By Faith Amon, CARE consultant
In the community of Mabote the Xindzala baskets of Mozambique have a long tradition. “My grandmother used to wrap her children in blankets and carry them on her head in bigger versions of the same baskets we make today,” says the village association president Lucia Lazo. In a community where the average household income is equivalent to just over dollar a day, this association of women, with some help from CARE International, have taken their livelihoods into their own hands, literally.
They call the group Famba Kwadzi, meaning “go forward” in the local language Xitswa, and they formed as part of the SEED project from CARE’s Vilankulo based program. Working in 4 districts, CARE is reaching people in one of the most vulnerable provinces in Mozambique to find alternative non-farm activities that will provide them some income. In this northern part of the country, droughts, floods, and cyclones, are common and complicate an already precarious substance living for most of the farming based families who live here. CARE's program, funded by the Canadian Development Agency (CIDA), combines several components and maintains a facilitator role in developing associations, village savings and loan groups, and micro-enterprise development.
The women in Famba Kwadzi weave the Xindzala baskets using the traditional techniques that their mothers and grandmothers used - CARE helps them refine the designs, monitor the quality, and find a market to sell them. “When I heard that the women in the group were selling their baskets, I decided to join,” explains Teresa Chituta one of the group’s newer members.
“My aunt taught me how to make the Xindzala weave, but we only used them at home and rarely sold them.” Working together the women have discovered there are many benefits to being part of a group. Since the baskets can take a laborious 6 to 8 hours to create, depending on the design, working together creates stronger social networks within the community, provides guidance and assistance to maintain higher quality standards for the baskets they produce, and offers them more negotiating power when pricing the finished product.
Together the women have managed to set a price for their craft at almost five times the price many of them say they are able to sell on their own. The SEED program has enabled the women of Mabote to produce their own income, independent of the season and the changes in the weather. While the process may be slow, the women weaving the Xindzala baskets are not only continuing a tradition, they are creating their future, one weave at a time.
The SEED project focuses on the diversification of livelihoods through rural non-farm activities and expanding links to export markets for community artisans.