Aristotle coined the phrase, “The soul never thinks without an image.”
I think of those seven words often, including when I walk into our living room and look at the wall. Hanging on our wall are three hand-made colorful baskets.
Those three teal and tan baskets take me back to June when my wife and I spent a day in a rural village in east Africa learning about everyday Rwandan life from five women who work as artisans.
The three baskets are made from dyed natural sisal fibers and woven over a core of forest grasses. Sisal fiber comes from an agave and is the perfect fiber to make such baskets due to how strong and durable it is, we learned.
It took us a couple of minutes to pick out the baskets in a store and about five minutes to hang them on our wall. It took the talented artisan who made them, however, two to three days to weave each one by hand.
It was one of a myriad of “things” we learned and were amazed by as Jen and I spent “A Day in the Life of an Artisan” experience with the organization Azizi Life.
Jen had known about the organization for quite some time, as it started in partnership with Food for the Hungry when she was studying abroad in Rwanda in college more than a decade ago.
The products they sell are called fair trade, which means the artisans receive the funds for the products they make.
By spending the day with a group of artisans (and a translator), we were able to get a glimpse into their work and their everyday lives.
We left the capital city of Kigali early in the morning to drive almost two hours outside of the city to a rural community where we met five women who live there. The women are part of a group called “Helping Our Homes,” and they focus on using their skills and talents as artisans to create products they sell to earn extra income for their families.
Moments after we arrived and greeted our new friends with hugs and handshakes, they gave us a new outfit to wear made of traditional Rwandan fabrics.
Clad in our new clothes, our first task of the day was to go on a short hike to a near-by field and gather the ingredients we would need to make lunch. We saw a myriad of cassava plants, which are similar to yuca. Our first job was to dig up the plant’s root, peel the cassava plant and then clean it so that it could be cooked.
Next, we helped prepare a field for planting. Later, we cut some grass from another field to feed to the neighbor’s cow.
From there, we hiked down a hill to a well that had a spigot. This spot is where the community members walk every day with buckets to gather water to carry back to their homes to boil, as it is not safe to drink from the tap.
We spent a couple of hours working alongside our new friends and getting to know them through the help of our translator as we shared stories about our families and lives.
By 1 p.m., we were all ready for lunch as we sat down in Beatriz’s living room to enjoy a big plate of beans, cassava, sweet potato and avocado.
After lunch, we learned that the five women we were visiting specialize in making earrings for Azizi Life. This news made Jen’s day, as she loves the earrings that Azizi Life sells and wears them often.
What happened next absolutely amazed me as I observed how they make these earrings.
We walked to a plant where one of the women cut off a long leaf that to my untrained eyes appeared to be aloe vera. (It wasn’t.)
Next, she cut off the ends and made a few more cuts on the long leaf. Suddenly, she was removing individual pure white fibers from the large leaf that were the same texture as dental floss yet much stronger that what we use to clean our teeth.
We learned that the women dye the fibers using water and a powdered color so that the earrings they create are colorful.
Jen caught on quickly as the women taught us to make earrings; let’s just say that I won’t be going into the earring business anytime soon. I’d probably still be sitting there today trying to make my first pair if one of our new friends had not jumped in to show me (e.g. do it for me).
Jen and I were both amazed at how fast our new friends could weave the earrings that they gave Jen to bring home. By the end of the day, it was one of many aspects of their lives that amazed us.
We had spent the first two days of our time in Rwanda in the city. Our day trip to the rural village, however, gave us a small glimpse into what life is like for many people who live in the country’s small towns and rural villages and the challenges they face every day.
I’m reminded of that perspective every morning and every evening as I look at the baskets hanging on our wall and think about the day we spent in a rural east African community.
The soul never thinks without an image.
jdpeeper2@hotmail.com
