Living a legacy: Artists on a mission
by Marsha Conn
In 2006, I traveled to Uganda as a teaching artist working with a dental foundation. It was here that I met the Batwa tribe of southwest Uganda whose lives had been turned upside down in 1991 when they were evicted from the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. On my next trip in 2009, Dr. Scott Kellermann and I stopped to talk to a woman on the side of the road who sat on a dirty blanket with a pile of dried beans and a baby by her side. That was all she had. No shelter, no food, no way to care for herself and for her baby. Dr. Scott helped her as he did many Batwa.
When I returned to Seattle, surrounded by my belongings, I remembered the woman on the side of the road. She had nothing, and yet I had so much. I witnessed her joy in the midst of poverty and a difficult life.
I decided that I wanted to do something to help through art and asked a group of eight local artists to travel with me to Uganda to teach the Batwa crafts so they could become self-sufficient. Even though we were uncertain how it would work, all eight women responded with a unanimous “Yes!”
We made plans to establish a Volunteer Artist Program to help the Batwa make crafts true to their culture. We wanted the crafts to come from them, not us, using recycled materials and objects found in the environment. Our first challenge was to raise money. A grant from the American Embassy in Kampala funded the needed materials. Two years of additional fundraising ultimately made the trip possible.
Upon arrival, our bus was crammed with sewing supplies and machines, tools, scissors, paper and drawing materials. Just as we were about to leave Kampala for the day-long drive to Bwindi, a Ugandan woman ran to the bus to donate bags of fabric. We were so grateful!
Our first day meeting with the Batwa was encouraging. Dressed in beautiful brightly-colored clothes, they were eager to get started. At first, we were uncertain if they would accept us. With the assistance of a translator, we quickly connected under a common purpose to discuss what we could make.
The Batwa artists brought materials they thought might be of use. Young boys collected bottle tops to make earrings and mobiles. We made jewelry, small mats, hippo bags, wind chimes, bracelets, necklaces, story cloths and drawings. Each classroom was a flurry of activity, with scraps of fabric flying everywhere. We laughed a lot and even found time to dance.
A pivotal sign of success came when Gladys, a Batwa woman, walked 24 miles to present her necklaces her village had produced on their own using the instructions we provided the previous week.
Overcome with emotion when it was time for our team to return home, I asked the Chief what they wanted us to remember. The chief addressed me as “Queen Marsha” and simply said, “Don’t forget us.”
We shared our experiences and expressed our gratitude for the relationships we made: children waving to us as our bus drove by, a man chasing his runaway goats, hikes to learn about how the Batwa once lived, the herbs they grew, the huts they built, the dances and songs, our fashion show with homemade costumes. We had fun!
My greatest memory is very simple. At night as I looked into the darkness lit up by what seemed to be a million stars, I heard new and exciting sounds around me and imagined that there were mountain gorillas roaming nearby. I pondered how all of us, the Batwa and the artists, had come together from different cultures and worlds to create something beautiful that we would remember for a long time. We had lived a legacy, not just left one.
In the months after our trip, we all agreed that the Batwa needed a dedicated space to make crafts which could be sold in the Batwas Development Program Craft Banda to generate income. News quickly spread, and an artist funded half of the Women’s Centre. Our team managed to donate the rest. The still thriving Women’s Centre is a gratifying lesson for us to believe what is possible, not what is impossible.
