How we travel

Let me just say it. Because unless you have been to Congo you probably can't really imagine. It is a miracle. Point blank. The fact that you can purchase a handmade bag from Congo. I know we make it seem easy. You order it and it arrives at your door a few days later. But that package, or rather the thing inside it, has made a truly incredible journey. A journey that started like this...

That is Argentine, with Solange behind her, on her kinga. Kinga means bicycle in Swahili, or in this case I guess it means tricycle. Argentine peddles it with her hands, and usually has someone to help push her. When the ladies are done a month of sewing, Argentine loads her Kinga with a 44 pound carton of SHONA goods and peddles it to the main road, on this path...

And that is just the start of the journey...a journey that ends a number of border crossings, bus rides and plane rides later, here in New York... with each individual purchase going out to the post office, carefully escorted by myself and Baby Claire (in her ridiculously large stroller).

You can get a quality, handcrafted bag from Eastern Congo delivered to your doorstep for under $15. A miracle? Yes. How is it possible? It is possible precisely because your bag travels like this...it starts in a tricycle and ends in a stroller. SHONA is truly the work of our hands. So next time you get a bag from SHONA, take a minute and look at that picture of Argentine again. And imagine the journey your bag has made. It will amaze you in so many ways.

And this is life in Goma

Mapendo sitting on one of the few things she still owns, her wooden bed frame. It is covered with sheets since she no longer has a mattress.

3 weeks ago thieves entered the house where Mapendo lives while she was at the shop working. They stole pretty much everything she owns, except the wooden frame of her bed. She came home to discover that everything was gone, except the clothes on her back.

This is how the new year started for Mapendo. For 3 weeks she has worn the same clothes everyday, because she has no others, and slept on the wooden slats of her bed, since the thieves stole her mattress.

But it is worse than that. Those thieves made off not only with all of her possessions but also all of her earnings for the month of December. Mapendo normally wouldn't keep money at home, but she had been preparing to send money to her mother who has been sick, and to take care of the many other family responsibilities that she carries.

Mapendo with her nieces and nephews, who she helps care for since their father died.

The irony is this. Just that week Mapendo had called in a carpenter to take measurements for a new door on her bedroom. In a country with little security, strong doors matter a lot. Trying to be prudent, Mapendo had set aside her own money to have a new door installed. And she thinks it was this very action that drew attention to her and led to the robbery. In the irony of Goma, the very act of trying to make yourself even slightly more secure, and protect the very little that you have, can make you a target.

Mapendo spent the first 3 weeks of the new year with no mattress, no clothes and no money, and I had no idea of what was happening. I have been busy with the new baby and Mapendo was embarrassed to tell me. When I found out I gave her enough money to buy a new mattress and a few pairs of clothes. But she still desperately misses the rest of the money she lost, money that should have gone to help her family and buy food for the month. The beautiful reality of SHONA is that the money each artisan earns touches the lives of so many. But on the flip side, when that money get lost, so many people feel it.

I asked Mapendo what she has been thinking these past three weeks. She answered, "nilifunga roho". Literally that means "I closed my heart", it carries with it the idea of hardening oneself/steeling oneself for difficult times.

This is life in Goma, where too often it is necessary "kufunga roho"...and yet the people of Goma open their hearts and carry on, again and again. As for Mapendo she is anxious to get back to work, and to start again.

I'm in the process of listing our new stock in our store, so please check it out, and consider buying something from SHONA this month, in support of Mapendo as she gets on her feet again. Or if you'd like to directly send a little money her way click here.

New Stock thanks to Baby Claire

Three cheers for Baby Claire, who slept for 3 hours in the afternoon, letting me get most of the new SHONA stock photographed.

Keep your eyes on our website for the new stock posting in the next few days, along with a great sale! (And if you're curious about some of our new cloth colors and designs take a look at the photo below!) OK, I better run...Baby Claire is no longer sleeping!

The challenge begins

This is Claire Neema. She arrived on December 27th. She is doing great, at nine pounds, and is super chill and sleepy all day, but ready to party all night!


And these are 2 packages from Congo. Filled with SHONA merchandise. They arrived on January 3rd.

They are also doing great. Except that they are still sitting in my apartment untouched. I only opened them so I could take this picture.

So begins the challenge. Claire is a beautiful new addition to our life and we love her infinitely. But I am also a bit sleep deprived and fuzzy at this point, finding it rather difficult to accomplish...well...much of anything beyond keeping Claire fed and clothed. Well...mostly just fed. Her grandmother seems to have taken over the "clothed" part...delighting in the huge array of outfits we have been given. If it were up to me, Claire would still be in a diaper and t shirt everyday.

At some point I will actually get some pictures of these new products, that the SHONA ladies work so hard on, and you will see me announce new stuff in our online store. I'm not sure if that will be a day from now or a month from now. But at least you'll know the effort that went into getting those new pictures online, in the midst of all the pauses.

So far my experience of having a child seems to be a lot like an African rainstorm. In Africa, you glance at the sky from time to time, and sometimes you see the clouds rolling in. You know it will rain soon, and so life just pauses. If you are out walking, you stand under an overhang and wait for the rain to pass. Often you end up crowded under the overhang with a random collection of people that were passing by. And so you make new friends. Or if you are out visiting someone, they put on another cup of tea, and you settle in for a slightly longer visit. And if you were at home getting ready to go somewhere, you just wait. You put your feet up, listen to the sound of rain hitting a tin roof, and enjoy the pause in the middle of the day.

Now, my days seem to have many of these pauses. Not because of rain, but because of Claire. Claire decides she is hungry and starts crying, and my whole world is put on pause.

The African rain was one of my favorite parts of Africa. It slows life down, and reminds us that we don't really run the world according to our own schedule. Seeing the clouds roll in, and hearing the patter of rain on tin roofs, helped me to enjoy the moment, even when it isn't exactly what I planned to do. It gave me permission to surrender myself and my time.

And so here I am now, with Claire. And I hope that I can cherish these pauses as well. These breaks throughout the day (and mostly the night!!) where I put down my hands full of work and sit in a rocking chair, listening to the quiet breathing (and snuffling) of this little baby...these breaks are precious too.

In fact I've taken 2 of them, just in the midst of writing this one blog entry. So if my blog entries seem fewer and farther between, and my product photos take longer to get online, you can know that they are punctuated by the cry of a little one, who just like the sound of rain on a tin roof, helps to remind me that life is made richer because of these pauses in the midst of our days.

Final Holiday Specials!

The holidays are nearly upon us and this is our final Holiday Offering! SHONA truly makes great gifts for the holidays. Check us out.

**Order your holiday gifts by December 15th and we will make sure they arrive before Christmas (within the US).

**Plus we're offering FREE HOLIDAY WRAPPING. Just leave us a note in the comments box at check out requesting FREE HOLIDAY WRAPPING and we will wrap your gift for you. And if you want, we will send the present directly to your loved one, just let us know the address!

*Check out our holiday packages!

Matching Apron and Table Runner: Celebrate the colors of the Season!
$29.99 for the set!

Set of 4 Shoulder Bags for the price of 2!
These bags make great stocking stuffers, gift bags and meaningful holiday gifts for teachers! Choose the colors you like!
Set of 4 for $29.99

Matching Apron and Placemat Set:
Celebrate the colors of the Season!
$34.99 for the set!

We Wait...

At 39 and a half weeks pregnant I feel as though my life has become something of a waiting game.

Waiting for this baby to come, waiting for our whole world to flip upside-down, waiting for a change that I can't really imagine.

It strikes me that this is actually meant to be a season of waiting, this advent season. There is the lighting of the advent candles at church each week. And each week we sing "O come, O Come Emmanuel".

I have tried encouraging this little baby inside me along similar lines.

But in general the Christmas season has rarely seemed to me to be much of a season for waiting. The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is impossibly short. Too short for getting the holiday decorations out ahead of time; I'm lucky if we have a tree up on the 24th. And by that I mean a NY apartment size Christmas tree, that most of you would probably laugh at. Too short for all the meaningful holiday gifts I plan to find, leading to last minute trips to big box stores which I despise. The lighting of the advent candles each week seem to generally provoke in me a reaction of "Oh, no, we're that close to Christmas already? But I'm not ready!"

I am not ready for Christmas this year either, but at least I have got the spirit of waiting down this time. I know that I am impossibly ill-prepared for the baby's arrival (don't ask about a name) but I've given up the frantic rushing around, in the knowledge that nothing I do will adequately prepare me. So, I'm just waiting. And we'll see how it goes.

Perhaps I should surrender to this spirit of waiting at every Christmas as well. Surely Christmas isn't really about having all the decorations in place. After all, Christmas is the celebration of a king born in a stable. I'm pretty sure Mary had different plans for that birth, plans that didn't quite work out. It is about surrender to something that is in fact beyond us.

The Congolese people are also waiting right now. They cast their votes last week for President. And now the votes are being counted. Results were promised on Tuesday, but have yet to come. And in Congo, it is truly a spirit of waiting. I ask my Congolese friends how things are in Goma and they respond "tunangoja tu" (we're only waiting) The SHONA women have piled up two cartons of SHONA products that are ready to ship, but no one is ready to ship them. The guy in charge of getting our cartons on a plane out of Goma, says there are no planes right now. "You have to wait until we see what happens with the elections," he says.

There is a great fear that when election results are announced, the losing sides will take to the streets. There have already been promises along those lines.

I guess waiting can come in many forms, both good and bad. So as I sit here today, looking out at the people rushing past my window, bundled in coats and headed off into a busy world, I will enjoy this time of waiting. For me, it is the privilege of waiting for this little one's arrival. No matter how much I worry that I am not nearly prepared, I know her arrival is a blessing.

For the people of Congo, I wish I could say the same. They wait for news that their country will somehow manage to hold together. Or news, that it won't. They wait for peace which has proved elusive for far too long, and yet which is hard to imagine to this day.

In this season of waiting, it is perhaps important to remember all that we have. And all that the rest of the world continues to wait for.

A gift of Joy! And Free Shipping!

Give a gift of joy and hope
this holiday season!

And shop today to enjoy free shipping!

This is Argentine with her youngest sister.
Your purchases empower Argentine
to provide for her mother &
7 siblings.

Her family lives in one of the
most violent regions of Congo, with very few resources. Before
Argentine started sewing none of her
siblings were in school, and there was barely food on the table.

Today, with your purchases,
there is food on the table
and there are children in school.

Your purchases make all the difference in the world to their family.

www.shonacongostore.com