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| Bec McQueen (and baby Isaac) return to Kesho Leo to teach the Mama's new craft skills! |
I volunteered with fws
for the year 2009, and it was so wonderful to be back to see the mamas and kids
again.
The mamas have learned to sew since being employed as live-in house
mamas at Kesho Leo, and have been making bags and purses for the past couple of
years which they sell in town. I decided to give them something a bit different
to do, something which I was hoping would spark some creative interest and make
use of otherwise wasted materials.
Before I left Australia, I got googling and found a
lot of different things to make with recycled magazine paper. I felt this would
fit in well with fws values, as there is no paper recycling facility available
in the area so this paper would otherwise go to the local dump and be burned.
Why not make something beautiful with it instead?
We started with paper beads. These are quite
simple to make, and you would never know they are made from paper.. and they
make gorgeous unique necklaces!
Next thing we did was make some beautiful gift bows. One
brightly coloured magazine page makes one bow, and I thought they would be a
hit at the Arusha Christmas fair this year. Another Christmas themed project we
made were tiny origami “lucky stars”, which can be strung together to make a
garland.
Lastly we used scraps of fabric and spare buttons to make some fabric yoyos. Some fabric scraps are too small to use for anything, and a project like this is a great way to use them, and also for developing fiddly hand-sewing skills.
As with everything in Africa, these projects took a lot longer to teach than I expected so unfortunately I didn’t get to the other craft projects I wanted to show the mamas.
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