Stitching together hope

As well as assisting the weakest members of Israel's refugee community earn more, the Women's Empowerment Project is boosting their self esteem and alleviating loneliness.

By JOANNA PARASZCZUK
women s tel aviv 311 (photo credit: Joanna Paraszczuk)
women s tel aviv 311
(photo credit: Joanna Paraszczuk)
In a narrow street off Sderot Har Zion in south Tel Aviv, a gaggle of small Eritrean and Sudanese boys swarm in excitement around the man from the pest-control company.
The pest-control man has parked his moped, a battered vehicle decorated with pictures of a malevolent-looking rat, some mice, a cockroach and a pigeon, in the middle of the street. On its seat he has balanced two enormous steel-and-wood rattraps, the objects of the boys’ fascination.
“Hey, can I hold one?” says the biggest and cheekiest of the boys, in accentless Hebrew.
“Don’t touch that!” barks the pest-control man. “It’s dangerous.
It could snap your fingers off.”
Thrilled, the boys exchange glances.
“Hey,” says the boy, jabbing his finger at a picture of the sharp-beaked pigeon on the pest-control man’s moped. “Do you catch pigeons with this trap?” The pest-control man replies that a net is used to catch pigeons. The boys are unimpressed.
“In Eritrea we have a better method,” the boy says. His audience draws closer, listening intently. “We put food in a box. We put the box on the ground. Then, when the pigeon goes into the box – wham! We slam the lid shut. Like that.”
The pest-control man slowly scratches his unshaven chin.
“Well, now you’re in Israel,” he finally says. “And here we do things differently.”
“Nachon, right,” the boys nod. The pest-control man carefully carries the rattraps into one of the row of dank-walled single-story buildings lining the street. These houses – the boys’ homes – are an emergency shelter for the weakest of Tel Aviv’s already-vulnerable African refugee community: single mothers and their children, and pregnant women. Run by the African Refugee Development Center (ARDC), a south Tel Aviv NGO that helps refugees access basic social services, the shelter provides these women and children with their only alternative to sleeping rough.
Efraim, an Eritrean refugee who volunteers with the ARDC, gives me a glimpse into life at the shelter. Inside one dank apartment, two narrow beds take up most of the available floor space. Two mothers, one heavily pregnant, live here with their children. In the room next door a family of five is sleeping. A tiny sink, a dripping tap and a single hotplate comprise the kitchen.
NONE OF the women in the shelter have work permits, and the ARDC relies on donations to feed them and their children.
What if there are no donations? “Then it’s starvation,” Efraim says, shrugging his shoulders at the obviousness of the answer. “For them, for these children.”
It seems like a hopeless situation. Yet the ARDC believes it is possible to empower these boys’ mothers to help themselves, even in a small way. In November the ARDC launched a new initiative, the Women’s Empowerment Project, which is teaching these women sewing and crocheting skills. Run by Diddy Mymin Kahn, the ARDC’s Counseling Psychotherapy Project clinical coordinator, the project aims to help the women create simple, salable objects. “We aim to boost the women’s self esteem, and give them a way to earn money,” says Kahn.
The project is run out of the ARDC’s headquarters on Rehov Golomb, a dingy street in the no-man’s-land south of Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station. The modest office is a magnet for refugees seeking advice and help.
When I arrive, a frightened-looking African man is standing outside the door. “Eritrea, Eritrea,” he repeats over and over. Inside the offices, a handwritten sign is propped against the wall: Israel was built by refugees. A young man in a thin jacket stares blankly at the floor as he waits in line for assistance.
Upstairs, the Women’s Empowerment Project is in full swing. Nine women are sitting around a large table covered with balls of wool, felt, beads and crochet needles. Two of the women are heavily pregnant, and two have babies in tow. All but one are refugees from the brutal dictatorship in Eritrea, whose ruling party – the ironically-named People’s Front for Democracy and Justice – has been condemned for its grave human rights violations, religious and political oppression, and use of torture.
To reach Israel, these women trekked north through Sudan and Egypt. It was a brutal journey and many died on the way.
ACCORDING TO Kahn, many of these refugee women needed some sort of crisis intervention when they reached here. Some arrived pregnant after being gang-raped in Sinai. Some were tortured before crossing the border into Israel; according to a December report by Italian human rights organization EveryOne, Hamas operates on the border, obtaining money from refugees via torture, extortion and organ-trafficking.
After such trauma, how can a crocheting project help?
“Look, these women need some kind of hope,” Kahn says bluntly. “A lot are pregnant. A lot are single mothers. They’re not going to get jobs. We’re trying to motivate them here.” Today the women are learning how to make crocheted kippot, but the session is not just about learning a new craft skill. It is a moneymaking venture, as Kahn explains.
“In the Jewish state, lots of people need kippot,” Kahn tells the women. “So there’s potential for big business if we can make quality stuff.”
The women listen as Kahn and volunteers Natasha Miller-Gutman and Kayla Zecher explain the benefits of crocheting.
“You can crochet at home, it can be integrated into your life,” says Kahn. “It’s a skill that gives you dignity. Instead of saying you clean houses, you can tell people you are an artist, a craftsperson.
“And you’re not asking for charity. You’re asking people to buy good-quality products.” The women nod and murmur assent. Money is something they desperately need. Yet the project is more than an opportunity to earn cash. The women say it is a welcome relief from the overcrowded shelter, from worrying about their children playing outside on the street, from sleeping to make the long days pass faster, from the petty arguments that inevitably arise when people live five or more to a room.
“It’s good to get together like this, to see each other outside the shelter,” says Danet, who arrived in Israel in January 2008. “It’s nice to see a different place, to sit together in a nice place and refresh our minds.”
At first the women are quiet, but soon the atmosphere relaxes. People chat and joke, comparing each other’s crocheting progress. They pass back and forth a white kippa made by one of the volunteers, to see how their work measures up.
Senait, who arrived in Israel three months ago, passes her toddler son around, and everybody smiles as the baby gurgles. Yet the terrible traumas that these women have only too recently undergone bubble under the surface.
Feve, a disabled refugee from Nigeria, tells her story: She arrived in Israel last January following violence in her village between Christians and Muslims. Her home was bombed. In the chaos, everyone fled. Feve thought her family were dead.
Just a few days ago, the news reached her – they are all alive, except her father, who died of shock after the bomb blast. A ripple of wordless sympathy passes around the room.
Then one of the Eritreans speaks up: “We’re so happy your family are alive, we’re so sorry about your father.”
The constant worry that accompanies missing loved ones is well understood here. Everyone has a cheap cell phone and everyone is waiting: for news, for hope. One of the older women suddenly gets up to leave – she has somehow located her missing son, and is going to an Internet cafe to try to connect with him.
The Eritreans speak in their native Tigrinya, and Feve cannot join in the gossip. But she reaches over to patiently help her neighbor, Tsaga, who is frustrated by her lack of crocheting progress.
“No good, very lo tov,” sighs Tsaga dramatically. Oblivious to his mother’s frustration, Tsaga’s twomonth- old son Suleiman sleeps peacefully.
Feve smiles and helps the younger woman start over. Then she leans over and whispers to me that she likes this project. “It keeps me busy,” she says honestly. “It’s better than sleeping all the time. And it helps me not be so lonely.”
Feve is the only person on the project who doesn’t live in the shelter; a local Christian organization has given her a bed in a church. People are kind there, but Feve is terribly lonely.
“We don’t have money,” she continues musingly. “So if we can sell these things, it will help us a lot.”
As the women crochet and gossip, volunteer Miller- Gutman dashes around the table with help and advice. A recent immigrant from South Africa, Miller- Gutman is an artist by profession and says a desire to get involved in community work led her to volunteer with the ARDC.
“We try to get a commitment from the women, we tell them this is their project,” says Miller-Gutman, who believes the project will be a success – if the women take ownership of it.
But the main aim is to make money, and Kahn and Miller-Gutman are trying to find outlets to sell the women’s handiwork.
“So far, it’s mostly word of mouth,” says Kahn.
The key rings have been sold in shops and at a bazaar held at Tel Aviv University, and recently Kahn has received an order for a couple of hundred crocheted kippot for a bar mitzva. But the project is in desperate need of a permanent workshop space.
“We are looking for someone to donate a workshop, or rent, so we can have a permanent space for the women to work,” says Kahn.
As the session ends, the women head back to the shelter. They take the few shekels they earned today from their handicrafts, and crochet needles so they can continue to work.
Feve helps Tsaga lift and strap baby Suleiman tightly to her back for the journey home. As Feve wraps the sleeping infant, Tsaga holds up her crochet needle like a talisman.
“Good, very good,” she says. Woken by the movement, Suleiman opens his eyes wide, screws up his tiny fists and smiles.
For more about the Women’s Empowerment Project, visit http://www.ardc-israel.org

The project is seeking donations of cotton and crochet needles, as well as cash to rent a workshop. For information contact Diddy Mymin Kahn on                               diddymymin@ googlemail.com