Ceramics, Leaves, and the Beach

January 21, 2008 at 12:49 pm · Filed under Indonesia, Rukmin

I’ve been in Bali for three days and after just one day it was easy to see that this is a culture devoted to handicrafts…and ceremonies – there are at least three ceremonies scheduled for the area during my 10-day stay.

The Balinese seem to be great at using natural sources to make their products.  Driving through a small village near Tabanan, I noticed piles and piles of discarded coconut shells.  It looked like junk and anywhere else it might have been just that.  However, my wonderful hosts from Mitra Bali informed me they were used to heat the kiln for the ceramics producer we were visiting.  This was the only “garbage” I saw on the roadside for most of the ride through the village.

The story of the producer is interesting (at least to me).  He used make clay roof tiles, like everyone else in his village, and struggled to support his family.  Working with Mitra Bali, he took a chance on ceramic homewares and decorative items AND on fair trade.  When his business started to grow, he hired workers and experimented with new designs.  After 14 years, he now has 50 employees, over half of which are women.  He pays all his employees salaries, gives them paid sick days and holidays, offers overtime, and gives one-hour lunch breaks so the women can go home and make food for their families.  His workshop is relaxed and at the same time efficient – very Balinese.  Mitra Bali refers to him as a model for all their producers.   Here’s what struck me about this gentleman.  He is a true entrepreneur.  We spent two hours at his shop and in that time he showed us at least five new designs he created, and after a 30 minute brainstorm session with Mitra Bali’s designer Adi, he had a few more already started by the time we left.  I was impressed, but not surprised at his drive.

On my first full day here, I visited a producer who uses recycled materials and leaves from his garden to create photo frames, notebooks and boxes.  His family and a few workers create these beautiful pieces at his home.  But don’t be fooled, this is a real business.  He pays his workers salaries, offers sick days, and even supplies breakfast and lunch.  He worked with Mitra Bali to determine a fair salary for his workers.  When I asked him about costing, he had the numbers for each type of material he used.  When we talked about his wage calculation, he was clear on the steps that lead him to salaries.  It wasn’t completely accurate, but it seemed like a step in the right direction.  By the way, he too had already come up with a few new designs to show us - he definitely has a designer’s heart.

One thing to note – both producers said their workers requested monthly salaries.  This helps them save money more easily, as they are not spending it on a daily basis.

Tomorrow I am off to visit a fair trade village and the most scared temple in Bali.  My hosts insist that I combine work with some fun exploring every day - yesterday, we started our day in the very small village of Tabanan (with no street signs or even addresses) and ended the day on the beach in Kuta, the busiest spot in Bali.

For the rest of my trip, I am staying in Ubud, the cultural center of Bali.  And I am excited to not see a Starbucks for the rest of my stay here!

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Bhubaneswar

August 8, 2007 at 1:05 pm · Filed under India, Emily

July 19, 2007

I left Delhi on Wednesday, amidst the scent of diesel fuel and the metalic hiss of jet engines.  I used the two hour flight to nap away some of my anxiety—what would this new place bring?  Yes, I was ready to leave Delhi, but was I ready to face another new city, alone again?

I awoke above Bhubaneswar.  Delhi’s iron grip on my stomach loosened as I surveyed the toy city through foggy windows—this place was green.  The buildings appeared as small, dusty-colored rectangles, like faded packages of chewing gum arranged on a lawn.

I walked off the plane into a curtain of humidity and fell in love with Bhubaneswar.  Bright palms and scrubby greens smiled across the tarmac in the wet sun.  The stares in the airport were friendly and curious, rather than suspicious or antagonistic, as they had felt in Delhi.  An enthusiastic taxi driver helped me with my bags, and we drove through Bhubaneswar.

The air carries some scent I can’t quite wrap my memory around—like lavender, mint, and moist tree bark.  Gone are the constant gusts of exhaust and claustrophobic concrete of Delhi.  The earth here is red.  Alongside the road, wide, motherly palms stand affably next to elegant eucalyptis trees.  I caught glimpses of Bhubaneswar’s streets:  cows lying placidly in the center of the road amidst honking traffic, chewing their cud introspectively.  People in colorful fabric building structures out of long, straight poles.  Men selling fragrant food out of oversized aluminum cannisters.  Mangoes piled in neat pyramids by the roadside.  My flickering impressions from the drive revealled that poverty exists in rural India as well as urban.  But on a smaller, slower scale, the sense of scarcity doesn’t feel as frantic, nor the struggle as impossible, as it did in Delhi.

I have come to Bhubaneswar, first of all, to work with ORUPA (Orissa Rural and Urban Producer’s Association).  ORUPA is a fair trade umbrella organization that acts as both a capacity-building partner and a marketing agent for 109 member organizations, among them NGOs, handicrafts cooperatives, and independent artisan workshops.  Training them on the Fair Wage Guide would be a new challenge for me:  since ORUPA mostly sells to the domestic Indian market, they’d never heard of World of Good or the FWG before I contacted them—so I would be starting from scratch.
I had another reason to come to Bhubaneswar:  my mother, her parents, and her brother and sister lived here for several years in the mid-1960’s.  My grandfather was invited to come to Bhubaneswar on a USAID contract, acting as an advisor at Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT).  So in 1963, my very-Midwestern family packed trunks of clothing, kitchen appliances, and Christmas decorations, and moved to Bhubaneswar, then more of a village than a city.  For five years my grandparents lived here with their children, adapting their lifestyle and habits from Columbia, Missouri to the realities of rural India.  The stories I grew up with paint a picture of a hybrid life, sometimes makeshift in its day-to-day solutions, and often poignant and comical in its surprising cultural mix-ups, like the time when the cook tried to wash the paper plates after a picnic, or the time when the housekeeper was found politely worshiping the cardboard Santa that had been left temporarily sitting inside a mock fireplace.  My grandmother proved to be a creative, adaptable homemaker, and the staff that ran their household proved equally adaptable and patient, learning to prepare strange American foods and procuring imported items like butter from far-away city emporiums.  Since I was a child, I have imagined coming to this place and finding remnants of these stories myself.

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A week of contrasts in Delhi

July 5, 2007 at 11:11 am · Filed under India, Emily

Delhi has proven to be a city of striking contrasts. Exactly a week after my visit to the child labor sweatshops, I found myself folded luxuriously into the corner of a vast chaise under the stars, blinking through the glittering crowd across a pool at a six-foot disco ball that spun to the pulse of techno-bhangra music. The place was Aqua, one of Delhi’s elite watering holes. The slick of beauty and wealth that hung over the patio appeared to be as intoxicating to the crowd as the concoctions in characateured cocktail glasses that adorned their manicured hands. I nodded non-committally through the banter of a wealthy politician as my overloaded senses struggled to parse the twinkling palms, the chlorine and flowers, the taste of lime, the swish of a sari past my knees. It was gorgeous and elegant and exclusive and alarmingly opulent—this was Delhi’s glitterati.

In the week that has bridged these two extremes, new meetings and conversations with others concerned about child labor crowded into the cracks of my schedule. A child labor activist. The head of an NGO that provides housing and education for homeless children. A media maven. A public health worker. They have brought more depth and texture into my thinking about the sweatshops I saw last week.

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Using the Fair Wage Guide at Mission Guatemala

July 2, 2007 at 12:22 pm · Filed under Guatemala, Aura Sanchez

Chimaltenango, Guatemala, February, 2007 - I saw the ad on Idealist. Com - Mission Guatemala was looking for a volunteer for a month to teach Spanish to the small staff of Guatemalans working for their non-profit organization.  The main office was in Chimaltenango, a city the guide books suggest you spend little time in. Others I spoke to however, found the place intriguing and authentic with an almost two-thirds indigenous population and a huge week-long market. It had been almost 40 years since last I’d been to Guatemala and I was eager to go again. Kay Sweeney, the director and founder of Mission Guatemala, called me at the end of December of ’06, a month before I was ready to go, and asked if, instead of teaching, I’d be interested in helping them do a trial-run of the Fair Wage Guide. 

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