finale

“At each moment, in every instant, I am in search of myself,

I search the grasses, twisting around my fingers, and the clear tent of the sky. 

I gallop the untamed winds of my own wild steppe,

and sit with crossed legs upon the vagrant white clouds. 

…I exist in unnumbered places, I go everywhere,

wandering and withering away in my search for embodiment. 

I am formed in the stars’ different watches, 

and find myself in the world’s different people.”

-from “In Search of Myself,” G. Mend-Ooyo, Mongolian poet

 

To my faithful blog readers:

For now, I think this is the last entry in my online Watson journal. Thank you for following me across continents and through the ups and downs of the past year. It truly meant so much just to know that I had a network of interested friends listening from afar. Even though I’m finished with my year, I will always welcome questions or further interest in discussing any aspect of my experience— the organizations I worked with, the countries I went to, my challenges and triumphs, the Watson, and my thoughts on why crafts and women’s craft organizations are important. Feel free to contact me anytime. I’m still more than eager to have good conversations about these topics, with friends old and new.

The next step for me is moving back east at the beginning of October, where I will start a job with the Fair Trade Federation in Wilmington, DE. I’m so excited for this opportunity to extend the interests that fueled my Watson exploration in a new context. In some ways, this will be a return to familiarity, living in the same area where I went to college; in other ways, of course, I’m entering uncharted territory. I hope to remember the Watson spirit of constant adventure even as I start the 9-to-5.

Without further ado, here’s my final report.

Dear Watson Headquarters,

It’s strange and nice to be writing to you for the first time with a picture of you in my mind that’s based on actually encountering you in person. Having spoken face-to-face, however, doesn’t make it easier to sum up my experiences in this final Watson report. I often feel like I learned too many things last year and haven’t learned how to express them yet.

Maybe I can start with numbers: during the 365 days of my Watson journey, I traveled on 27 ½ flights (the midair u-turn and emergency landing fiasco in Ethiopia counts as half a flight), passing through 11 countries outside of the U.S. I enjoyed the hospitality of 20 homes where I slept on beds and couches and floors. I learned words in 10 languages: Spanish, K’iche, Arabic, Siwi, Luganda, Bahasa Indonesia, Javanese, Balinese, Mongolian and Kazakh. I went through 4 cameras and 4 journals. I got parasites/food poisoning 0 times (Triumph! I have the best stomach ever.) I spent $5,682.60 on plane tickets and will give $3,874 back unspent.

The world’s too small for walls.” -Berlin Wall graffiti

“People are just people/They shouldn’t make you nervous.” – Regina Spektor

In the past month I’ve been struggling to develop a pithy message that I can deliver to people who ask me how my year was. I don’t think that saying I discovered a new faith in humanity quite sums it up. It’s more like I discovered that I can connect meaningfully with people who are different from me in nearly every regard. Along with that recognition, which struck me over and over and delighted me each time, I let go of a fear of people that is all too often built into our understanding of the world and our place in it.

In summary

My Watson adventures started in Guatemala, where I first began to understand the enormous role that serendipity would play in my life this year. I stumbled across Oxlajuj B’atz’, an educational organization that embraced me as a member of their equipo, listening to my voice at staff meetings and incorporating my interests and skills into their education projects with Mayan women’s artisan groups. I spent time fighting to understand the shackles of dependency and fear– made worse by aid attempts– that hold women down in the blustery village of Xeabaj II. I found hope in the passion and buoyant resolve of my co-workers at OB. I loved the colors of Guatemalan textiles and the fierce pride and love that inspires women to wear huipiles that take months to make by hand.

In Egypt, I split my time between the chaos of the metropolis and the relative peace of the desert oases. I was overwhelmed by gratitude (and sometimes just overwhelmed) at being welcomed into homes in Siwa where I could interact with women in the indoor environments where they shed their full-body coverings and come into their own. I danced at weddings and joked in Siwi about embroidering my own wedding gown. I discovered, during the fledgling days of the revolution, a sense of solidarity with the Egyptian people that defined global citizenship for me in a new and exciting way. People most often ask about my experiences during the revolution, but the quieter moments made just as much of an impression on me: hiking to the top of windswept dunes, drinking tea, smoking hookah and reading at a cafe in Cairo, scuba-diving among the proliferation of underwater life in the Red Sea, or hunting for perfect basket-making palm fronds in the date gardens outside Siwa.

In Uganda, I studied baskets and barkcloth and natural dyes, enjoying the creation of crafts that are essentially harvested from the land. I delighted in the bold colors of Kampala and the feeling of my bare toes wriggling in the dark earth of the garden. I spent a lot of time riding minibus-taxis around the city and getting stuck in traffic jams. I danced and played ultimate and finished a triathlon and made amazing friends. I met with artists, activists, children, single mothers, businesspeople and academics, all of whom believed that crafts could be a key to their own empowerment and to solving Uganda’s development challenges.

Fair trade in the archipelago: Indonesia

World Fair Trade Day celebration in Bali

Helping out with Forum Fair Trade Indonesia’s project of documenting artisan stories allowed me to visit batik artists and plant-fiber weavers in Java, cashew growers and backstrap-loom weavers in Sulawesi, potters in Lombok and woodcarvers in Bali. Rather than growing roots in Indonesia, I traveled extensively, met many people, and listened to many stories. Even going to seven islands and seeing places that few tourists see, though, I experienced only a tiny portion of the many worlds encompassed by the vast Indonesian archipelago.

Despite the short period of time I spent in each location, I met people who are etched indelibly in my memory. Tia, the amazingly dynamic leader of a village on Makassar Island in Buton, Sulawesi, was one such unforgettable individual.  “Before, women didn’t go to trainings outside our homes– or if we did go, we followed the 4 d’s: datang (come), duduk (sit), denar (listen), diam (silence).” Tia helped the women of her village, who are skilled weavers, to organize a successful cooperative and community education projects, and emerged as a forceful leader whose ideas are changing the way women contribute to and participate in their community.

The seaweed harvest in Buton, Sulawesi

One place where I did feel a sense of rootedness and of home was in the house of Nani Lestari, the 24-year-old leader of the Berkah Lestari cooperative in the Javanese villageof Imogiri. Nani, despite her youth, is a master batik artist who can reproduce traditional masterpieces as well as designs of her own imagination. Nani taught me that to be a fine batik artist, you must find a quiet place that will allow you to make lines that are straight and true. At the cooperative I made a batik piece with a combination of motifs: traditional sido asih and a contemporary take on parang, the motif of kings.

My time with the Berkah Lestari cooperative included many hours spent listening to giggling and gossip and tinny American pop music playing from cell-phone speakers with the young apprentices. There were other hours, though, in which we were quiet with our tjantings (wax pens), in which I found the inner and outer peace to draw straight, even wax lines and rows of evenly spaced tiny dots. Like moments I experienced earlier in Guatemala, Egypt, and Uganda, I found the practice of batik meditative. The patience and attention needed for crafting, for me, provide the space for creative expression.

A key-maker's painted cart in Jogja.

Working with successful, well-developed fair trade companies like Apikri and Mitra Bali gave me the chance to reflect on best practices that truly help to overturn exploitative dynamics within trade. Thinking critically about the interviews that I conducted with artisans along with my own observation of fair trade in practice, I developed a set of best practices. These included: building networks for communication and material transactions; recognizing that sometimes craft production is not enough; institutionalizing systems of ensuring accountability to one’s principles. Working with larger companies in Indonesia allowed me the chance to zoom out from individual craftswomen’s experiences and think about systems that would support economic security for many individuals.

I don’t regret my approach to getting to know Indonesia, but I learned that traveling to many places is sometimes not as meaningful as working to understand and feel a part of one community. Leaving Indonesia for Mongolia felt significantly less painful than other uprootings, and in some ways I missed that sweet sorrow of parting.

Every hour is adventure hour: Mongolia

My 31 days in Mongolialeft me no time to do anything except seize the day. I wanted Mongolia to be a culmination, like a final exam testing my ability to make connections and go adventuring and live a big bold life. Sometimes, especially in the first days while I was trying to make sense of the Cyrillic alphabet and the border between actual tradition and tradition manufactured for tourists, I felt a certain panic that I wouldn’t be able to live up to my lofty expectations. By this point in my year, however, I was good at talking myself down from these panic moments and coaching myself into excitement and patience. My mantra became Every hour is adventure hour. Adventure came in all shapes and sizes: petting a roaming yak, hiking along a precipitous slope, paying for a taxi in chocolate, learning Mongolian vodka toasts around a campfire, drinking a bowl of melted sheep fat.

I decided to approach Mongolia with a different strategy for connecting with craftswomen, too: instead of attempting to explain my interest in grassroots development and women’s cooperatives, I introduced myself as an artist interested in textile traditions. This approach worked surprisingly well, and I was thrilled with how many craft techniques I was able to learn and how many goals I accomplished in a short time.

That is not to say my time in Mongolia was without challenges; I spent much of the first week dealing with the shattering of my pre-conceived notions. I arrived in Ulaanbaatar with a fantasy in my mind about women’s cooperatives among nomadic families. I imagined women making traditional felt slippers in a fire-warmed ger during the hours before going to sleep, supplementing their families’ income as herders and bringing financial stability while supporting the survival of the nomadic lifestyle itself. In reality, nomad craft cooperatives do not exist (as far as I know, anyway) and slippers are not traditional inMongolia. Traditional felt is for utilitarian purposes like making the walls and floors of a ger, and therefore is not particularly well suited for making trendy hair clips for foreign tourists. Craft cooperatives sprang up in newly sedentary communities when nomadic families gave up their herding and moved to urban areas in pursuit of opportunity and a respite from living constantly at the mercy of the harsh Mongolian seasons. Seeking a better and easier life, many instead find vast ger districts on the fringes of the city, where jobs, social services, and infrastructure are hard to come by. Even as Mongolians continue to flock to towns and cities, they often lament the loss of their deep connection to the land.

Mongolian horses on the steppe

With funding and training from Scandinavian NGOs and artists, Mongolia started to develop contemporary feltcraft in the last twenty-five years. My instructor in the art of contemporary feltmaking was a woman named Bayanduuren, whose studio is a cozy basement space in a Soviet apartment block that has ceilings so low I kept banging my head on the water pipes. Working with sheep wool, my first experience with animal fibers, was rewarding in an unexpected way. Bayanduuren told me that the wool of a dead sheep is useless. To make felt you need energy, she said; you need to connect with the life inside the fibers. Bayanduuren believes that in order to be a good felt maker, you have to give something of yourself: the heat of your hands and the will of your heart. After I finished my first felt piece, a scarf, she paid me this compliment: “Because you love it, because your heart loves it and your hands love it, you are a good felt maker.”

Switching gears after my contemporary felt lessons, I left the capital and ventured into the countryside, to a little town called Altanbulag where I worked side by side with women (and two men!) learning felt quilting and eating mutton noodle soup every day for every meal. Last, I flew on an exorbitantly expensive plane to Bayan-Ulgii, the far western aimag of Mongolia, which is a stronghold of Kazakh culture. Embroiderers in Bayan-Ulgii export many of their finished products back toKazakhstan, where demand for traditional products is high but few craftswomen remain who can produce the old designs. Like in Ulaanbaatar, the recent influx of herding families moving to town seeking opportunity means there are plenty of women skilled at embroidery and looking for employment.

I learned traditional Kazakh embroidery from a woman named Ina, who also hosted me in her family’s beautifully decorated ger– which might now be my favorite room in the world. Living with Ina, her husband Kaderbek, and their family for a week gave me the opportunity to try delicacies like sheep’s head, slurp my way through many a greasy meal of buuz (meat dumplings), drink bowls of airag (the cold, creamy, refreshing, bubbly, sour fermented horse milk that is a Mongolian specialty), bathe in a Kazakh sauna, and see golden hunting eagles in the yards of gers, as commonplace as dogs.

Taking a fishing break.

Before arriving in Mongolia, I heard horror stories about the public transit that, of course, made me eager to test my mettle on a long-haul bus trip. The bus ride to Khuvsgul (billed at 20 to 24 hours) was as harrowing/exciting as promised. It started out comfortably, actually: with individual seats, a functional AC/heating system, and  a TV playing kung fu movies. Just after dark, the TV started playing Mongolian karaoke. Unlike the karaoke that I’m accustomed to, in which one person screeches out a pop ballad, there was no microphone and no stage. Everyone sang together, blending their voices to create a sound more like hymn-singing than karaoke. Every Mongolian on the bus seemed to know these songs, from my seatmate, a superfashionable teenager, to the grandfather across the aisle.

Our first flat tire came on a bathroom break in the middle of the midnight steppe, when we heard the loud pop of a blown-out tire. After a few confused minutes of milling around in the darkness, we were ushered into a tiny roadside cafe. The cafe was built of logs, with artificial flower bouquets planted in not-artificial wall sconces made of bracket fungus, two little sets of antlers on either side of the quilt-insulated door… the lightbulb on its electric cord was strung through the snarling mouth of a taxidermied boar’s head mounted above the door. We drank cups of salty milk tea dipped from a vat heating on the wood stove, and tried to sleep with our heads on the tables. The next day, after the third flat tire, the bus just gave up and quit functioning altogether. 48 hours after departing UB, we finally arrived at our destination by the lake. I enjoyed my five days of hiking at Khuvsgul Nuur all the more for the many hours I spent waiting to arrive.

Drinking airag upon the wild steppe.

I spent most of my year in places renowned for their hospitality, but Mongolia set a new bar for generosity and graciousness. In the Mongolian countryside, personal possession is sometimes nearly irrelevant. If a traveler stops at a ger, he or she is offered food and tea without question. Sharing is understood not just as a courtesy but as a means of survival, the glue holding a nomadic society together. I was fascinated by this totally different approach to community, ownership, and survival. Mongolia is becoming influenced more and more by capitalism and westernization, but I’m still intrigued by the ramifications of this hospitality for the country’s future development.

Mongoliaand its nomads felt like the perfect place and way to finish this year: footloose and independent, with food and shelter in my pack and a whole lot of open horizon before me; hiking along a sparsely populated path with only the meh-eh-eh-ing goats for company. I also fell in love with the Mongolian landscape. The clarity of the air after months in steamy Indonesia was a blessing, and like Mongolians, I tried to develop my own sense of connection to the land. I felt nomadic, and I felt at home in that feeling.

Crafting community

I came into this year unsure what I was going to learn about crafts and community and the women who connect these two ideas through their everyday livelihoods. I wanted to learn  muscle memory and technical dexterity and best practices and hope. I wanted to learn what kind of contributions I could make to women’s craft initiatives, and what kind of belonging I would feel as a outsider wanting to learn skills associated with a specific place and tradition. Looking back, I am still amazed and gratified at the generosity of craftswomen in every country I visited, and their willingness to patiently instruct me. Their grace in accepting my hesitant communication, my uneven stitches, and my botched formalities has touched me deeply.

Some friendships are born of conversation, but some are born of silence, of hours of amiable companionship with busy hands. I also love the hours I spent in silent uncomprehension, content to occupy the space of community without having the language skills to enter into community’s conversation. I discovered that I am pretty good at hanging out with mothers and grandmothers, women much older than I who hold the dying secrets of craft tradition in their minds. I am less good (despite much practice) at sitting endlessly on hard floors, a task that women around the world seem to have mastered effortlessly.

In imagining my project, I saw craft production as a vehicle for other kinds of connection. I discovered the truth in that idea: with busy hands, women are still free to use their minds and their voices, often in collective, sharing stories, gossip, advice, and dreams. The hours of sitting on hard floors working with my hands created a space in which I got to be part of that sharing.

Lessons

At Khuvsgul Nuur

Every time I wrote a quarterly report, I also wrote a letter to myself and mailed it to the US. Opening those letters when I got home brought back a flood of memory and uncertainty, the thrilling and daunting promise of the unknown that characterized my thoughts about the future during much of my fellowship. They also include some truths that I hope I am able to hold on to as I leave the extraordinarily nourishing context of my Watson year. Including:

The next adventure is as close as I will it to be.

Live up to my opportunities.

Every place has its own beauty.

My tendency to smile a lot is one of my best attributes.

It was wonderful to discover that my interest in craftswomen, and the contexts in which they work, could in fact span a year of exploration and grow constantly over the course of that year. I was thrilled by finding answers to my questions and by the steady stream of new questions and desire for greater understanding that filled my mind. At one point I wrote in my journal, “It’s a great feeling to know that I was right to dream in that direction… It makes me want to keep thinking up crazy dreams and finding ways to happen them. It makes me believe in passion, not only in its existence but in the necessity of it, its integral part of this life I’m living and the life I truly want.” Days that, individually, sometimes seemed mundane, useless, frustrating, and wrong-headed, took on meaning because they were strung together by passion.

Home

SFO --> MSP. The home stretch.

I came back to the place I call home after a year in which I felt at home in many different places. Over the course of the year I felt a complicated relationship with the United States and my role as a representative. My experience in disadvantaged communities made me so grateful for the opportunities I have been granted, especially as a woman. Yet I was often uncomfortable with the culture associated with the idea of America. I confronted bizarre ideas about my home country, from the imaginations of people who know Americafrom TV: Your country is completely paved and skyscrapered, right? A place where there are no dirt roads, a place without poverty. Your bodies are all soft and white. You would never have potholes like this in America. Do you have rivers in your country? Do you have farms?

Answering these questions made me think hard about the places I inhabited this year and their relation to the place that I call home. I realize now that most of us in the US are so disconnected from the actual processes and struggles that ensure our survival: we are cushioned by our affluence to such an extent that we are removed from the realities of producing our basic needs. To be free of the fear of not having enough to survive is a wonderful thing. To be free of the knowledge that our survival costs something, that our existence comes only by the work of human hands and the use of finite resources, is a very dangerous thing. Humility is more important than I ever imagined– a value that we often devalue, unwisely.

Somehow, my education in crafts also taught me that a banana or a t-shirt or a gas-powered flame should not be assumed and are not guaranteed. Perhaps the value of my education in basketry and weaving and batik, these slow, tedious, humble, painstaking processes, is the recognition that enormous effort goes into my sustenance and survival. Even when I do buy shirts off the rack at Target and plastic-wrapped food at a supersized grocery store, I want to carry the knowledge of that effort and make decisions informed by knowing.

“Your life will be a great and continuous unfolding.” – Dear Sugar

Meeting the other Watson fellows, talking with them into the early morning hours and dancing exuberantly with them in conga lines helped me piece together bits of the what-the-past-year-means puzzle. It helps me to know that my Watson experiences will continue to pay dividends and will continue to unfold. I’m sure that there are some experiences and lessons from this year that I won’t understand for many years to come. It helps to know that the spirit of the Watson will come to me in moments of future deliberation.

Most of all, I am so grateful for this experience and feel so lucky to have lived this dream for twelve months of my life.

Gracias. Shukran. Weebale nyo. Terima kasih. Bayarlaa. Thank you. 

go west, young woman

Bayan-Olgii is Mongolia’s westernmost province, an isolated and mountainous region where most people speak Kazakh and feel as much allegiance to Kazakhstan as to Mongolia. The majority of the population is Muslim, instead of Tibetan Buddhist, and Bayan-Olgii is a stronghold of Kazakh culture, including the art of traditional Kazakh embroidery. I spent the last week in Olgii town, learning embroidery and staying with Ina and Kaderbek and their family. Ina is a master embroiderer– I got in touch with her through the owner of the first fair trade certified company in Mongolia.

One of Olgii’s mosques at sundown.

For some, embroidery business is booming. I visited the workshop of an embroidery company owned by Mr. Narbek, a local designer who employs 52 women to create bags, wall hangings, and other items. He exports 70% of the products to Kazakhstan, where demand for traditional products is high but few craftswomen remain who can produce the old designs. In Kazakhstan, the art of embroidery nearly disappeared with the Soviet crackdown on folk art, but it survived in Bayan-Olgii where most of the population lived as nomadic herders, their lives in the countryside far from Soviet influence. The recent influx of herding families moving to town seeking opportunity means there are plenty of women skilled at embroidery and looking for employment.

While I was chatting with him in his shop, a woman came in with a bag of old wall hangings to sell. She spread the masterpieces on the floor, and Mr. Narbek purchased three of the highest-quality wall hangings. He will resell them to tourists (marked up 5x the amount he paid), or cut them up to make recycled bags.

The woman had collected these old masterpieces from countryside gers. She probably brought a little cash income to herding families, but something about the sale of these wall hangings made me sad. (Which is also hypocritical, because I bought one in the Olgii market.)

The door to Kaderbek and Ina’s ger. Their living situation represents a blend of nomadic and urban life: they sleep and eat in this ger, which is decorated in the traditional style, but also have a permanent concrete building with a kitchen and a few more rooms.

Inside… what may now be my favorite room in the world. Every one of the wall hangings and cushion covers is hand-embroidered.

From my journal, July 21:

“Today has been quite the culinary adventure! For lunch we went to Ina’s sister’s house, where I found out that the whole family is gathered because of a memorial for the family patriarch, one of the town’s founders and a pioneer of democracy in Mongolia. A cousin also told me that Ina is famous for here embroidery in Bayan-Ulgii. Anyway, the memorial is the reason that so many relatives are in town– gathered from UB, Kazakhstan, and the countryside. Lunch was a big family affair which included… sheep’s head!

It was served on a big platter piled with other sheep parts including liver, intestines, legs, and mounds of fat. Those mounds filled me with great trepidation… One guy (I have not worked out people’s names or relations, really) carved each of us a small piece of face-meat to start (I was relieved not to get a chunk of lip, which was very recognizable as a lip). Then there came a flurry of carving. Luckily for me, the platter full of sheep quickly being cut into manageable-sized chunks stayed in the middle, so I could serve myself pieces of meat and artfully avoid the large chunks of fat that everyone else was slurping down with relish. Note 1: Eating in Mongolia involves a lot of slurping. Note 2: I have seen numerous people take spoonfuls of butter from the dish and lick it straight off the spoon. Low fat dieting is unheard of in Mongolia. 

“The meat was delicious, tender and juicy. I tried a slice of liver, which was fine. After we demolished the sheep’s head and other parts, the leg bones were cracked in half and two lucky people got to slurp out the marrow. Then, our plates were cleared away and we each got a bowl of strongly flavored broth… except I’m pretty sure this broth was just the drippings from the sheep,  which means I’m pretty sure I drank an entire bowl of melted sheep fat. Ahh, adventure.

“Next up (with a round of bowl-washing in between) we were each served up a bowl of fermented horse milk– airag! Finally I get to try this drink I’ve heard so much about! It was good- Ina served it, first lifting up a ladle’s worth and tipping the milk back into the pot. Cold, refreshing, bubbly, sour like yogurt but creamy. It was strange, but nice.

“And now- we just finished dinner, which was the best and greasiest buuz (meat dumplings) I’ve ever eaten. Homemade, nicely seasoned, you bite in and immediately have to start slurping to catch all the juices and keep them from dribbling all over you. Inevitably, a lot of that juice ended up on my plate, where it very quickly congealed and revealed its true nature: yup, more pure fat. AYY. I hope I don’t die of clogged arteries.”

The family gathered around the tea table in a relative’s ger.

My embroidery in progress:

After staying with Ina and Kaderbek and co. for a couple days, I ventured out into Altai Tavan Bogd National Park for a few days of camping and hiking. Getting into the park meant a seven-hour drive in a Russian van, crossing wooden bridges like this one:

On the way we stopped to check out this ancient stone marker.

And see the hunting eagles that are also famous in this region!! The actual hunting is done in the wintertime, when foxes and wolves are easier to spot.

Sagsai village– built with clay bricks and logs.

The park’s beautiful snow-capped mountains:

I stayed near a lakeshore, just below these two gers.

The weather was tempestuous and unpredictable, with persistent winds and clouds spilling quickly over the mountain ridgeline. (Luckily my new tent is awesome!) Rain in the marshy fields above the lake.

I went for a hike and made it to the top of the first ridge, but I didn’t attempt the high ridge because of hail. The view over the lake valley was pretty spectacular, but you can’t see much in my photos because of the hail.

Another yak, in sunshinier times.

Horseman

because your heart loves it

I love making stuff. This must be apparent by now, 11.5 months into my 12-month craft-making odyssey. Here’s the Mongolia update: first, I learned how to make felt with a contemporary felt artist, Bayanduuren. Here’s a couple of her beautiful creations, on display at the Zanabazar Museum of Fine Arts in Ulaanbaatar:

I covet this coat.

Wool-painting

Bayanduuren’s studio is a cozy basement space in a Soviet-style apartment block with ceilings so low I kept banging my head on the water pipes. Here’s the carding machine for preparing the wool (wool from hybrid sheep, not pure native sheep).

You can’t make felt (or spin yarn) from wool that comes from a dead sheep. Wool has to come from a living, breathing animal, and Bayanduuren told me that to be a good felt artist, you must feel the energy of the felt and work with that energy.

“Congratulations!” she told me, when I finished my scarf. “How did it feel?”

“I loved it,” I told her. I do love it. Working with the wool is like working with something alive; I love that I need the heat generated by my hands and the friction of my movements to join the fibers.

“Because you love it, because your heart loves it and your hands love it, you are a good felt maker,” Bayanduuren told me.

Here are my creations! First the scarf, which is thin and soft and has a Mongolian cloud motif. Then the knot-topped traditional hat. The scarf took a bit more than three hours; the hat took five hours to complete.

Ready to join the Mongol horde, right?

After learning contemporary felt art with Bayanduuren, I ventured out into the countryside again to learn traditional Mongolian felt quilting. I spent the weekend in Altanbulag, with a woman named Tsendsuren who is in charge of two different traditional felt-quilting groups. Altanbulag is a little town in Tov Aimag, just an hour and a half south of Ulaanbaatar, but it already feels worlds away from the polluted, traffic-laden streets of the capital. The horizon is nothing but blue mountains, and cows wander around the dusty tracks between wood-fenced homes.

Tsendsuren is a powerful woman with imposingly excellent posture, who is always impeccably dressed in a printed dress, black patterned stockings, and black heels. Here she is at left, with quilters in the workshop:

They were hard at work on a carpet commissioned by the government, which will cover the floor of an enormous ger. Laying out the finished pieces:

To draw the quilted pattern on the felt, the quilters use a paper template with tiny pinholes marking the lines. They dust a red chalky powder over the template, leaving faint dotted lines that are then traced over in pencil, and finally stitched with wool yarn. The stitching is both decorative and functional; the quilting process strengthens the felt and helps the carpet last longer.

My stitches:

My little quilted square! It’s about 12 in. x 12 in.

And here’s my bed in her house!! Talk about a beautiful place to sleep.

Tonight I’m sleeping in Ulaanbaatar (in a not-as-lovely though perfectly comfortable hostel bed) and waking early tomorrow to board a little plane bound for Bayan-Ulgii, western Mongolia, where I will stay with a Kazakh family and learn traditional embroidery.

I’ll be back in the USA in 12 days. Here’s to 12 days of beauty and discovery and mutton noodle soup (ugh) and adventure and more Mongolian fun! I’m feeling bittersweet about the impending end already.

dude.

My pack-every-experience-possible-into-one-month plan is proceeding very successfully! Last week, that meant a fantastic camping trip at Lake Khuvsgul in northern Mongolia.

The bus ride to Khuvsgul was pretty much as harrowing/exciting as promised. It started out comfortable and pleasant, actually: the coach bus had individual seats, a functional heating/AC system, and a TV playing kung fu movies. The best part was just after dark, when the second kung fu movie ended and the TV started playing Mongolian karaoke. Unlike the karaoke that I’m accustomed to, in which one person screeches out the lyrics to a pop ballad, there was no microphone and no stage. Everyone sang together, blending their voices to create a sound more like church hymn-singing than like karaoke. Every Mongolian on the bus seemed to know these songs– from the super-fashionable teenager sitting next to me to the grandfather across the aisle. It was wonderful.

Our first flat tire came on a bathroom break in the middle of the midnight steppe: the passengers were stretching our legs when we heard the loud pop of a blown-out tire. We spent the night in a tiny roadside cafe, drinking salty milk tea and trying to sleep with our heads on the tables, under a single light bulb that dangled from the teeth of a taxidermied boar’s head mounted on the wall.

The next day, after the third flat tire, the bus just gave up and quit functioning altogether. Who needs a jack when you have a tree stump? This was flat tire #3.

We waited for a replacement bus. Finally, 48 hours later, we made it to Murun, the aimag capital. Then another wait and another 4 hours in a van to Khatgal, on the shores of the lake.

I was all prepared to have a solo backpacking adventure, but when I finally made it to Khatgal  and the start of the trail, I met two French guys who were hiking the same way as me, for the same number of days. We decided to walk together, at least for the first afternoon. I found out that they were both 22 (!! a coincidence that wouldn’t seem significant except that I have spent the vast majority of this year hanging out with people who are not my age), from Paris, and that they travel a lot, camping/trekking everywhere they go. By the end of the first day, we were getting along excellently. And so it was that I went camping with the Frenchmen.

The cast of characters:

C’est moi.

Brice

Victor

My new tent!

Khuvsgul Nuur!

It was a very cold lake (and biiiigggg! It made me excited for Lake Superior).

But who can resist swimming with yaks?

Yakkity yak (don’t talk back)

I taught them essential English words like belly, flip-flops, dude, puke, brand, and trashcan. They fed me soup, imported French sausages, pate de foie gras (not kidding), and chocolate. We made fun of each other a lot. We hiked a lot.

We camped inside two half-built buildings to escape the cold. We learned how to do Mongolian vodka toasts from two men who came to share our campfire one night. We were fed fruit, candy, meat and vodka by the generous Mongolian tourists we passed along the way. We lost the trail at one point and bushwhacked along a hillside so steep and high above the rocky shoreline that we would have died if we slipped.

My shoe became a casualty when we got a little overenthusiastic about stoking our campfire. Hiking 25 km the next day in a shrunken-melted shoe was a challenge, and I have the blisters to show for it.

A sacred pile of sticks, bones, silk scarves, and (inevitably, in Mongolia) vodka bottles.

Nearing the end (two beautiful dogs adopted us and followed us for the last two days.)

We saw all five animals essential to a Mongolian herder’s livelihood: yaks, horses, goats, sheep, and… camels!!

We made it back to Murun, and in the public bathhouse there I had the best shower since the one in the Dubai airport hotel (yes, I keep track of these things). After several long days of hiking and eating camping food, we decided to eat at a restaurant. We wandered and wandered around Murun; all the restaurants were closed for the annual Naadam festivities. Finally, we found one that was open! It had real tablecloths and cloth napkins and they brought us hot towels to wash our hands– serious luxury. Ordering was comical: the menu was in Cyrillic and none of the staff spoke any English, so they called their friend, who stayed on the line as an interpreter while the phone was passed around between us all. They put on French music for us and served us three huge, delicious plates of stir fried meat and vegetables.

After we finished our food, however, Brice announced that he was still hungry. To avoid a repeat of the phone-interpreter situation, he asked for “the best thing you have.” One of the waiters ran to the supermarket to get more supplies, at which point we knew we were in for a feast. A few minutes later, they delivered about half a sheep, cooked with hot stones with carrots and potatoes. Then came a huge salad plate of vegetables. Then individual fruit salads for dessert.  Somehow we managed to finish the entire feast (and it was amazing).

Murun sunset

I’ve met tons of people during this year, and many of them have been amazing individuals who I will remember and keep in touch with for the rest of my life. It’s really rare, though, to find new friends who I relate to as easily and comfortably as I do with my friends from home. Thanks for that, Victor and Brice.

cielos azules

Mongolia!

I’m in Ulaanbaatar and I can’t stop smiling. For some reason when I was in Guatemala I had the crazy idea of coming here, and ever since I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I can’t believe I’m here. I love it.

Mongolians (at least here in the capital) dress very fashionably. Their chic outfits are a funny contrast to the drab concrete buildings and dusty streets. Also, they dress like Minnesotans do in April: like, “It’s supposed to be warm, right? So I’m gonna wear my sundress and cute sandals, dangit.” No matter what the mercury says, summer is an attitude. (Note: on sunny days, it actually is really warm.)

The city’s avenues are laid out in the luxuriously expansive way of human settlements that are surrounded by vast unpopulated space, sort of like a scaled-up version of a town in the American West.

The air here feels so crisp and light. Like the air on a fall day on Lake Superior. Maybe it’s the altitude, or the fact that I’m not wading through humidity like in Indonesia. I know that it’s far more polluted here than it will be when I make it out to the countryside, but my lungs are still delighting.

Nights in UB are bleak. I don’t like being startled by drunk men lurching out of stillness from the bars. But my cheeks glow from the nighttime chill and the stars are breathtaking.

English-Russian-Mongolian wrestling dictionary, anyone?

A couple months ago I read a travel blog about Mongolia; the author had traveled extensively in Central America and Africa, but advised his readers that public transit in Mongolia is by far the most grueling and uncomfortable ride that he’s experienced. Of course I took that as a challenge rather than a warning, so tomorrow I leave for Murun, a 20 to 27 hour bus ride away, in Khovsgol aimag in the north. There’s a cooperative there that I hope I’ll be able to find and communicate with.

If not, I’ve decided not to stress about it. During my first few days here I spent a significant amount of time stressing out about my contacts not working out and knowing neither the language nor Cyrillic script and not being sure about how to find/choose the “right” craftswomen to hang out with and about having some of my fantasyland preconceived notions shattered. So much energy spent stressing! I spent plenty of energy enjoying myself, too, but still. I have had an incredible 11 months. I am in a country of enormous natural beauty, and I want to go explore the countryside. I miss wilderness and camping and feeling tested by the outdoors! I’ll do my best to find craftswomen out there, but if it doesn’t go as planned, I am determined to have an amazing time nonetheless. My new mantra (I’m really into mantras) is “Every hour is adventure hour.”**

The shattering-of-preconceived-notions has actually been really interesting. Here are a couple significant things I’ve learned:

• About 1/3 of Mongolia’s population lives here in Ulaanbaatar, the capital. This is a huge increase over the course of a few years; a couple especially harsh winters devastated livestock populations and forced many people who lived as nomads for hundreds of years into urban areas, seeking jobs and opportunities. Unfortunately, Ulaanbaatar doesn’t have enough jobs, housing, or services to accommodate these former herders, which leads to ger districts around the city’s periphery where crime is high and opportunities are scarce (ger is the Mongolian word for yurt.)
• Consequently, most women’s craft groups are formed in urban areas to provide employment for the masses of people who have left their herding livelihoods in the countryside. (Unfortunately, urban Mongolia is not really where I hoped to spend most of my time.)
• Most felt crafts here have been developed over the last 20 years with the help of Scandinavian NGOs. Very few of the felt souvenirs are traditional. Foreign NGOs even introduced new breeds of sheep which give wool that’s better suited to felting…but the sheep can’t live outside in Mongolian winters.

——Ahhhh… So the glory and the trouble of the Watson year is that one two-hour meeting can turn all your plans upside down. A few hours after writing most of this post, I met an awesome felt artist and am now calling into question a lot of the things I decided on over the last couple days of stressin. I think I’m going to attempt to cram every conflicting thing I want to do (which is about five distinct goals) into less than four weeks. I just bought a tent. I’m excited.

Happy Independence Day, friends.

**Maybe somewhere in the Mongolian steppes I’ll even find a tray of DC cookies. Or the key to the bell tower door. Who knows.

the strong woman quest: buton, sulawesi

I like to think that by this point in my year I’ve developed a keen sense for finding woman leaders. Call it my strong woman radar, perhaps. In any case, my senses started tingling when we sat down to interview Tia outside her house in

I was already excited about finding backstrap weavers in Indonesia (halfway around the world from weavers in Guatemala using nearly the same technique!) and meeting with Tia left me glowing.

Tia’s Story (JPKP Buton)

In Tia’s village on Makasar Island in Buton, Sulawesi, the women are weavers and the men are fisherman. Tia is 40 years old and has 6 children, and like most women in her village, she learned weaving from her mother as a girl. Weaving patterned sarongs, using backstrap looms, is part of a long heritage. Tia describes her day as a weaver: “It takes 3 days to finish a big cloth—I start at 5 am using an electric light, working until 6:30, when I prepare my kids for school. Then I alternate washing, cooking, and weaving throughout the day, with some time to rest.”

Stringing the warp is a two-person job that’s done with amazing coordination.

Tia, her fellow weavers, and JPKP Buton are new to fair trade and are learning more about the movement. JPKP, the newest member of Forum Fair Trade Indonesia, worked in Tia’s village from 2004-2009, conducting special assessments and gender trainings. These gender trainings have transformed community dynamics and opened new opportunities for women to emerge as leaders advocating for their village’s sustainable future.

JPKP’s gender and capacity building trainings ignited Tia’s passion for leadership and altered the possibilities for women in her village. Through the trainings, the women of her village learned how to make a women’s organization. Now, women help men with the seaweed cultivation and harvest. There’s been a community-wide change of mind: women can also work with the sea projects, not just weaving.

“Before, women didn’t go to trainings outside our homes—or if we did go, we followed the 4 Ds: datang (come), duduk (sit), denar (listen), diam (silent),” Tia recalls. JPKP changed that by inviting the whole family to join in the training, especially women. “We women then informed our families about gender. Now my husband and children help with housework, and they don’t complain about it! Before, education was only for men and boys, due to the patriarchal system. But now my daughters go to school, too.”

Tia!

“She’s been a great village role model,” says Yana, the JPKP community organizer who has worked extensively with Tia’s village.

Tia is an icon for motivating the village, especially when it comes to gender equality. The turning point, Tia says, were the JPKP trainings. She got fired up. “In the beginning, when I went to a meeting, Yana would help me prepare questions, step by step. I learned a lot. I wasn’t confident about writing—I couldn’t spell and didn’t know how to order words for a sentence.”

She describes how JPKP has helped her and her fellow weavers gain the confidence to take initiative in leadership: “Now, women speak out! We prepare presentations and go to the government asking for funding and documentation… before I couldn’t do that. But now I tell my friends, you can do it!”

“Our weaving group has many strengths. We can make the shel, a small thin scarf, which not all backstrap weavers in Sulawesi can make. We also developed a sample book for our different designs. It’s been shown all around Sulawesi as an example, and makes it much easier to work with buyers and develop designs. We don’t have to start from scratch each time we weave a pattern.”

Tia and her weaving group already have a good bookkeeping strategy, and they look forward to doing product cost calculations using the fair trade method. They’ve already implemented some fair trade policies: good payment, not disturbing the environment, and no child labor.

The greatest challenge for the future is marketing. The local market is still small; most of their production is sold to buyers in Bau-Bau. Recently they had a big order because their cloth is being used for the official Saturday uniform of government employees in Bau-Bau regency. Tia is trying to market their goods in Papua, since she has family there. She hopes that working with fair trade will also widen their market access, and hopes to receive input on new designs as well.

Yana describes JPKP’s strategy for gender and community empowerment: “In gender trainings, we use films and discussions. Before we begin trainings in a community, we identify what kind of dynamics exist, what the situation is with regard to gender. The most important thing for successfully promoting gender equality is to have good motivators–good leaders who are respected and dynamic. I see the intangible effects of trainings in the changes in people’s minds and attitudes. I love it when people cease to see their communities as marginalized areas and begin to understand the benefit of sending their children to school, rather than believing that their situation is hopeless.”

Buton

One more thing…

To finish my fair trade reflections, I’m going to leave you with this thought about gender equity from Mitch Teberg, who is traveling around Southeast Asia working with fair trade groups and learning and writing about best practices for fair trade. (Here is the blog entry this quote comes from, an insightful reflection on his experience discussing gender equity and cooperative governance with members of a coffee cooperative in Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia.) Gender equity is an issue that frequently becomes tangled in debates about religion, culture and tradition– it’s a point of contention in all societies, and Muslim Indonesia is no exception. Mitch rejects the notion of cultures (particularly progressive and social-justice minded groups within cultures) being incompatible with gender equity:

“Gender equity is not a religious issue; gender equity is not a cultural issue; gender equity is not introduced from the outside. Gender equity is about principles they [the coffee producers] very much believed in: Representation and Participation in a Democratic System.”

Thoughts?

Bali Goodbyes

Things I did in my last 48 hours in Bali: went bungee jumping (for freeee!)

Attended a Balinese wedding!

That’s the finale to the Indonesia blog bonanza! Whew. I’m in Ulaanbaatar until Tuesday and I’ll post about Mongolia before I leave!

apikri: fair trade reflections, part three

My fair trade sojourns in Indonesia also brought me to Apikri, another Forum Fair Trade Indonesia member company. Check out the products that Apikri sells to Ten Thousand Villages for an idea of the range of crafts that they market, from over 200 producers in the Jogjakarta area. Sri, an Apikri employee, accompanied me on visits to three artisans/groups and did a wonderful job translating for me.  Thank you, Sri!

First we visited Picuk, a batik artist based in Yogyakarta. For Apikri, Picuk makes rebana drums, wood batik puzzles, sometimes scarves. The production of the drums that she paints involves three Apikri producers: they are made by one, then decorated at her workshop, and then they are sent on to yet another who makes the basket-woven detail on the drum.

Picuk mentioned two big ways that fair trade has changed her approach to business. First, she thinks more about how best to care for her workers. Fair trade, she explained to me, means more than just higher profits from higher prices. It also means thinking about my workers’ total well-being: their health and other needs. As a fair trade producer, Picuk feels responsible for being socially aware. Second, she is more concerned with ensuring that her business practices are environmentally friendly.

Next up: Sumijem is a fiber producer in Kutogiri, a village in Kulon Progo Regency. Her workshop is called Rami Kencana, Golden Jute. She too cooperates with other Apikri producers: when she gets an order, she sends a request to an Apikri-affiliated friend who harvests raw material.

Sumijem is a tiny woman (I had flashbacks to my days of always feeling like a gringa giant in Guatemala).

I also made my first visit to the village of Giriloyo and the Berkah Lestari batik cooperative. I loved it so much that I went back there and stayed for a week, which is where I made the blue batik piece.

My last post about Lombok included one of the stories I wrote for a Forum Fair Trade Indonesia education/marketing project. Here’s another about Berkah Lestari Cooperative. Nani, the young woman who I talked to, also hosted me when I stayed within Giriloyo, and we became good friends.

Berkah Lestari’s Story

The village of Giriloyo is well known for its batik heritage. For generations, women in this community an hour south of Yogyakarta in central Java have earned fame for their beautiful, intricate batik tulis, hand-drawn batik textiles.

Nani Norchayati Lestari is the young, dynamic leader of Berkah Lestari batik cooperative in Giriloyo, a group of 50 skilled women artists. “Our mothers and grandmothers were batik artists,” Nani explains. 10 of the cooperative members work together at the cooperative center, while others work from their homes.

Nani first heard of Apikri, one of Forum Fair Trade Indonesia’s member organizations, when Apikri sponsored batik training in Imogiri, partnering with Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta. Over time, the relationship with Apikri has helped Berkah Lestari in myriad ways. Apikri provides Berkah Lestari with information about market trends and reviews new product samples. After becoming involved with Apikri, Berkah Lestari has expanded from batik textiles to batik on wood and bamboo. The unfinished wood and bamboo materials come from other Apikri producers. These partnerships with other producers extend beyond business—Apikri organizes meetings in which artisans can share experiences and problems, learning from each other as they exchange materials for their craft. In the future, Berkah Lestari will also meet with Apikri to discuss fair wage calculation and make sure the batik artists are receiving fair pay for their work.

In the past, women in Giriloyo applied the wax designs to fabric, then sold it to be colored elsewhere. Several years ago, they started coloring the designs themselves. They never imagined that coloring their textiles was dangerous, until a meeting with Apikri. Nani tells the story of discovering the hazards of chemical dyes: “We found out a year ago, in an Apikri meeting, that a survey had found the chemical dyes to be harmful. Before, we used the chemical dyes on the table in the kitchen, and would drink from the cup right next to the dyes! When we learned that the chemical dyes could be hazardous to our health, we were all very sad.

“Now, our members feel that our lives are healthier than before. Apikri supported the separation of the kitchen and dye area, and we now always use gloves while working with the chemical dyes. We didn’t know the chemicals were so dangerous!”

Apikri is now helping Berkah Lestari move toward using natural dyes, which are safe and healthy for the artisan, the consumer, and the environment. When asked about improvements to the fair trade system, Nani says, “I hope that Apikri holds more meetings to build connections and cooperation between producer groups. Berkah Lestari would love to establish a partnership with a silk cooperative, so that we could do our batik work on fair trade silk fabric.”

Thing I learned from Apikri:

Networks matter. If this seems horribly cliche (I feel like the word ‘networking’ has lost all real meaning, being such a buzzword), here’s what I mean: Apikri has made actual communication and material transactions possible between its different artisans, who work with very different materials and techniques. On the production side, this means that, instead of a product that is just assembled  under the auspices of fair trade, many of Apikri’s products are made with fair-trade-sourced raw materials and include the labor and skills of several different craftspeople along the “assembly line.” In a (hand-carved coconut)shell (ha, sorry), this means more fair trade jobs in more different sectors.

For example: a fair trade coffin (yes, they exist!) is made with jute that Sumijem harvests and processes, which she sells to the coffin-assembler for a fair price. Same for the wood and bamboo– harvested in a different area where the natural habitat favors the growth of those materials. One craftsperson assembles the coffin structure, and then it will be sent to another artisan who will do the fine detailing.

But the importance of networking extends beyond the production process. Apikri has also provided opportunities for artisans to meet outside of their economic transactions. Nani, Picuk and Sumijem all told me that they benefited immensely simply from sharing their problems, challenges, and successes with other artisans. Sometimes, as in the case of Berkah Lestari Cooperative, creating a safe workspace is as simple as having access to the right information, and Apikri’s artisan meetings provide that opportunity for open sharing and problem-solving.

lombok pottery center: fair trade reflections, part two

I spent one week in Lombok with Lisa, the lovely Forum Fair Trade Indonesia coordinator, visiting artisans from the Lombok Pottery Center (LPC), one of FFTI’s member groups. Nusa Tenggara province is made up of a string of islands extending east from Bali and Java, of which Lombok is the closest to Bali.

One our way to our first of three  cooperative visits, we drove by a bustling morning market with octopus and glassy-eyed fish for sale in buckets. Lisa told me, laughing, that the supermarket closes every day from 3-5 pm, so that the proprietors can take a nap. This is a place far from the traffic of Bali, where we pass nearly as many horse carts as cars. I was fascinated by people chewing betel nuts, their lips and teeth stained a bright orange.

Lombok Pottery Center

On the shady verandah of the Penujak Village Cooperative, Ibu Ayuri, the cooperative’s leader since its beginning in 1988, tells her visitors from Bali and the U.S. how fair trade has changed their lives: “There are few employment opportunities in our villages: in recent years one of the only ways women are able to earn money is to work as maids overseas. Working with Lombok Pottery Center offers quality wages and ensures that women can remain in their communities.”

Ibu Ayuri has been leader of the Penujak cooperative, which comprises 75 women potters, since 1988. Lombok Pottery Center provides the main income for the entire village: when pottery orders are good, the village economy thrives.

Penujak Village Cooperative is one of the 4 cooperatives that own Lombok Pottery Center (LPC), a fair trade company operating in ruralLombok. For Ibu Ayuri, working with fair trade means that she is not just a businesswoman, but can also follow her passion in social work and community organizing. “It’s not easy to work with the community. You have to really know the community’s characteristics, what they really want, what they need, and then make a true assessment,” she tells us.

Recruiting artisans and extending fair trade in the villages is one of the challenges that LPC faces. In 1988, when the project began, few artisans were comfortable working with foreign buyers. “People were afraid to see bule (foreigners) and lacked the confidence to market their pottery,” Ibu Ayuri recalls. LPC began with 9 artisans, all widows, and slowly built the enterprise with initial project funding and artisan training funded by Oxfam New Zealand. 

When the cooperative staff explains the meaning of fair trade to artisans, they focus on fair price, high quality, and giving back to the greater social well-being of the community. One of Ibu Ayuri’s most important missions has been ensuring that producers do not use child labor. “We tell our artisans that children have a right to play and to get an education,” Ibu Ayuri explains.

LPC potters are artisans, but also farmers. They split their time between making pots and tending their land. The relatively dry climate means that most families grow only enough crops for daily consumption.

Traditionally and to this day, creating Lombok pottery is women’s task, although husbands often help with finishing. The people of Lombok believe that women are the best potters because of their patience. The renowned priuk design is always made by women. The priuk is a wide, rounded pot with a flaring mouth, made using the paddle method, in which the potter beats the pot’s wall rhythmically with a bamboo paddle, while holding a smooth stone against the inside wall. The technique results in a strong, thin-walled, elegant shape.

Making priuk:

In Lombok, price competition between potters is very high. Often, potters do not calculate the cost of materials and labor needed to make a piece, meaning that they sell their pottery so cheaply that they actually lose money. Part of LPC’s job is to fight this trend by offering fair wages and avoid exploitative situations in which artisans are losing money. LPC pays 7000 Rupiah for a big bowl or plate that would fetch just 1000 Rupiah in an art shop. LPC’s payment also sets it apart from the other pottery buyers inLombok, who mostly operate on consignment: LPC pays cash when the product is completed, collecting finished products on regular quality-check days in each village.

Sukian, a Masbagik potter, lists several important changes that have improved her life since beginning work with LPC: soft loans offered by the cooperative help her afford large costs, like children’s school fees or purchasing raw materials; the reliable payments from LPC; sustainable orders; and, finally, being a shareholder.

Most of all, Sukian says, it is the sense of security that LPC offers that has transformed her life. “It’s difficult to express the feeling of safety,” Sukian says. For the first time, she feels financially secure because of the steady orders she receives. Furthermore, when she completes an order for LPC, she knows she can trust that she will receive her payment promptly.

Being a shareholder also contributes to Sukian’s sense of safety and ownership. As one of the cooperative founders, she feels great loyalty to the group. “I would be very sad if LPC did not exist—I wish the staff and my fellow artisans health and success so they can continue their good work,” she tells us.

Zuriati, another potter, echoes Sukian’s opinion that being a shareholder has improved her financial security: “I receive an annual dividend. If I or another cooperative member face an unexpected expense, like a marriage, illness or death of a relative, we have access to a special fund that’s part of the cooperative budget.” Zuriati was also selected as the village representative to the cooperative for her ability to read, debate and share ideas, and serve as an advocate for the interests of her village. She is proud and honored to have this big responsibility. Before traveling to Mataram for the cooperative meeting, she meets with potters in her village to discuss concerns that she will relate at the meeting. “Learning how to make a decision that everyone will be happy with is a good challenge for me. I enjoy feeling important and useful,” Zuriati tells us. Participation in fair trade enterprise gives Zuriati and her fellow artisans a voice and helps them develop as community leaders.

The firing process is still a challenge, as the open-fire process that has been used for generations directly exposes artisans to harmful smoke. An attempt to develop closed-kiln firing in 1992, aided by the government’s industrial development fund, was abandoned because the firing took too long, and each kiln could be used for one color only—so each kampung would need separate kilns for the black, brown and tamarind-colored pots. For now, that is an investment that they can’t afford. According to Sukian, firing is the hardest and least pleasant step of the pottery process. She is always relieved to sell items that don’t need firing. (After seeing the area where the pots are fired, Lisa told me, “This is the other side of fair trade.” Later, reflecting on the day, she revised that observation: “Maybe that isn’t fair trade at all.”)

Still, despite the challenges, Hadiah, another Masbagik artisan, sums up the changes that LPC has produced at the most fundamental level: fair trade has helped the village provide for daily needs. “Before, the village had no money even for cooking. Now, the poor people and the rich people can have their same rice.”

(I own a beautiful black LPC-made tagine dish that has produced several delicious Moroccan stews, so I was excited to see where it began its life. It turns out that it likely began its life in the strong, sure hands of Hadiah, who makes six tagines per day, and whose name means “gift.”)

mitra bali: fair trade reflections, part one

One thing that I hope to do at the end of this year is compile a list of best practices for craft producers—in other words, the best strategies and approaches for building craft enterprises that are financially viable, democratically and responsibly governed, environmentally friendly, innovative and sustainable—based on the examples of groups that I’ve encountered along my way. In Indonesia, I’ve been lucky enough to interview artisans and organizers affiliated with several different fair trade organizations as part of a documentation project I’m undertaking with Forum Fair Trade Indonesia, the umbrella network for fair trade groups in Indonesia.

I’ll start with some thoughts on my visits and interviews with artisans at Mitra Bali, a wonderful and very successful fair trade organization working with hundreds of artisans in Bali. Their products include wood and bone carvings, silver jewelry, ceramics, items made from coconut shells and bamboo… Click here to see some of the products that Mitra Bali exports to Ten Thousand Villages. 95% of Mitra Bali’s production is for export.

The World Fair Trade Organization (WFTO) identifies ten Principles of Fair Trade that fair trade organizations/companies are expected to strive for. Commitment to these principles distinguishes fair trade enterprises from other for-profit companies. You can find more detailed explanations of each of these principles on the WFTO’s website. Briefly, they are:

1. Creating opportunities for economically disadvantaged producers
2. Transparency & accountability
3. Trade practices that function with concern for the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of marginalized small producers and do not maximize profit at their expense
4. Payment of a fair price
5. No child labor or forced labor
6. Promoting gender equity, freedom of association, and generally non-discrimination
7. Healthy working conditions
8. Capacity building
9. Promotion of fair trade
10. Friendly to the environment

Things I Learned from Mitra Bali

–Standing behind principles. Mitra Bali provides placards listing the ten principles of fair trade for each artisan to post in their workspace. This seemingly small measure speaks volumes to me: most Mitra Bali artisans’ workspaces are within their homes, and having those ten affirmations about the right to a better life strikes me as a powerful statement about artisans’ ownership of the fair trade movement. Not only that, but it shows a commitment to building an organization in which every member and employee, from the wood-carver to the people packing boxes to be shipped, are invested in fair trade principles and serve as checkpoints making sure that Mitra Bali lives up to its ideals.

–Sometimes craft production is not enough. Mitra Bali understands something that I have been reminded of over and over this year: even if artisans are given a fair price for their work, their prosperity is still dependent on the whims of consumer desires, the unpredictability of the American and European appetite for painted cat figurines or batik scarves or decorative baskets. These are not inelastic goods; craft producers suffer and thrive in direct relation with the highs and lows of Western economies.

In order to help its artisans achieve economic security, Mitra Bali implemented a sort of mini-Heifer International project. Artisans are given a cow, which is kept as a sort of buffer– if someone in the family suffers an illness, or if orders lag, or if the artisan wants to undertake an expansion project or build a new home, they can sell the cow. The program is self-sustaining, because each artisan who receives a cow donates its first calf back to Mitra Bali to be given to another artisan.

For the World Fair Trade Day celebration in May, the cows were temporarily painted with fair trade slogans! Bovine stars of the show with the Mitra Bali staff (who seem very much like a family– complete with family-style lunches for the whole staff and exercises after work on Fridays ).

-Fair trade is about humanizing economic transactions. Mitra Bali and most fair trade organizations I encountered in Indonesia do an especially good job of emphasizing this point.  Nearly every artisan I interviewed spoke about the importance of direct, honest communication between producers and buyers in their relationship with fair trade marketing organizations. Many even said that this is a more important positive aspect of fair trade than the higher price they receive for their craft. Simply being able to openly express their needs, issues, and desires to producers is empowering. It’s an important reminder, I think, that in an ideal fair trade situation, both the producer and consumer (and all the other people playing roles in between) should be treated like human beings, not economic cogs, and hopefully can even gain some sense of meaningful global connection from the exchange of goods from one person’s hands to another through the big, sometimes impersonal networks of our global economy.

Unrelated: A couple weeks ago I attended a discussion/presentation by noted Canadian designer David Berman, author of the book Do Good Design and an outspoken proponent of design thinking as an important way of improving the world. Cool project: he re-designed Canada’s unemployment law– with clear language, diagrams, etc– so that it’s easily understood by anyone, without the need for a lawyer’s interpretation. Social design/human-centered design keeps popping up everywhere this year! I think I kind of want to be a social designer.

a post to placate my abandoned readers

Ok. I know I’ve been a really bad blog-updater recently. I’m running around trying to do a million things before I fly to Mongolia on Tuesday, and the last weeks have been packed with jetsetting: a few days in Lombok, a few days in Sulawesi, a few days in Java, now a final few days in Bali. Here are some photos from recent days, and a promise of several wordy, fair trade/craft research-related posts soon to come.

Faces of Borobudur

Borobudur is a huge, ancient Buddhist temple outside of Jogjakarta. The many stone stupas, arranged in concentric circles, are covered with intricate relief carvings. I visited on a misty morning- no dramatic skies to offset the gray stone.

I think I divided my time at Borobudur equally between walking through the many levels admiring the beauty of the stonework, and posing for pictures with Indonesian school groups.

More batik!

Look what I made this time! It’s a combination of two traditional Javanese motifs- parang (the diagonal stripe pattern) and sido asih (the motif with wings/leaves/birds).

It has a lot of mistakes, but I’m proud anyway. My teacher/host Nani told me, “There are no mistakes in batik. There is only character.”

Detail in progress:

Three little tjantings sitting in a wax pot:

Beaches, beauties, beasts

Bau-Bau, Sulawesi: on a bluff overlooking the sea

Sulawesi: pastel-painted houses on stilts. Oh, how I want to live in one of these!

Giriloyo, Java: I stayed in Giriloyo, a village known for its batik artists in central Java, with the lovely Nani and her unlovely chickens:

Sulawesi: outrigger boats and jewel seas

Gili Air, Lombok: beach sunset

Gili Air, Lombok: I was walking through the island’s untouristed interior when I stumbled across a group of men playing a game that I would describe as top warfare. Each person had a big, heavy, carved wooden top (the spinning kind) with a piece of string wound around the top of the top in a tight coil. After a huge arm windup, one person would hurl the top at the ground, releasing the string to set the top spinning madly. Others would then hurl their own tops violently at the already-spinning one, trying to knock it off balance.

Bali: at the annual arts festival

Gili Air, Lombok: hermit crab!! This one even found a shell with a convenient eye-hole

En route to Gili Air, Lombok: riding the public boat

Bau-Bau, Sulawesi: old cemetery in a huge rock fortress on top of a bluff.

That’s all for now. More to come very soon.