Reading this week:

• American Serengeti by Dan Flores

Our final formal event of our very fun day with Kigoma Eco-Cultural Tourism was the one nearest and dearest to Elizabeth’s (the owner’s) heart: learning to embroider traditional mashuka ya Kigoma. But first, lunch. This was very exciting because I finally got some ugali on this trip. It’s called nsima in Mambwe, and I ate it every day in Zambia, and I had been missing it. All the places we had been to so far catered a little too much to tourists to serve any ugali with dinner but now here we were at the very nice Juke Fast Food where they will serve you your goat stew with ugali and it was very good.

My super amazing wife and I did not know about mashuka ya Kigoma until we came to Kigoma, though the artform is purportedly known throughout Tanzania. What they are is bedsheets embroidered with fancy designs (“mashuka” being “sheets”). My super amazing wife and I had initially thought they might be something like taatit rugs, special sorta newlywed gifts, but they do not seem to be so narrowly employed. Instead, as far as well could tell, they are just fancy “good” sheets.

Although we were going to embroider some ourselves, first we did some market research by stopping by the market and researching the wares. This was extremely impressive. The women all unfolded the many, many examples they had. Some of the designs were very complex and very wild. A number had embroidered animals, like large zebras or peacocks. Others took more inspiration from pop culture, like one that had a swirling repeated Coca-Cola logo motif. Others were more geometric.

At the back of the market we saw some of the division of labor in the mashuka economy. Although Elizabeth assured me that there are women that do the same, we saw a setup where men were first creating the bedsheets themselves by sewing together two strips of fabric to create a single bedsheet (hey, again like taatit). I was tempted to think that meant the craft started with ‘merikani but that would be some irresponsible speculation. Neither Elizabeth nor Peter (our guide) could report when mashuka ya Kigoma started, except that it was apparently long ago. After the men create the bedsheet they then also draw the designs (again Elizabeth says some women do their own patterns). From these the women do the embroidery to decorate the sheet.

For most women who do this work it is a supplemental income method. When we visited the market on our walking tour all the women who were selling vegetables were also embroidering sheets as they waited for customers. The women we were going to be learning from do it in the afternoons. They are part of a co-op that Elizabeth helped organize. In the mornings the women work in their gardens and then after lunch all gather to hang out and embroider sheets. When we arrived they had already gotten started, so we all said our hellos and settled down to do some needlework.

Instead of starting in on a whole sheet my super amazing wife and I both had basically samplers. Elizabeth’s co-op focuses on more traditional geometric designs, executed with some basic stitches. By “basic” here I mean there is a set of standard ones they use and not “simple,” because the women tried to teach me and I just did not get it. Having tried my hand at it the most stunning thing about these sheets is how cheap they are. Each of these women fully embroiders a whole sheet in about two weeks and despite all that work we bought a sheet and pillowcase set (our samplers were really meant to be half a pillowcase each) from them for I think about $30. Having tried it this is bonkers to me. After a very short amount of time (it can’t have been an hour) sitting on a mat trying to embroider I was a broken man. My back ached and my legs were falling asleep and I just got progressively worse and worse at this M design this woman tutoring me tried to impart upon me. Quite the learning experience and a valuable and concrete lesson on the value of women’s work; I think those sheets should really be like $1000 each.

Eventually our backs and our egos were taken pity upon and Peter took us on a walk to “show us the environment.” This meant going down the hill to the little fishing village nestled in a cove. This was very pretty but also hot and long and in the end we had to walk back uphill which finished us off. But the village was very interesting to see. Of all the spots where we witnessed the rising lake levels this was the starkest. Out in the water was standing by itself the minaret of a former mosque. I guess the tower was made of concrete but the rest of the mosque had been made of mud brick so with the lake washing away the foundations the bricks had returned to just mud. The most fun part of it all was when one of the fishermen who were bringing in their boats greeted us with a “Bonjour!” I trawled up every ounce of high school French I could in an exercise of us mostly not understanding each other, but in the end I learned he was Congolese (if the French didn’t give it away) and lived in the village. He invited us (as a joke) to go fishing with him which I deferred until “maybe tomorrow.”

Environment seen, we then hiked back up the hill which finally did in my super amazing wife and I. Elizabeth rescued us in the car and brought us, after our very long and very interesting day, back to our hotel. Just to put a point on how great Elizbeth and Kigoma Eco-Cultural Tourism is, she finished overnight our samplers and brought them to the hotel the next day so we could take the finished product home. So one last time, if you are in Kigoma you have got to hit them up. Meanwhile though we pulled ourselves to the hotel restaurant where we watched another amazing Tanganyika sunset go down over Congo while enjoying the company of each other and some cold Stoney Tangawizis.