I met Sheila and her family for the first time in 1978. Her husband Stewart was visiting the department of Nijmegen University in the Netherlands, where my husband Arie worked. Arie said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to invite them for dinner?” So, we did and became friends. We swapped houses with them one Easter, went to the weddings of both Jae and Gwen and also to Stewart and Sheila’s 25th wedding anniversary do.
In 2008, a year after Arie died, Sheila helped me make a quilt using some of his clothes. In May, we will spend a few days together turning a lot of squares of fabric into another quilt. (See Sheila’s blog of 31st March).
Recently on a Thursday evening I went to the monthly meeting of my women’s group. We have thirty-two members aged between 44 and 74 years old, who all used to be women working in quite a lot of different professions. We have a hairdresser, a judge, an art professor, a lung specialist, several teachers, a beautician and so on. Three or four of us will generally organise an interesting evening with the theme being the broader sense of ‘art’.
This time, a friend of two of our members told us about her stay in Tanzania – about two small villages – Shimbwe and Uru East, at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. She lived there for three and a half years, her husband having been sent out as a doctor/specialist.
She told us that life is very hard in the hills, the little farms having uncertain harvests and crops, and so uncertain income. She started together with a very special local woman investigating the strengths, ideas and possibilities of women in order to work to improve their economic situation. “Sewing for Growing” is one project with which the Minjeni Women’s Group (slogan “we can only do it together “) are doing very well.
There were a lot of products that we could buy: aprons, pan-holders and tablecloths. I bought a very nice scarf and a necklace made by another group called Acorn. All of us paid more than the price asked in order to donate extra to the groups.
She told us about Mount Kilimanjaro and that when people are talking about climbing it, it means climbing one of the two summits. People generally climb Kibo, not the other one which is called Mawenzi .
I liked the story and the products. And was of course highly interested!