The Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury

Huwondiral Dalaba e West Newbury

Introduction.

Dalaba (in the mountains of the Republic of Guinea, Conakry) and West Newbury, are joined in a sister-city program for the purpose of pursuing activities and programs of mutual benefit. The friendship between John Hutchison, Boston University professor of African Languages & Linguistics, of West Newbury, and his student, Mamadou Sadialiou Bah, Humphrey Fellow in the School of Education at Boston University, led to their attending a meeting of the Selectmen of West Newbury and laying the foundation for this Alliance in 2002. Since then the Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury has been involved in citizen exchange, the strengthening of women’s and girls’ education, collaboration with Dalaba NGOs, marketing of artisanry produced in Dalaba (particularly indigo-dyed cloth), and working in implementing a women’s micro-credit program.

The Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury e-mail: alliancedalaba@gmail.com

Brief history of the Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury.

The history of the Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury has been dictated to a certain extent by the history of events in the Republic of Guinea. Given the relentless and neverending political crises in the Republic of Guinea, the Alliance has experienced great difficulty in facilitating the obtaining of visas for the Dalaba counterparts and visitors, throughout the history of our sister city relationship. Only a few visitors from each city have been able to visit their sister city. Nevertheless, the Alliance is strong and has great potential. The early years of the Alliance were characterized by short visits from the West Newbury coordinator to Dalaba and visits from the Mayor of Dalaba and his son, as well as Hadja Nafissatou Bah, the founder of the girls and women’s Coopérative Sisale 2 which is based in Dalaba. The Alliance benefited greatly from the support and enthusiasm of Selectman Glenn Kemper and his family during the visits of our guests from Dalaba.

During 2007, the Alliance financed the refurbishing of the computer room of the Dalaba high school which is today near completion though still in need of computers. is nearly completed and now all that is needed is the computers. We are currently in search of used laptops for this purpose since the cost of sending desktops is prohibitive. Our fundraising effort for the computer room continues.

During the summer of 2008, a group of students traveled to Dalaba with John Hutchison to work with the Coopérative Sisale 2 and its founder, Hadja Nafissatou Bah. The group worked with the women and girls of the cooperative and was also involved in making a documentary film about Hadja and her cooperative. The team ended up filming and interviewing women from a variety of women’s organizations in the Dalaba area. The results will appear on the Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury website. Hadja’s organization strives to educate young girls, and their mothers, in order to encourage them to become economically independent and educated, in an effort to empower them to gain the tools necessary to break the cycle of early marriage that has for so long been a problem in the Futa Jalon region where Dalaba is located. (see the translation of the Guinean newspaper article about her cooperative that follows this page.)

For most of the life of the Alliance, we have been marketing the stitch resist indigo-dyed cloth that is made by the girls and women of Dalaba and of the rest of the Futa Jalon throughout the North Shore area and have the cloth on sale in a number of stores, from Beverly to Newburyport. Sets of cards with photographs of 6 examples of the indigo-dyed cloth have been produced and are also currently being sold in the area. Anyone interested in purchasing them or helping with the distribution should contact the Alliance at alliancedalaba@gmail.com.

During the summer of 2007, a representative of the Converse shoe company visited Dalaba with the coordinator and facilitated a project leading to the production of Converse-All Star shoes from the indigo-dyed cloth. The shoes are not currently being distributed however.

The Alliance is also involved in establishing a scholarship fund for students in Dalaba and is looking into becoming involved in a micro-credit program there.

The Alliance has benefited greatly from the enthusiasm of the people of West Newbury, and particularly from the ongoing support from the Selectmen of West Newbury.

In order to make a charitable contribution to the Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury

Anyone interested in making a contribution to the Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury should send their contribution by check made out to “Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury, Limited” and mailed to Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury, 511 Main Street, West Newbury MA 01985. Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury, Limited is a non-profit corporation (number 20-4074000) so contributions are tax-deductible. Donations of any size are most welcome. As mentioned earlier, we are also in need of laptop computer donations for the high school computer room project.

SECTION 2

Partner NGOs in Dalaba collaborating with the Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury

Coopérative Artisanale Sisal 2 Dalaba

Hadja Nafissatou Bah is the President and Founder of the Coopérative Artisanale Sisal 2 Dalaba. She and her colleagues work in the education and of training of young girls, and their mothers, bigenerationally, in an effort to enable them to become independent economic operators, empowered through this process. One of the goals of the Coopérative is to break the cycle of early arranged marriages that has been characteristic of the region of Dalaba.

make the following into a pdf and place its link next to the introduction to the Coopérative Artisanale Sisal 2 Dalaba; incorporate these two photos that I have inserted here next to or below the above paragraph of introductiojn of the Coopérative

Coopérative Artisanale Sisal 2 Dalaba

      The Sisal 2 Artisanal Cooperative is active in the promotion of women.

      Within the framework of the struggle against poverty and illiteracy, the women of Dalaba organized into the Sisal 2 Artisanal Cooperative work in dying, soap manufacturing, literacy and training in information technology and communication. Created in November of 1977, it today has more than 45 members and has restructured itself for its daily struggle.

      The president of the Cooperative, Mrs. Nafissatou Bah, explains that the principal activities are indigo cloth dyeing, colored cloth dyeing, mudcloth, soap production, knitting, crocheting, embroidering, doll-making, basketry, orienting other groups of women to encourage the creation of branches of the Sisal II Cooperative.

      “Our products are generally 100% homespun cotton thread on linen or on handwoven country cloth (leppi) and are made by our women members and by weavers.”

      According to Mme. Bah, the cloth is dyed either with natural locally prepared indigo in blue and black, or with artificial imported indigo in diverse colors, and for mudcloth with clay and leaves that are found in the local environment.

      In selling agricultural products during periods of drought or lack of food, the president of the cooperative points out that a priority is accorded in this regard to the parents of the cooperative’s apprentices, this within the framework of opening up schooling opportunities for girls and training them in trades and professional occupations. Thus the sought after objectives are, among others, to help women and girls to rise above the weighty forces of inertia that are marginalization and non-insertion into the social and economic fabric of society.

      As a result, it is also important to promote the artisan’s sector by creating a mutual understanding between those exercising the same occuption, and to struggle against unemployment by employing girls as much as possible and organizing exchanges of points of view between the members of the cooperative and other groups both within and outside of the country. At the same time it is important to develop relations with partners such as public institutions, non-governmental organizations, and others that are implicated in the promotion of artisanry and to work to provide high quality services that are rewarding.

      Among other accomplishments, the cooperative is committed to consideration of the environment, and was able to realize the fabrication of 139 improved wood-burning kitchen stoves in clay in collaboration with Ms. Deborah McGrath, Peace Corps Volunteer in the towns of Dalaba, Diaguissa, Petel, Companya (in Labe), and in Conakry. The cooperative also trains students in the recycling of domestic plastic.

      The cooperative is devoted to the training of girls in order to raise the level of literacy of women, in seeking a change in behavior capable of leading them to take responsibility for themselves particularly in managing the health of their children. The cooperative strives to “create branch associations for the support of the education of girls and the combat against sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS, and to improve their living and health conditions.”

      In order to realize such ambitions, the president of the Sisal 2 Cooperative sends out a call to the government, to national and international NGOs for assistance in the supplying of the basic materials, equipment, teaching materials to enable them to improve the schooling rate for girls, to fight poverty, and also sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

Coopérative Artisanale Sisal 2

B.P. 14

Dalaba, République de Guinée

e-mail: casisal2@yahoo.fr

Section 3

Pieces of this cloth are available to anyone interested and are being sold by John Hutchison (978-476-3078) in order to raise funds to support the Alliance Dalaba-West Newbury.

The man’s gown shown is made of hand woven cotton cloth that is then stitched and indigo-dyed. This is the more traditional version of this cloth, known as lebbe, that is the most appreciated by the people. The mounted pieces of cotton damask cloth are tied or stitched and then indigo-dyed by hand by Fula women of Dalaba and Labe in the Futa Jalon region of Guinea, in West africa. This is the commercial variety of the cloth worn in everyday clothing. The Fula are a widespread West African ethnic group covering nearly ten countries of Sahelian Africa. It is thought that they originated in Guinea.

About the role of cloth in Guinea.

Indigo cloth plays an important role in Fula culture:

Naming ceremony: Seven days after a baby is born the name is given. Both men and women observe this ceremony. After the name has been announced there is a feast and the mother is presented with a pagne (wrapper) of indigo cloth. The mother will then either wrap and carry her baby in the cloth, save it as a remembrance, or keep it as a part of the child’s dowry.

Circumcision: The indigo cloth is also used to mark the status of boys after their circumcision. They traditionally wore a light blue cloth and carried walking sticks. They are wrapped two days before the ceremony and do not wear the cloth again until the birth of their own children.

Marriage: The bride wears an indigo cloth on her wedding day. This cloth is wrapped around her waist as a skirt. The evening of the marriage ceremony she is givden another indigo cloth called the bowlumbo. She will wear this cloth for three months and then present it to her mother who will wear it until it wears out.

Death: Indigo cloth has traditionally baeen used to wrap the dead at burial, however, it has now been largely replaced by white cloth due to the influence of Islam.

Cloth as a mark of identity:

Indigo cloth, or gudhe ngara, has a significant role in the process of identity formation on multiple levels: individual, familiar, ethnic, regional, political and national. Indigo cloth is a tool used in constructing one’s identity. The youth of the Futa Jalon is a generation that recognizes the cloth as part of an indigenous material culture, using it for t-shirts and pants to identify with the modern western world. However other youths follow and support the cultural norm of using the cloth for men’s gowns known as boubous.

Indigo cloth is also used for group identity. Families will commission particular indigo cloth to be worn by an entire wedding party. This is done to express one’s allegiance. These cloths are used for other special occasions like childbirth and naming ceremonies. Elsewhere in Guinea, they consider indigo cloth as a symbol of national identity as a democracy is established there. The dyed, hand woven indigo cloth has achieved an enhanced status and prestige over the years. It was the chosen dress for the 1996 Guinean Olympic Team for its opening ceremony dress.

 

Cloth as a gift:

A cloth as a gift is a statement of a bond between two people. Family or very close friends will give a mother a cloth at her baby’s naming ceremony. A groom will provide his new wife with outfits made of cloth and will continue to give her cloth gifts throughout their marriage to express continued affection. Mothers will also keep cloth for years in separate suitcases for each daughter or future daughter-in-law. A bride will begin her new marriage in cloth chosen by here mother and her closest female relatives.

Cloth for clothing:

The most common form of dress for women is the pagne or wrapper (wuddere). The cloth consists of seven to ten handwoven strips or lefe sewn together and dyed. A woman is considered dresssed when clothed in a wrapper from waist to ankle. Muslim women also wear what is comethimes called a ‘sacrifice’ cloth underneath the wuddere that is wrapped around the waist and then between the legs. Public dress for women will also include an upper body wrapper (wuddere tamerende) that today is usually fashioned into a robe or a blouse. An older married woman will also wear a scarf draped over here head and tossed around her neck. Wearers of this scarf command respect from others.

Men sometimes wear indigo cloth in the form of a robe, or as a type of shirt known as feddre, which is the equivalent of a cloth used for ‘sacrifice’.