Sustainability

Driving through Coffee Bay, you will notice how beautiful the landscape is, you will notice how nice the people are and you will see how much effort it takes for families to do what we take for granted, like provide water and food for meals. What you might not notice at first or at all (until you go looking for some cough medicine to combat the sinus infection you got while sitting next to a sick child on the 16 hour plane ride) is that there are no stores in Coffee Bay. Nowhere to buy a cold drink, a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper or diapers for the baby. There is nowhere to go on the weekend to shop for some new clothes, the latest top-40 CD or a book to read. For a town that gets most of its money from the few visitors that travel looking for an "authentic African experience" there is no central market for anyone to sell their goods.



Tonight we met an amazing woman named Albertina Nomonde Madlalisa, but you can call her Betty. Betty runs the Masizame Woman's Project located in the Ngogo section of Coffee Bay. The Woman's Project is a group of about 10 woman, and a few men that make traditional African crafts, teach dance and promote the rich culture of the land. On the surface, walking in to the project building, it looked like a crafts shop. There were beautifully made grass woven baskets, intricate bead work, colorful dresses and shirts and a floor full of sculptures carved masterfully out of drift wood washed up on the beach.



After looking around, Betty sat us down and gave us the 10 year history of the project and where she wanted it to go. She talked proudly about the evolution of the project and proudly about being invited to places like Canada and New Orleans to show off her art work and the honor of being named community builder of the year. Then she told us that even with her success, the group will never be able to grow much further as it is. The cost of getting to the arts fairs to sell her goods is too steep, she has filled orders to ship her products to places like Germany, the US and England, but there is no transportation to get them to a mail center, so all the money made on the sale is eaten up by overhead. The woman's project is not a store and people don't just pop in to browse around. You have to know that they are there...and in a town with no shops, no market and no structure for such things, the project's future is hazy.



Betty's goal is to train 200 woman on the traditional art work of her people over a 3 years span. She wants to promote her culture and continue the traditions of her ancestors. She believes in the power of her artwork to be able to help her community sustain itself. People throw around buzzwords like "Economic Sustainability" all the time. They should look at Betty's studio as an perfect example. If Coffee Bay has a future, places like the Woman's Project have to be supported. It is business, a cultural center, a school and a gathering place all in one.