About
It is natural that I now sell shawls that are really works of art, for even as a child I had art on my brain. That came out in little ways, like when I made my own toys because my family was too poor to buy them. Very young I learned how to roll up a cloth and make a baby doll that I could then cradle to my breast; and later when I was old enough to tend my aunt’s food stand I made a flower from dried leaves and added a stem from coconut. And I always tried to decorate the clothes that were handed down to me by my older brothers which I then passed to my younger sister. So when I saw the Kenyan biker at Ten Thousand Villages it was natural that I thought to decorate her with a basket and flowers. I remember the children in the Northampton store gathering around and very interested to see me make a skirt for her out of wrapping tissue because there was no other material at hand. I remember so well when I was a kid, and I can still think like one.
My village is in the part of Thailand where many of the women used to dye and weave the cotton that they raised themselves. Now all that is a lost art that I hope to help revive with the profits I make in America, but when I was a child most women worked with pots of indigo dye and hand looms under the house which was raised on stilts so we could sleep at night without too much heat from the earth.
I remember my grandma under the house chewing betel nut and making the cloth for shirts, pants, and blankets. Like so many of the village women her hands and wrists were black from the indigo dye to match the black stripes in her teeth from the betel. She also kept silk worms and make silk for the better clothes for going to temple or the fair. The indigo cotton was for everyday use. She worked under the house in the area separated from the water buffalo. She taught me to weave, but when my aunt got sick I had to spend all the time watching her little stand. Grandma and all the women could spin cotton by turning a little wheel made by the husbands with one hand and twisting the fibers with the other hand.
Despite all the happy memories of my village I knew I was going to fly away. Thankfully my parents were willing to pay for my school when they saw my good grades, so after high school which was twenty miles from my village I was offered a scholarship at Payap University in Chiang Mai which was eleven hours away by bus. I went and became the first in my family’s history to graduate from university. None of my four brothers or two sisters did that, but I am proud to say my niece Apple graduated last year.
From my little village to Northampton has been a big journey. We are on opposite sides of the earth and from different worlds. My village is Third World with many problems. One is the fact that with modern advances fabric from Bangkok or China or Indonesia became cheaper to buy than what grandma made, so the arts of dye and weaving have almost disappeared. Where once the women had useful occupation, now they do not, so I feel compelled to help with that.
My profits will go to establishing a center where the women can remember the artful techniques that have for centuries produced some of the world’s most beautiful dyes, designs and fabrics. I work now with a women’s co-operative that needs to learn some basic skills such as how to open a bank account. I can teach them other skills for marketing and selling, so that as they prosper their daughters can join with them and have a way to earn money between the times of planting and harvesting the rice. Luckily I am in America where I can get the money to do this.
It is far from here to my village, but my village is near my heart.
