Embroiderers

Sani Mudau

My name is Sani Mudau. Mudau is a well-known surname in this area. We are vhalanda, ordinary Venda people, people of the land with no status. I do not know when we started living in this dry area, my parents lived here and their parents too, as far as I can remember. I am married and have seven children, my husband is over fifty but still tries to find work but as you can see there are no lasting jobs in this area. Everyone is so poor. In the past, when we both were young my husband often spoke of getting a job in Johannesburg, but he never even traveled as far as Polokwane. He could never find a job. How we all survived I do not know. My life had not been easy. About 20 years ago I found work in the kitchen of a white lady who lived on a farm nearby. I do not know how it happened, but there I stood one morning in the kitchen with a doek around my waist, the lady called it an apron. That was the beginning of the happiest time in my life.
“Can you cook?” the lady asked. And I had to admit, I could only cook porridge.
That morning I learnt the proper way to cook pumpkin.
First you peel the pumpkin. Carefully, with a sharp knife and then you cut it into small pieces. Then comes the tricky part: you put the pumpkin pieces in a pot with very little water on the cool side of the stove, and you listen very carefully how it simmers gently. Keep the lid closed. When your pumpkin is cooked, find a beautiful dish, pick the most beautiful dish in the house and place the cooked pumpkin in this dish. Sprinkle well with sugar and spices, there used to be a wonderful bottle of sweet smelling fine brown powder in the farm kitchen but I have forgotten the name of that pwder. Then you cover the pumpkin well with the sugar and spices. Before you place the beautiful dish in the oven, remember to put many chunks of farm butter on top. Leave the pumpkin to bake in the oven. I used to sit in front of the oven listening to the pumpkin with the cat on my lap. For twelve years I worked in the kitchen and that was the happiest time in my life. The sweet smelling pumpkin and the soft fur of the cat.
The lady died and her husband moved away. We were very poor and with seven children life is a struggle. One day I went to pastor Piet Mavhetha. I could not say too much I just sat there crying. He called his wife and told her “Teach this woman how to embroider.” My life changed a little bit. Now I can embroider well and I can support myself and my children who are grown up but still without jobs.

Florah Kwinda

I was born in this same area where I still living now. Long, long ago. Sometimes, when we sit talking at night around the cooking fire in our kitchen hut, my friends say it was better in the olden days. In those days we had more rain, the corn grew taller, we had more goats and hens and eggs, but I do not think it is true. I can remember years of drought, yes there was rain but I can also remember poverty and hunger and drought. My many sisters and brothers and I did not go to school, there were no schools in this area. We did not have schools and shops or roads. Later when I became a teenager a white farmer bought a farm close to where we were staying. He started cutting away the bush and employed my whole family and other families too. He said he wanted to plant tomatoes.
“What is that?” we asked ourselves. We only knew miroho, that is wild spinach.
The farmer and his wife saw we had no food at our homes; we were hungry in the mornings and could not work so well. From then, on early in the mornings one woman had to make a fire and cook a huge pot of porridge for all the workers.
“You must come to work before sunrise,” the man said “and eat first.”
He did not have to ask us to come to work earlier; we could not wait to get to work. Before we fell asleep we were thinking of that big pot of steaming porridge. We dreamt of that big pot of steaming porridge.
After some time the farmer told us it was the end of the first month.
“What is that?” we wondered. We stood in a line and received money. Many of us haven’t seen paper money before, the coins we recognized, but what are we to do with the paper?
The farmer’s wife, who could also speak Tshivenda explained to us that  paper was actually of more value than the coins. We laughed and shook our heads. How could that piece of paper be more than shiny metal coins?
“I’ll take you to Musina, to the shop.” She said.
One afternoon she took us all in the big truck to Musina. In those days there was one shop in Musina.
“Come!” She said but we did not want to get down from the truck. My mother sent me and my sister to follow the farmer’s wife into the shop. The whole shop was full of wonderful things, corn meal in bags as high as the roof, bags and bags of sugar, a mountain of yellow pumpkins, bags of salt, a whole row of bicycles, a crate full of white shoes. As our eyes got used to the dim light inside, we saw more and more wonderful things. Loaves and loaves of bread, eggs in large wooden boxes. Bottles of Vaseline, bars and bars of blue soap, candles, small bags of tobacco all stacked up, blue dresses and red dresses that could fit me and my sisters and my mother. We turned around and walked out.
“Don’t you want to buy anything?”
Where do we start?
We climbed back onto the truck. Other people bought packets of sugar and tea or coffee, but we were all so confused. One man bought a pipe and a bag of tobacco.
Back on the farm the farmer’s wife handed a parcel to every family: enough sugar, and salt and cornmeal for one month.
Soon we knew what tomatoes were and learnt how to cook them with our wild spinach. We learnt how to sort tomatoes for the market and the rest, that were not good enough to pack into boxes, we could take home, the farmer said. Our life changed. We had enough to eat.
We thought life would never end, but years later the farmer and his wife moved away to Louis Trichardt. We did not stay. My children and I moved to this side of the mountain. My husband could not find work and again I knew what poverty was. One day Selinah Mavhetha called me over and showed me how to hold a needle and how to embroider. In the beginning I did not do well, but after many embroideries that were too tight, we call it kokhodza, I understood what to do and how to do it.
I am now an old woman but another wonderful thing happened to me. Selinah came to me one morning, she said: “Ina phoned she wants to know if you are willing to go to Johannesburg and learn a new design?”
“I have never even been to Louis Trichardt or Polokwane and now Johanneburg!” I said
“I’ll send my son Peter with you to Sibasa and there he will put you on the bus” Selinah said.
Peter came with me on the first part of the journey and lent me his cell phone.
At Sibasa he bought my bus ticket and showed me the cell phone,
“You press this button, Ina will speak and then you tell her when you are close to Johannesburg.” Peter said.
“But how will I know that I am close to Johannesburg?” I said
“Eish” Peter said
He found an old man with an honest face who was also getting onto the bus and said, “Will you please help this woman. Press this button on the cell phone and tell them on the other side as soon as you get close to Park Station in Johannesburg.”
I traveled all day on that bus.
In the afternoon the old man pressed the button on the cell phone and said :”We are close to Johannesburg” Before he killed the cell phone I asked if I could say something too.
He gave me the phone, I said: “I am wearing a white head cloth and a red nwenda , a nwenda is our traditional Venda dress, don’t loose me.”
When I arrived at Park Station Ina and Alice were waiting for me.
I spent a whole week in Johannesburg learning the new design. For me it was like a holiday. I did not have to walk a long way every morning to fetch water and firewood. There was water in the taps.
When I got home after that week I asked Peter to phone Ina and tell her that if she has a new design again she must please phone me. I’ll come.

 Eni Nenzhelele

I had a happy childhood. Now, that I have said these words I think to myself, “How can you say that?” We were so very poor and often went to bed hungry. Yes, that was true but I also had a happy childhood and even today I can say, “Ndi takala”, I am happy.  By saying this it does not take away the hardship but it does not make me unhappy.
But let me begin when I was a child. My mother is called Tambani and she had eight children, I was number 4. In those days, when I was a child in 1950, life was far more difficult than now. My father had left home to go and look for work but never returned. My mother was left with 8 children. Every morning we went into the hills to search for wild spinach, for miroho – that is the Venda word for wild spinach or any green leaves that we can cook. School, we thought, was a waste of time and furthermore only boys went to school. The old people used to say: “school make little girls mad”. I really did not want to go mad, so I did not go to school.
We planted pumpkins and beans; we looked for wild honey in baobab trees, we picked  wild cotton and collected wild fruit. In those days there were fewer people and more food in the veldt. We had goats and a few chickens.
One evening, we had already been asleep for quite a while in our kitchen hut when we heard: “Kho! Kho! Kho!” Someone was knocking on the door. We were too scared to make a sound
“A! Ndi madekwana!”, “good evening” in our tshiVenda language. My mother recognized the voice and opened the door and there stood her sister Mushou and her son Malori. We blew on the coals and made tea and gave them something to eat, so glad to see our aunt and Malori. It was exciting getting a visitor that time of the night. We all had tea but quickly fell asleep again. The two sisters were talking and that night, before I dozed off I heard that my aunt was running away from her unkind husband. She could not stand his cruelty any longer.
Now there were even more mouths to feed.
At night my sister and tried to think of ways to help our mother. My mother and her sister made their own plan to feed all of us. They started raising chickens. They did not even have enough food for us children but they managed to feed the chickens. After a few months they had 30 hens. They borrowed a donkey cart with three donkeys from a neighbour and early one morning set off for Musina, about 40 miles away. Musina is our closest town. It took them two days to get there and two days to get back and only 18 hens survived the trip but they came back with a bag of maize meal, sugar and better plans to protect the hens against the blazing sun next time. My mother and her sister Mushou struggled to feed ten mouths but there was always laughter, they were poor but happy to be together. They made many plans to survive so that today, I can honestly say, we were often hungry but seldom without fun.
It was close to Christmas one year and our mothers had forty two chickens ready to take to Musina. Early one morning they set off. When they reached the Nwanedi River the donkeys refused to walk through. They shouted and dragged and urged the donkeys on. They were halfway through the river when suddenly a wall of water came rushing down. My mother and Mushou managed to cling to tree trunks and dragged themselves out. Donkeys and chickens were lost forever. Later that morning the two women arrived home on foot and told us what had happened. That was one of the few times I saw my mother really heartbroken.
Today, I am a grandmother of seven grandchildren. I am the supervisor of our embroidery group and everybody in my home is in the malappie team (the cloth team).
My eyes are not so good anymore, but I received a pair of reading glasses and now I can see very well. I want to thank everybody who buys our embroideries. Please remember these embroideries are food to us. I sign my name Eni.
Thank you.

Mashudu Nenzhelele

My name is Mashudu and in our Tshivenda language this word means “blessing”. Eni is my mother. I started embroidering when I was still in high school. Nowadays I embroider and  I collect all the finished embroideries and check quality. Once a month I pack all the embroideries and early in the morning at about 5 o’clock I take a small bus to Sibasa. There I buy a ticket for the TransState bus to Johannesburg. We all sit under a large blue gum tree waiting for the TransState bus to come. At eight o’clock the bus arrives and then we grab our luggage and get into the big bus. It is a long journey to Johannesburg. At about 4 o’clock we arrive at Park Station in Johannesburg and there Ina waits for me and we go to her house.
Three or four days later I travel back with all the money in small pay packets. For me it is a great joy to hand the money to the women and to see how happy they are when they receive the money. They often rush to our local shop to buy bread or peanut butter or soap. The shop owner smiles and says: “Here comes the malappie team.” (the cloth team)
I have one child, Aluwani, he is nine years old and goes to the local primary school.
Often people ask us: “Why do you live in this dry area? Move to the cities where there are more opportunities and jobs and entertainment?”
Our lives here are very simple; we have no electricity and no running water. The cities frighten us. 
On the one photograph you see me counting out embroidered squares and on the second photograph I stand on the left next to Selina Mavhetha – we have just arrived in Johannesburg with bags of embroidered squares.

Emmah Vhengani

I have just recently joined the embroidery team, and all I can say is that I really enjoy it. The colours are so beautiful and I recognize pictures from our own Venda folk tales – we call that ngano. That is the stories that our grandmothers told us in the evening around the small fire in the kitchen hut. Venda women work very hard. On this one photograph you will see my kitchen hut – I built that myself and I can tell you it is very hard work. First you fetch the clay, then you make the bricks and you let them bake in the sun. When the bricks are dry and hard you start building. The nice part is to decorate your house. I used charcoal to make back paint  and brown clay as you can see. Do you see the low brown walls leading from the kitchen hut to the bedroom hut? See how nice and smooth I plastered them with my hands. We call those walls guvha walls, they connect all the sleeping huts (remember a Venda man can have more that one wife) of the women with the kitchen hut and these walls show that we are a connected family. These walls are very useful, we use them as a low shelf, we can sit on them and children and hens play on them.
It is wonderful to stand back and look at your finished house – then you say to yourself: that house I built with my own hands. I write my name Ema on my embroideries, now you know who I am.
I nearly forgot to tell you that I bought mugs and plates with my first embroidery money.

Ndoweni Khangale

My name is Ndoweni. I recently joined the embroidery team and I see this work can help me a lot. I am not married and I have 5 children to care for. Last month I bought food for my children and brand new cups. I also bought a kettle. I hope to improve my embroidery skills and to get lots of squares to embroider.

Violet Manngwe

I live a quiet life with my husband and six children. Work is very scarce here where we live and that is why I am so grateful to be part of this embroidery group. Last month I bought a school uniform for my youngest child with the embroidery money. When a child arrives at school without a uniform he can be sent home, so a uniform is very important in our community. I also bought curtains for my house and I gave each child some pocket money. That made them all very happy.