Back at Amani

On Tuesday after I cam back from Zanzibar, I got involved with a project that has been on my mind. Before I left for Zanzibar, Mama Toni, an English missionary who has been living in Tanzania for 7 years and works with Amani, told me about a greeting card idea she really wanted to materialize with the help of someone artistic at Amani. There are currently cards the Amani centre makes that are nice. They are made from banana leaves and say Tanzania and have the map of Africa. They are nice but Mama Toni wanted something more appealing to the urban “Muzungus” (white people) at craft fairs, hotels and shops. I kept thinking about it, as this is something completely up my alley. So with a refreshed mind, one morning I spoke with Constancia, the daycare teacher who runs the arts and crafts, about an idea I had. Why not make cards from local African fabrics and add little elements like some of the banana leaves they already use, some beads or buttons? Make collage type cards that are handmade, that white people tend to like, something that doesn’t have Tanzania typed on it, but that uses African materials and is true to the local culture. And I have tons of beautiful paper donated to me by Elizabeth (thank you! I finally found a good use for them). So we played around with a few ideas for a day. It was a lot of fun. Everyone got involved, from Kapembe the driver (and jack of all trades), to the teacher and the youth. By the end of the day we had 10 beautiful cards made to show to Mama Toni. We narrowed it down to 5 with her. And now those are being duplicated. We have gathered scraps of leftover African fabrics, dryed banana leaves, buttons, beads and that’s it, anyone can get to work. Even the current group of high school students visiting from Scotland has been helping. The cards look beautiful. Each card will be sold for 3500 tsh and hopefully this project will bring money to the Amani centre.
The next day, I got my second bout of Malaria and got tested. I had 2 parasites again and just took a one day treatment, rested for the day and quickly got better.