In a blog earlier this year I wrote:
'Saving
Lasma Sitanggang' means saving the whole village. It means struggling to
answer
the challenge of how to make a good life despite all the forces that slap down
the little farmer in Indonesia. This past year alone, four people in her
village committed suicide for reasons related to poverty. Lasma wants to honour
her cultural heritage as well as find her way through this world that champions
only the value of money. For me, traveling with Lasma Sitanggang means being
willing to share the burden on her shoulders, to help construct strategies that
fit with her local circumstances, to construct ways that will give everyone a
chance to win and climb out of the hole together. What we undertake, the
interventions we construct, must meet the criterion of serving the well being
of the whole village.
Lasma 1 August 2016 With a water bottle hanging from her neck. |
I alluded to it, but I did not write
about our plan directly. I am loath to write about plans until they are a sure
thing, until the path is cleared. I don't want to write about pipe dreams and
invite all the consequences. Today, however, our well is being drilled. We are
taking the first step in building and there are real pipes. It is time to dare to share our dream and
our plan. And celebrate.
Lasma and I are trying to build a Weaving
Centre. Why? How? Where? When? With whom? All of these questions have been
besieging us for the past couple of years and answers have gradually begun to emerge.
Let me start with the 'why'. Lasma and I
need to do something that in the process of supporting her would help her make positive
change in her village. Our common interest lies in the area of
weaving. Lasma's village is a weaving village -- well, an ex-weaving village.
The women have stopped weaving because the selling price no longer supports
their work. So why make a weaving centre when people have stopped weaving and
the market is so weak? Answer: because Lasma and I hope that when and if
this world ever wakes up to realize that it is squandering its most valued
assets, including craft traditions that have been constructed century upon
century by human ingenuity, there may at least be a centre in the Simalungun
Batak area of North Sumatra where women are continuing their bounteous and
beautiful weaving heritage. Surely, if we work cleverly and carefully, we can
find and construct a market that will allow it to survive. There are no
guarantees in life, but this goal seems, to both Lasma and me, worth devoting
ourselves to. Not necessarily from an economic point of view (although we need the Centre to at least survive on that front) but from a moral, aesthetic, and
cultural point of view. If we are successful, not just the whole village, but
all of Simalungun, all of Batak will gain. Why are we building this centre?
Because the time is right and it is a good thing to do.
On to the 'how'. How to build a centre from
which the entire village can gain, when the weaving craft is already on the verge of
extinction and the women have turned their backs to it? There are two answers
to this question; one answer relates to craft and culture and the other to physical
environment, but it all boils down to one issue: well-being.
The women in Lasma's village have never
found an alternative to weaving. Granted, they earn more from their farming
activities and thus they invest in that, but they still miss the supplement and
diversity that weaving gave them. Moreover, they have lost that special niche that
their culture reserved for weaving women, a place of women's excellence and pride.
The women have become mere impoverished labourers. Lasma and I believe -- and on
occasion the women in the village have corroborated this -- they will be
enlivened by the pride they can once again achieve from an opportunity to be
excellent in their craft. The weaving centre will allow them to come together
and work together. They also miss a place where they can share ideas and experiment
together. ... Oh dear, I seem to have lapsed back into the 'why'. Clearly, the
centre must not be just Lasma's Weaving Centre, rather a Centre where all the
weavers in the village feel at home and can benefit. We want women to feel
pride, empowerment, comfort, able to participate. And we would
like young women, including orphans, to be able to come and stay,
work in the garden and at their looms, find pleasure in the day-to-day.
That is how and what and where we want the centre to be and with whom we want to build it.
Building a centre that aids the village
from the point of view of physical environment is an issue that plays a greater
role in my mind than in Lasma's, although she is really excited by organic
farming and herself farms organically. Nevertheless, I don't think she has ever seen a park and
experienced land that is maintained purely for pleasure and not directly for profit.
I would like to rectify this gap in her experience. I live in The Netherlands where parks are plentiful, and brilliantly conceived
and looked after, and I would like someday to show some to her. Together with her I would like to build a green, lush oasis where
the fruit and nuts hang for the picking from the trees, where the people can
relax in a beautiful environment and eat an organically farmed meal. Green does
wonders for the spirit and the health. Even if our weaving centre fails, let us
at least have constructed a village park where the children can
eat their fill of organic fruit. And where the people can be introduced to a
healthy vision for the future. We want to show how textile production belongs to a better future and not just the past.
This is why, in the end, I purchased
land in Lasma's village for our weaving centre. It is not on a major tourist
route. Really, there is not a whole lot going for this village and some have
argued that I have therefore not selected a good location for the centre. I, however, have made a point of locating it in a village that has nothing going for it.
Such villages are always left out. I am using the same rationale for investing
in this village as I used for giving my luxurious edition of Legacy in Cloth to poor rural weavers: they are the ones who will
benefit from it the most. And that is what it is all about. The Centre will be where the weavers are.
There, this is enough for one blog.
There is too much to tell all at once. Suffice it to say that our well is being
drilled, down, down through soil and rock to underground streams. It is giving
me the opportunity to gush. And I will gush more on this topic in a future
blog. On and on.