Elukwatini is a small town off the beaten track in the province of Mpumalanga (previously Transval). Typically, craft is an important means for women to take initiative in using their skills to make opportunities for themselves. Weaving from telephone wire has become one of the main village craft industries in South Africa. Agnes Mafuso has led a group of women in Elukwatini to develop their techniques and supply bowls to city shops. Agnes' daughter Philile follows her mother's footsteps, but finds the going difficult for a young person. She was invited to write for Craft Culture to describe a typical day. Her account reveals some of the difficulties in this craft, and the need to accord it greater value.
Philile Simelane with an early telephone wire bowl
...I'm looking for a job because, I can't continue making a living out of telephone wire bowls. They too long to make, too little money and take forever to sell. Sometimes it takes months to be bought. It could have been better if we were near the cities because tourists would buy our products, but I haven't stopped making the bowls. I have learned to make copper bangles too.
...My typical day goes like this: I wake up in the morning at around 5am to check if there is water in the tape because sometimes you wake up and there is no water. If the water is gone, I go to check if it is available at the cemetery tap and if it also not there I have to go up the hill and get it from the borehole.
After I have fetched water, I put it on our paraffin stove to boil to make breakfast. I either cook soft porridge or make tea with bread. Then I help my mother get ready to go to the environmental centre as well as help my brother get ready for school. After they have left I fetch water again for chores, because the water I fetch earlier gets finished because it is used for bathing and cooking.
I then do the dishes, I do the pots, I sweep the floors of our two roomed house. I mop the floors and apply polish if it is available and if I have to apply it. I leave it to dry, then I take it off with a brush. I dust whenever and whatever needs to be dusted. I do some washing if need be, but that happens only only once a week. Then I have to do some work outside, like sweeping the yard, water the vegetables in the garden when water is available, but they usually die out because our climate is so hot and the water is scarce. Rain only falls during the summer and when it does rain, it sweeps away everything.
After I'm done with the garden (what's left of it), and the yard, I feed the chickens mealies and the dogs are fed porridge, and whatever we had the previous night. After that I'm done with my chores and I get myself cleaned up and I'm off to the environmental centre where I join the other women. I had stopped going there since February because I was busy looking for a job in our dead-end so-called town. I walked into every store, bank and even the undertakers, but I still didn't get hired.
I would have gone to the big cities, but I wouldn't have had a place to stay whilst looking for a job there. Besides, the jobs being offered there are for people with proper qualifications like diplomas and degrees and I only have a senior certificate which means I have nothing. I wanted to get a job so that I would save up enough to go to university, but the way things are going, it doesn't look good, but I haven't given up hope yet.
In the beginning of March I started going to the environmental centre again, it is still the same story, all work and too little money. My mom went to a show in Qatar and Oman, but she says the show wasn't good. She didn't do as well as she had hoped. She still hasn't received the money for the things that she sold there due to whatever reason that I do not know.
When I come home from the environmental centre, I have to prepare supper. It depends on what we are having for me to finish early with my cooking and continue with making my bowls or bangles. We usually have porridge and beans or porridge with spinach or porridge with cabbage or porridge with sour milk. Cooking the beans usually takes a lot of my time because they take so long to be ready and for that reason I have to cook them outside on our three legged pot so that I do not waste paraffin.
On Sundays we slaughter a chicken, that is when we eat meat (yay). After I'm done with supper, I continue with making my handicraft. Then off to sleep.
I still want to go to law school. I still want to achieve my law degree. My mother has raised me to make a success out of myself. This is not what I'm supposed to be. My life cannot be a dead-end. Sometimes the future seems so bleak that I can't think straight and sometimes I question why I am on earth if I have to endure so much poverty, but I won't give up that easily.
Philile Simelane is a young telephone wire weaver whose mother runs a women's collective that make a modest income from their bowls
Last modified 23-May-2005
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