Seven Mile village – Bandarban

I have been very bad at keeping my blog updated – I really do not have a valid excuse…So I hope this blog will make up for it! An insight into indigenous textiles in the district of Bandarban in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT).

Seven Mile village is as the name states seven miles outside of Bandarban Sadar, the main town of the Bandarban Hill District in the CHT.  It is difficult to access the village you can get to it via motorbike for most of the way but if you are traveling there during the monsoon season, then you will have to abandon the bike at some point as the path becomes to dangerous.

Seven Mile village is small village with about 40 families and soon to be three churches (one was being built when I was visiting) the main income of the villagers is Jhum farming (Jhum farming is the indigenous practice of farming which involves slash and burn cultivation) many of the farmers farm for subsistence whilst some are lucky to be able to produce enough to sell in market.

However the women of this village are coming together and are producing textile products from their traditional weaving process – the back strap loom.  The women that are I met with are from the Bawm indigenous group.  They are weaving blankets, bags and scarfs and are selling them to the local market which is out on the main road.  A couple of entrepreneurs have set up a few stalls that are long the road side, mostly in bus shelters, the road very conveniently runs past a local tourist spot.

I met with a family who were farmers, the husband was able to sell his produce to the local market.  His wife in the day helped in the field and then in the evening she wove blankets, scarfs and bags for the ‘bus-stop’ stall and local shops.  I asked her if she enjoyed weaving and she said she did and that she liked comparing designs and techniques with fellow women of the village.  I asked her what problems did she face and the main problem was electricity, the village does not have electricity.  She often weaves by a kerosene lamp, she would love to do more intricate work but can not because of the light.

The first picture above shows two weavers counting the design to see how many shafts would be required to make the design.  The second picture along shows fellow female weavers who have come to have a chat and to find out what I was doing in the village.  The third picture is of the Back-strap loom that has been folded away and the blankets that have been produce on the loom and are ready to go to the stall.

One blanket is between 400-600tk (£4-6) depending on the design, the blanket takes 2-3 full days to weave, the weaver usually earns between 70-100tk per day to weave a blanket.  For many of the weavers this is a sideline income for them, their farming comes first and if they are producing for market then their income per day is between 100-200tk.  Many weavers have abandon their weaving skills and have become farmers, as access to yarn is difficult and weaving is a time-consuming process but this means that their cultural traditions are being lost.  However the women above still want to carry on their traditions, they take it in turns to take their blankets and other products to market and who goes to market that day will buy the yarn for their next blankets.  They still face problems in doing this as they do not have enough money at the beginning  of their production to buy enough yarn for 2 or 3 blankets, as they will only get money at the end of the production.  So this means they are always just breaking even on their outputs.

The women stated if they were able to access small credit loan they would be able to set up a small cooperative that would be able to manage a yarn bank.  They would be able to strengthen relations between the yarn seller and be in more of position to negotiate a fair  and sustainable price. With the stalls and shops they would be able to produce more blankets therefore generating more profit to go back into the cooperative.  The weavers said if they were able to produce blankets more regularly with reliable outputs they could then be able to receive part payments at the beginning of their production so that this would cover some of the costs of their production. The weavers went on to say if they made enough profit from their weaving they would want to invest in solar panels for their homes so that they could weave at night, improve the water access of their village because in the winter water access becomes a problem and they would want to improve the road access to the village.

This is Bawm weaving on the Back-strap loom, it is a very interesting technique as they weave the fabric on the reverse.  They use bright colours as these are what are available in the market, crafts advisers are trying to advice the women in using more subtle colours but they like the bright colours.  The white floral piece is a very old traditional piece of Bawm weaving – this particular practice is loosing its traditional as many Bawm women  prefer to wear the ready-wear fabrics that are available from the market and only make these pieces on special occasions.

Deshi Dosh (Bangladesh 10)

Bangladesh now has its own design floor! 

Deshi Dosh – meaning Bangladesh 10 is a design floor that has recently opened in Bashundhara City (The largest mall in South East Asia) – in Dhaka City.  It brings together 10 Bangladeshi design houses which are all producing Bangladeshi fabrics and clothing.

I was very excited to be invited to inauguration ceremony at the Sheraton Hotel in Dhaka.  I turned up in my bestish salwaar and kameez to find women in thier wonderful delicate and well crafted saris and men in their very precious punjabis – it was lovely to see however I kept tugging at my kameez to make it look less creased, I felt very drab! 

It was a very arty affair with poets, artists and writers all present.  Speeches were given on the importance of preserving these fabrics, traditions and practices.  It was just beautiful and I am so glad somebody had the creative to bring this all together. (Shamim I bet you had a large role in this!)

I have yet to go to Dhaka to see the floor but as soon as I do, I will post pictures.  From what I have seen on friends Facebooks pages it looks like Selfridges – hmmm my £100 per month salary is not going to last long in there! haha

Will be back soon

Quilts of Chittagong has changed its name!

Welcome to Threads for Life

 I now have made the decision to change the name of my blog, because the nature of my project has changed in Bangladesh. I originally thought that my project with VSO would be to work with women and create educational quilts. However, this has proven to be very difficult, as before I arrived in Bandarban, I was unaware of the community situation.

Bandarban is the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The CHT up until 1997 faced fierce conflict for more than 25 years, this has been between the plain lands (the majority of Bangladesh) and the indigenous people of the Hill Tracts. Things have calmed down a lot since 1997, however, there is still heavy army presence which makes travel for Bideshi’s (foreigners) very difficult, as you need permission from local government and a police escort to travel. This is fairly unnecessary now, but it is still in place because some foreigners and key Bengali people in the past have been kidnapped.

To cut a long story short, I have limited contact with beneficiaries so it makes the concept of organising a quilting group fairly difficult. I have had to re-think my project, which has taken me some time.

So hence the new name – Threads for Life. The aim of this project is to promote the hand-made textiles of Bangladesh and its producers with emphasis on Fair and ethical trade.

I am going to use Bangladesh as a case study of how effectively the concept of Fair Trade is working to improve and promote traditional textile producers in this country. I will conduct a study of different organisations, companies and institutions working under or promoting this concept of Fair Trade, to establish how it is working in practice. The study will also look to highlight the challenges and strengths of hand-made textiles under this Fair Trade umbrella on both the side of the producers and the buyers. Through this hopefully ideas of interventions may arise which then can be lobbied to key people.

I will use the findings of the case study as an opportunity to share learning of organisations that are already successively producing Fair Trade textiles with textile producers in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). Training and small groups are just starting in the CHT to create projects for indigenous women to produce textiles as an income generating activity. I hope that this study will provide good documentation of practices and learning to make their projects sustainable and successful.

Within the case study I will also investigate what is Fair Trade and how it works. I will carry out a survey of different UK organisations working or selling Bnagladeshi products to establish what their views and understandings are of Fair Trade. With doing this I hope that my final report will bring more awareness to the Fair Trade practice in Bangladesh.

The final goal of this piece of work is to produce a report of my findings, which I will send to all the people that have been involved in the project. I will also look to send it to key influential people in organisations both here in Bangladesh and in the UK, which will have the power to implement change to this sector.

Back strap weaving what is the future?

I don’t know what it is about this country but everything seems more accessible here.  For example, if I need rice wine, I just give my colleague Kwyti a nod and within about 10 mins there is a fresh bottle of rice wine 

sitting on my desk.  Or you ask Martin the admin assistant at VSO, or as volunteers so creatively call him, the guru or the integral cog of VSO – I think you get the picture- You ask him for the contact details of Dr Hameeda Hossain, a Human Rights activist and General Secretary of the National Crafts Council Bangladesh, and low and behold the next morning those details are sitting in your pigeonhole!!! Fabulous (Thank you Martin) you then send Dr Hossian an email, a reply within a few days stating a meeting time – RESULT.

I recently attended a meeting with Ruby Ghuznavi, Ruby is the Managing Director of Aranya – a fair trade natural dyes organization based in Dhaka. Ruby is also the Deputy President of the Worlds Craft Council, South Asia region.  Within minutes of our meeting she tells me about a regional conference the UN Development Programme (UNDP) is hosting on ‘Bain Weaving; Past, Present and Future.’ And that I should attend, so I do and wow what a conference it was…

First of all, Bain weaving, also known as Back-strap weaving, is a weaving process that does not use a loom stand, it uses the body, the warp is tide to a post and then is pulled tight by the weavers back – hence the name Back strap weaving. This is a traditional technique used in many indigenous communities. 

 

The conference brought together nine countries from the region of South and South East Asia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Vietnam, Laos, China, Thailand and Indonesia.  It also attracted some big players of the Bangladesh garment and fashion industry – an industry that is also working for the socio-economic empowerment of the poor. The purpose of the conference was to share learning’s and knowledge about this weaving process and what the future holds for this technique.

There is very little documentation of this weaving process, so origins of where it began are unknown.  An interesting observation is that this form of weaving is often referred to as the traveling loom.  From my learning’s of working and living in Bandarban, there was a migration of people to this area of Bangladesh, Chittagong Hill Tracts, over 300 years ago (dates vary on each community) from different countries like India and Myanmar. With the movement of people also went their weaving, this creating a connection, a common thread. The conference highlighted that there is a visual connection of each the nine countries and the indigenous people practicing this form of weaving. Each indigenous group distinguishes themselves and their ethnicity through their weaves.  What is interesting is that there are similarities and differences between each of the weaves but what connects each of them is the tradition and process of the Backstrap loom.  This depletion is especially apparent in indigenous textiles, there are so many factors it is hard to know where to begin, however, I will try:

A major problem is that there is no documentation of traditional designs , techniques or motifs, knowledge is often passed from one family member to another.  However, Bain weaving is a time consuming process, so enthusiasm to learn this technique is often low in the younger generation and due to the time process, markets are selling cheaper machine-made alternatives.  Yarns, which traditionally were made by indigenous people, are now sold through the Bengali market and to add to this, the market sellers are meeting the demand of its consumers, consumers are wanting cloth with more glitz and bling – a modern look that can be only obtained by synthetic materials. Other factors include lack of raw materials, access to markets due to infrastructure, distance and language. To conclude, Bain weaving in the Chittagong Hill Tracts is weaved for subsistence use and is not sold through local markets because of these above factors.

 

Moving forward, speaking about Bangladesh, some integral organisations and individuals have realised how important it is to preserve this traditional weaving technique.  Training is taking place in the three districts of the CHT, involving indigenous women, in natural dying, cotton and silk back strap weaving and organic farming. 

But the question is where does it go from here…what good is having the knowledge and the material if you cannot sell it? Other countries, for example Malaysia, have developed Backstrap weaving and are now selling to international markets at very high prices, please see http://www.edricong.com/textiles.html.

However in the CHT, it is evident that the indigenous people are actively wearing their traditional clothing (regardless of it being hand or machine-made) so there is a need and a demand for this craft at local market.  However  the problem is how do you promote the traditional technique of backstrap weaving but also how do we bring the productivity of this technique up to the standard of other weaving techniques?  And how will the producers compete with the machine-made fabrics to get a fair price for their craft?

 

The conference has catalysed  my thinking and has raised further questions, especially regarding the philosophy and practice of fair trade.  With in the case of backstrap weaving in the CHT it brings fair trade into the context of the local market – and how can we promote fair trade at a local and national level not just internationally.

Stay tuned for the next installment! Thanks for reading and I will be back soon.

A change is going to come

On one of my many training courses with VSO, I had the great pleasure of meeting Robert Chambers, he is an academic at Institute of Development Studies, Sussex. He had a profound affect on me and reminded me very much of Bunker Roy, the founder of Barefoot College in Rajasthan. Both men have a similar philosophy, ‘Bottom up’ meaning change comes from a field level, from the people. They also share a similar view of people coming from the west to work in developing countries, Bunker Roy told us that he tells people who want to come from and volunteer with the Barefoot College then you spend six months doing nothing just observing – he says many people cant handle this and end up leaving. Robert Chambers also stressed in his training – take things slowly and as they say here in Bangladesh Aste-aste (slowly slowly) and well I have taken this advice to heart and mind. It is so easy to turn up in Bangladesh and make assumptions as to what is wrong with this country and what needs to change. But how can you change something you know nothing about or have experienced before. I guess this is why I have taken my time to write this blog, it takes you along time to try and understand this country and to work alongside it. I truly believe this will be my biggest learning.

As for the quilt project aste-aste, I am in the process of working out which women I can work with and whether this is even achievable. In the meantime I am researching and meeting people in the textile industry here in Bangladesh and what is the scope for Indigenous textiles within this market.

So while I take my slow, thoughtful and learning approach as to how I can contribute to the mass of development in this small space, I thought I would try and set the context for you of my findings of Bangladesh so far. There are many many things I can and want to write about Bangladesh and trying to work out where to start is like trying to work out what came first the chicken or the egg… The context of this country is extremely difficult to explain with many facets impacting and influencing the next. I am not a political analyst or a historian so I can only comment of on my thoughts and observations, here is a brief synopsis.

When I try and think rationally about Bangladesh it throws my head into a spin, especially when I am in Dhaka. Dhaka feels like you are at the edge of the ozone layer, the pressure at times can be intense. There are so many people in this city, when you stop on the street to buy some fruit you are suddenly surrounded by about 15 people, all admiring your Bangla (Bengali) and wanting to know, Where is your motherland? Are you married? Why aren’t you married? When are you going to get married? What is your religion? Are you Christian? (this one always gets me – trying to say you are not religious does not pass!) To add to this wonderful interaction with the general public there is the traffic honking past you. Its like a constant traffic jam in Dhaka, as there are so many cars all trying to get to their destination as quickly as possible but ironically not going very fast at all. Dhaka has a grey smog that convexes the city, this is when you feel you are at the edge of the ozone layer, trapped in the city with no escape.

But even with this feeling of entrapment, Dhaka has an air and pace about it like nowhere else. To me it’s exciting to be here, there is so much possibility for change and scope for initiative projects it is very inspiring to be working in this environment. When I arrived in Bangladesh it was the run up to the American election, with McCane and Obama going head to head. Along with your uncomfortable chats about your religious and martial status, people would shout Obama at you with a big smile on their face. I was quite surprised by this because in December 2008 Bangladesh was due to have its first election in two years (Bangladesh has been under emergency law since Jan 2007) however there was no talk or excitement about the Bangladeshi running candidates. The more I thought about it the more I came to admire this common support and hope for Obama, it felt we were all united in one goal which was change and we all believed that good would prevail from this change.

Bangladesh in fact witnessed its own momentous change with Sheikh Hasina and her party, the Awami League, taking power with record amounts of seats. The Awami League is a left wing party with a more secular approach. Six years ago the political situation was a different story with Khaleda Zia gaining power with her party the BNP (Bangladesh National Party) a right wing Islamic party.

When I found out I was coming to Bangladesh and realised it was a majority a Muslim country I decided not to give it much thought, I wanted to keep an open mind and not get carried away with the stereotypes that have dominated the UK media in recent years.

My open mind philosophy has treated me well so far, I soon realised I have to be sensitive of my behaviour and actions as there is a lot of attention on me being a western woman. This said I am often surprised by the attention I receive as a western female, that men will want to communicate with me and my fellow female friends, quite openly and we are almost given special treatment – I find this really uncomfortable especially knowing that the wives of these men do not receive this treatment. I can’t quite work it out, do they just want to prove their knowledge to me about western culture and life in the UK? Is it as status and power thing? I am often surprised that people speak so enthusiastically about the UK, with all the damage that we have done in this part of the world through colonialism and some people even feel very proud to be affiliated with the UK. I have also come across a few men who speak of their love and admiration for Princess Diana (one man looked like he was going to cry just mentioning her name) and this takes me back to the Polash restaurant in my home town, with a glass engraved picture of herself truly…to be honest I have never seen the attraction or been that much of a fan.

Just as it was hard to start to write this blog, it is hard to know where to go from here. There are many things that I haven’t written about and this will come in time. I was sat in a CNG (Auto, Tut-tut) the other day after returning from Bangkok, and I realised something unique about Bangladesh and Dhaka in particular, they are still traditionally Bangladeshi. Visiting Bangkok you could be in any city in the world, it has gigantic malls with all your famous shops ranging from mid to high range price tag, Zara to your Prada. But in Dhaka even though it has its malls and its coffee shops they are not your super chains and I guess this is the quality of Bangladesh, it still feels like you are somewhere different to the world you know, a world that challenges you at every corner whether it be traffic, weather or politics.

The intention of this blog was not to promote Bangladesh as a tourist hotspot but to actually say that I am enjoying my time here, as it is completely different to the world I have known and for me that excites and invigorates me everyday.

Please keep reading…and I promise I will write more regularly

Its all about hope

A big welcome to Quilts in Chittagong! The purpose of this blog is to document my time while i am in Bangladesh with the main aim to update you on my quilting project.  For those of you who dont know a part of the requirement of my placement with VSO is that i have to write and deliver my own project while i am out in Bangladesh.  Quilts in Chittagong is my project and it is to bring the indigenous women of the Chittagong Hill Tracts together to create change and awareness in their community by making educational quilts. 

On October the 12th i will fly to Dhaka to start a year long placement with Bolipara Nari Kalyan Somity (BNKS) in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (south east Bangladesh) through the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). I have five weeks in-country training in Dhaka and then i will head to Bandarban to start my placement.

Having read other peoples blogs, people seem to be very witty and intelligent about their observations while they have been on placement…Please don’t expect that from this blog, for most of you who are reading this and know me, you know that writing is not my strong point (dyslexia and waffle) but due to requirements of VSO I have to share my learning with all so that hopefully it can impact your lives!!! hehe some of you maybe, others hmmmm I’ll emphasise hopefully again! if you would like to read a humorous and intelligent blog then please click on http://banglarich.wordpress.com 

So why i am i going to a country that has one the most corrupt governments, over-sized populations and is incredibly poor…hmmm its quite hard to say, especially without sounding cliche.  And when i really think about it, i don’t really know! To experience something new? To give something back? to share my skills? I keep asking myself what do i have to share? I have asked myself the question what am i running from which then leads to me asking what i am i running to…and basically i have come to the conclusion this is just something i want to do…i hope that’s enough

It wasn’t what i originally planned, to go to Bangladesh, i wanted to head to Africa (much to Snib’s horror and woe!) however the choice was out of my hands and in the hands of VSO and Bangladesh is what they came up with.  However once i had read my placement brief it just felt right to say yes and ask when do i fly.

As i said i will be working for BNKS which, is an organisation that works to empower indigenous women and children, as a Documentation and Communication Officer (it makes me want to salute when i say it!!) From speaking to Richard (he is doing the placement at present) it is very vague and varied.  From what i can gather i will be documenting the organisations projects and outcomes…hopefully all will be come clear in the next few weeks.  From reading the organisations strategic plan it looks like it does some fantastic work, it has seven core areas which are
Economy
Education
Health
Governance
Disaster risk and Environment Degradation
Women’s and Children’s Rights
Indigenous Rights

Many people have asked me does Bangladesh need my help, do the tribal women want to be empowered and in all honesty i don’t know and is something that worries me a little as what can i do that is not being already being done by people who know best.  However BNKS has being running for 17 years and was set up by a ‘local group of educated and energetic like-minded social workers’ so i am guessing they know what they are talking about…Lets hope so… 

To conclude the way i hope for this blog to work (hope seems to be a running theme of this blog) is to document my project Quilts in Chittagong.  For more information on this Click on the tab Quilts in the top right hand corner. It will also record my observations of Bangladesh, Indigenous communities and development.  I hope you enjoy the blog, please add comments and give your say it would be great to hear from you.

Peace and love

La x