditional zulu
baskets. That is, I start one. Making a basket takes a long time– a
medium-sized basket can take about a month to make The women use palm leaves
that are cut until they have the right thickness. These are thread on a thick
needle made from an old umbrella and sown around a base that makes the
thickness of the walls. To make colors; they use roots, leaves, berries, and
tree bark. It is hard work and I pierce my fingers, more than once.
After 10 days with the women, it is time for us to go, but
not light-hearted. These women have become our friends now. To say goodbye, we
all dance to traditional zulu songs and even a drum I hope to come back one day.
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