NAMASTE

 

 

I recently bought this handmade ceramic piece from a cute local gift shop.

The growing popularity of yoga has helped to bring “Namaste” into our mainstream culture.

There are many interpretations of the word, but many yogis and instructors have a common description that Namaste means “the light in me honors the light in you”. While in India we learned that it’s also the customary courteous and respectful greeting to begin with (and often to end with) when meeting friends, family, or strangers. 

Why am I telling you this? Well, coincidences are cool and worth sharing, but simply put: I want to make a connection here and share a few observations about our culture and theirs. It’s not profound, by any means, but it is significant. 

Because of the context and meaning that I had for Namaste before we left, it was interesting to use it to greet the people I met each day. I don’t often get to exercise the ever-so deliberate practice of pressing my palms together at my heart, bowing my head slightly towards another, and to say such a significant word with such a powerful meaning. I essentially said “the good in me sees the good in you” to every person I met the 10 days we were in India. It was such a moving experience.It brought me to such a place of mindfulness and being in the moment. I felt it was a very “centering” experience. Now, magine if we practiced such mindfulness and such a show of respect every time we

greeted someone here. Somehow, our “hello and a handshake” just doesn’t measure up.

Now it’s time for some real talk it also called awareness to undercover judgments or criticisms that I found were imbedded in my day-to-day thinking. Instead of “the good in me sees the good in you”, I found I have been coming from a place of “the not-good-enough in me sees the not-good-enough in you”. Whoa. I had no awareness that this is where I had been coming from until I was guided to do it differently. I have always heard that we can’t love or understand others until we love and understand ourselves. That hits home more now than it ever has. We are human. We are always changing and our

capacity for love and understanding grows more every day.

That’s an experience worth sharing. 

Respect and mindfulness are key, foundational themes in our business. They are integral pieces of fair trade principles, and they are important to our supporters and humanity at large.

Thank you for your practice in mindfulness and for “Being The Change”.

Namaste,

Shanan

20 Years Without A Country

Over 200,000 members of the Karen Tribe in Burma (Myanmar) have been displaced due to political turmoil and persecution. As many as 160,000 of them live in refugee camps along the Thai-Burma border. The Karen are not Burmese, they were there long before Burma existed. They aren't Thai, even though many residents of the camps were born in Thailand. In the 20 years the camps have existed a whole generation of children have grown up there and are starting to have children of their own. Two generations of people who have never stepped foot in their homeland, yet are not free to move about the country where they live. One of the largest of the camps is MaeLa, home to about 50,000 people. In January we were able to visit the MaeLa with staff members from Women's Education for Development and Empowerment (WEAVE), an NGO (non government charity organization) Buy The Change works with in northern Thailand.

We were required to submit our information to the Thai government for a special letter of permission to enter the refugee camp zone. After taking a 5 hour car ride from Chiang Mai, our home base in northern Thailand, to the small town of MaeSod, we met with the staff of WEAVE and visited their showroom which is filled with products made by women in the camps. WEAVE is dedicated to assisting refugee women by giving them training in business building and helping them find worldwide markets for their handmade goods. We were able to see many new products and placed a large order for our Spring/Summer inventory. Maybe sometime soon I will tell you about the northern Thailand rest stop toilets and roadside food we experienced on our 5 hour drive north. We weren't doing the driving in case you were wondering. Even I, who loves an adventure, would not take off in a car through the mountains of Thailand without a guide.

The next morning, after passing through 4 or 5 police check points, we entered MaeLa camp. The camp is a virtual city in itself with homes, stores, restaurants, schools and offices. There are many NGOs with a presence in the camp focused on assisting the refugees with everything from education to relocation. We saw a setup of a typical American kitchen and bathroom used to prepare people who will be relocating to the United States. Can you imagine having never left MaeLa camp, where there is no running water, plumbing or electricity in your home, getting on a plane and being plopped down in a city in the US. Talk about culture shock. At the WEAVE tent we met Newah, a 20 year old mother of 3 who spoke a small amount of english, she makes her living doing embroidery for WEAVE. She had gotten word that she was approved for relocation to the US and will be living in Kentucky. Of course we gave her all of our contact information and expressed several times that we would be glad to help her in any way we can after she arrives. Newah gave us a tour of her home which is made of bamboo slats and sits up on stilts to be above the water that rushes through the camp during the rainy season. There was a stack of mats that they roll out to sleep on at night.

Because of the bamboo construction of almost all the buildings in the camp, fires are a common occurrence. When a fire starts it rages through many buildings quickly. It is so sad to think of people who have been displaced from their country, lost everything, watched family members be killed, lived in the forest moving daily to avoid Burmese solders and walked hundreds of miles to get to the relative safety of the camps losing everything again. You can see from the photo they do not have much. A fire had raged through an area of MaeLa shortly before our visit and we were able to see the rebuilding taking place. This is a typical street in the camp so you can see how a fire would be very difficult to stop.

Everyone who knows me or follows Buy The Change knows how much I love kids and enjoy taking photos of kids on our artisan visits. The good news at MaeLa is that all the kids go to school. The bad new, for me anyway, was the kids were in school during the time of our visit so I didn't get the chance to take any photos. We passed this group of little ones while walking from the site of the fire.

At the WEAVE tent we watched the women sewing, on foot powered sewing machines, and weaving on back strap looms. It is a fascinating and time intensive process, from setting up the loom to weaving the scarves and shawls one thread at a time. They asked if we wanted to take a try and we said no, for fear of messing up a project it takes 3 days to finish, without having to fix the mistakes of visiting Americans. Buy The Change sells scarves and shawls made by these women and we have only a few left in stock. You can see a couple of colors on the website here:http://www.buythechangeusa.org/scarves. We also have a couple each of khaki and peach left in the show inventory. Message us if you are interested in any of those. Each purchase will enable us to order more products from these wonderful women and keep them working. The blue in the photo is sold out, sorry.

Thank you so much for joining us on this journey of creating positive change for women around the world. Together we are changing lives one bag, blanket, scarf and piece of jewelry at a time.

I leave you with one of my favorite photos from MaeLa camp.

In Gratitude,

Kari

From Genocide to Peace

The third country Shanan and I visited on our artisan tour in Asia was Cambodia. The people of Cambodia have endured a great deal in a span of time shorter than my lifetime. Here is a very brief history; after the Vietnam War spread to Cambodia, the communist Khmer Rouge regime took power. What followed was years of devastation, mass killings, torture and fear. From 1975 to 1979, led by the Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, there was a reign of terror in this small country. In 4 years, nearly 2 million Cambodians were murdered. Under the government that followed a full pardon was given to all members of the Khmer Rouge for the genocide and atrocities they had committed, this was a slap in the face to the surviving Cambodian People. In 1993, a mere 20 years ago, peace came to Cambodia. Since then, the country has struggled to find growth and prosperity while surrounded by the remnants of war, the rule of a dictator and a communist government. The endless list of challenges they still face include land mines, extreme poverty, lack of infrastructure, lack of jobs and a population left deeply wounded both physically and psychologically.

We didn’t know what to expect as we headed for Phnom Penh on the last leg of our tour. Our reading told us Cambodia is a place you will fall in love with or feel completely overwhelmed by. We settled in, after some hotel switching drama, and were ready to find out which side of the love/hate relationship we would develop with the Kingdom of Cambodia. We fell in love! Cambodia is chaos with seemingly no traffic rules, huge SUVs, whole families on scooters, hundreds of tuk tuks pulled by motorcycles and bicycles all weaving in and out, and somehow not running in to each other. Cambodia is beautiful with temples and bright orange clad monks everywhere you look. Cambodia is joyful and filled with smiles. The Cambodian people amazingly find a way to include kindness and laughter in each day.

Buy The Change works with a non-profit called Craftworks Cambodia which was founded to give disabled Cambodians access to a market for their handmade goods. We aren’t talking about arts and crafts here, these people are highly skilled sewers, weavers and jewelry makers. Craftworks Cambodia works with dozens of independent crafts people around the city and in surrounding villages. Sapbay, the founder and director of Craftworks Cambodia who was once a refugee himself, was kind enough to introduce us to many of them.

We visited a woman living with HIV/Aids. Her husband died of AIDS several years ago. She earns enough money with her sewing and beading to support herself and her daughter who is now attending university. Her daughter was home that day helping her mother add beading to an order of blouses. 

We visited the workshop of Srey Kimsean and Srey Mach . Kimsean caught polio as a child and wears a brace on her damaged leg, Mach lost her leg in a land mine explosion many years ago.  These two women are the creators of our popular Elephant Bags and our new Recycled Feed Bag IPhone cases. They are challenged daily with the fact that their workshop is on the second floor up a very steep flight of stairs. This may slow them down a bit but it certainly never stops them.

Srey Oun , we have written about her story in previous blog posts, was the victim of an acid attack during a dispute with a neighbor 14 years ago and was left severely disfigured and blind. She supports her elderly mother and young daughter with the income she earns crocheting bags for Buy The Change and other fair trade companies. She keeps her face covered but showed it to us and it was difficult not to react when seeing the pain she has endured.

Along with her husband and several apprentices, this wonderful mother creates the Recycled Bombshell Jewelry we are so excited to add to our inventory for Spring. He was raised in an orphanage and she was born in a refugee camp, together they have come so far. We had to rethink our philosophy concerning selling items made exclusively by women. This couple works together, side by side, every day. They are raising two chldren and working very hard to create a better life for them. It didn’t seem right to exclude them and these great products because she has a husband to share her life and workload with. We learned that empowering whole families is empowering women. 

Hopefully, this short introduction to a few of our artisans in Cambodia will help you understand how important and life changing your purchases are to real people working hard every day to create better lives for themselves and their children.

As always, Thank you so much for joining us on this journey. Together we are changing lives one bag, blanket and piece of jewelry at a time.

In Gratitude,

Kari