A New Library In Timor

A few weeks ago I was contacted by a friend of a friend, who was helping prepare for the official reopening of the Xanana’s reading room (Now Xanana's cultural centre and library)

At our first meeting Belekria was asked to sew some cushions for the children's area in the library.  They asked for a total of 24 cushions including 10 huge cushions at 1mx1m.  All with an applique animal on the top surface.  Most cushions produced here are single layer, but we sew/stuff a cushion and also sew a removable cushion cover to match.

Their second request was for me to organise a floor covering of some sort, which we decided would be better if was woven matting rather than a cloth/sewn rug.  We discussed some decorative options and have decided to use tais fabric to stitch an appliqued outline of East Timor across 3 large woven mats.

The third request was for a large crocodile puppet along the lines of a Chinese dragon, which children could hold up and move around. 

The fourth and final request was for me to re-stretch 2 small paintings which Xanana painted while he was in Prison.

WOW!

As you can imagine I’ve been quite busy myself as well as the sewing room being flat out stitching and stuffing cushions. J

The official opening was this past Sunday, and the cushions and crocodile were well loved. 

Unfortunately the woven mats were unable to be prepared in time, partly due to the impracticality of collecting and drying the required palm leaves during a rainy time, and partly as they are so huge themselves – 3 mats each 2.5 x 5.6m!  Hopefully they will be ready for Mid January when regular activities will be arranged at the Cultural Centre.

Some more awareness of womens issues

I was very excited to be invited to attend a meeting at BESIK, where Jose and her colleagues were collating data they had collected in the Bobonaro District last week.  BESIK is looking at how to assist women in their sanitation needs.  Part of this includes a goal to increase the use of toilets, but also assessing what women's needs are in regards to sanitation.  It was fascinating discovering some of the beliefs surrounding menstruation, and both encouraging and informative for Belekria.
I was able to show a sample of our pads, and explain a few benefits.  They were quick to realise themselves that the pads would save money and create less rubbish.  One woman commented how soft the fabric was.
In preparation for the meeting I began to sketch out some notes, and the dot points I began with, grew into a decent report conveying my process and developments, challenges and hopes.
I will upload the report to the research page above.


Being a sewing room, I think its ok to say that im glad that "gender" has come into fashion. :)

On the same theme, Liz at CARE has also contacted me and I hope to be able to chat with her early next week.

To Do List:

• CARE
• World Vision
• PLAN
• ALOLA

End of year figures

I love using excel.  Just thought id share that with you.  It does explain why i have a very detailed file with lots of separate pages of numbers and figures for all sorts of things related to bellekria.  Of course there is a costing page, which works out how much each item costs, and what profit you get for the suggested retail price.  Then there are pages to do with employee details including loans management, pay packet tools and prices of all materials.  Just to name a few
Anyway, of course the most important excel file is the monthly profit and loss.  Sinta keeps a daily paper record of all sales, and at the end of the month passes them onto me along with any receipts and a chart detailing what days each employee worked.  I enter all this data, and add in any extras including their pay.  I have just been using the same file since i opened the sewing room, and it has always been in the red by a few hundred (ok, 9 hundreds to be more accurate).  Anyway I thought I would try the novel idea of working out the profit/loss just from this current year.  I wanted to see how much the business had needed support each month to function.  So I entered the data in like this:
And then i averaged it out to see what the average monthly loss was –ok i admit it… I'm naturally pessimistic) and lo and behold I got a profit of around $3 each month!!  Wow!! So there you go.  It hasn't cost me anything – in terms of dollars and cents.
What a miracle – Thanks to God  and all the wonderful donations of materials which really help in a huge, HUGE way.
So aside from the numerical figures, together we have been able to give full time employment to 5 women (with feminine figures ha ha).  Three of whom have taken out home loans from us, making monthly repayments through their salary.
  Sinta, with her husband Apoli and two nieces are standing proudly outside of their newly finished home.






Ana also took out a home loan to assist in finishing her new home- pictured here with her husband, young son and lots of family to help celebrate moving in.
     

Novi has also taken out a home loan to help finish her house for  her husband and young daughter.





Amona (Nona) is very grateful to be employed.  Not only does it provide an income for her household, but it gives her a daily activity to help her cope with some difficult family issues.
 


Ange has been travelling from the other side of the city, and has been grateful for an income to assist with the costs of raising her 4 young children.

Op Shopping in a 3rd world country

A few weeks ago our neighbours needed to chop down 2 coconut trees – which is kind of ok as there are about 40 of them all around our house and we hear a coconut drop nearly every day, so a few less to worry about is a good thing.  (Although of course its a little sad to chop down a lovely fruiting tree).  Anyway, where was I….Ah yes,, so the the chainsaw man arrived and cranked up the RRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEE machine.  Right next to our house which doesn't have glass in many windows, so there is no way to dampen the sound.   A few hours later, as they were still RRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEing, I realised that they were also slicing the tree up into nice beams etc. and that they hadn't even started on the second tree.   Well no school today, and maybe we should go for a long walk.??  So Serenity and I soon agreed that a nice outing would to be to hike up to the closest market (only a handful of stalls) and “go opshopping” for the first time since March.  Off we went and enjoyed buying a few outfits, esp a wedding outfit for Serenity to wear to the upcoming wedding at our place.  It was a long walk, especially the walk home and we didn’t arrive home till around 4:00.  On the way home we lamented the fact that our local village didn’t have a “sack of clothes” shop we could visit.  We tossed the idea around about purchasing one ourselves……
Second hand clothes arrive in large cloth sacks about 1m wide and 1 m high.  In my browsing history it seems that most of these seem to come from China.  There is a wide variety in each sack from silk blouses to cotton tshirts and plenty of jeans thrown in. Anyone who knows me will know that its a special treat to go rummaging through second hand clothes.  I don't get to do it very often here though – maybe once every 3-6 months.  Prices vary from 50c-$4.  About the same, or a bit cheaper than Aussie Op shops.
Anyway, can you guess my thought processes???  Here we are in Bellekria, looking for cheap fabrics for our bags etc, and turning old clothing into new attractive dresses. 
On returning home I popped in to the sewing room to chat with Sinta, Novi and Anna.  I mentioned the idea of buying a sack.  They all perked up! OOH what a lovely idea!  We could buy it, open it up and sell the best stuff (after taking out our favourites of course), then, we could offer to alter the clothes to fit better $$. AND any large clothing or weird stuff we can chop up and turn into other things!  What a fantastic idea.