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Bookmarks for a better life
by Joanna Yap. Posted on February 5, 2012, Sunday
READY FOR SALE: Pandanus bookmarks, made by 29-year-old AzizahTamrin, ready for sale. The original bujamlipo pouch handle can be seen at upper left. -Photo courtesy by Reita Rahim & Gerai OA
PONDER this: when is a bookmark more than a bookmark?
At first glance, the above question may appear quite frivolous. After all, its answer seems quite straightforward: readers place a bookmark between the pages of a book to mark where they last stopped reading. There’s rarely another use for them.
But bookmarks mean so much more to the Mah Meri weavers of Pulau Carey, located off the shores of Selangor.
For these weavers – most of whom are barely literate or completely illiterate – weaving bookmarks made from the pandanus or screw-pine (of the family Pandanaceae) is a way to earn quick cash for emergencies, according to Reita Rahim, coordinator for Gerai Orang Asal or Gerai OA – a non-profit volunteer-run group helping to preserve and promote indigenous heritage crafts.
In January 2010, weaver Fauziah Husin and her daughter Firwini Embus wove and sold 310 pandanus bookmarks to Gerai OA to partially pay for expenses incurred during the heart operation of Fauziah’s infant at the National Heart Institute (IJN) in Kuala Lumpur.
Also in the same month, teen weaver Norfarhana Samad made 130 pieces to pay for her spectacles so as to not burden her foster family.
In January this year, Fauziah and Wini both wove another 100 pieces each in anticipation of expenses during the follow-up consultation at IJN scheduled for mid-February 2012.
Colourful, delicate
These touching stories are just a few recently posted by Reita in an enlightening and heart-felt note on Gerai OA’s Facebook page which detailed the extraordinary background stories behind the eye-catching pandanus bookmarks which are among the group’s bestsellers.
The bookmarks’ designs are based on the latches or talikawang used to secure the lids of traditional Mah Meripandanus pouches called bujamlipo.
Depending on the design, it takes about an hour to weave each bookmark which compares quite favourably to bujamlipo which can take up to three days to weave.
Despite hours of meticulous work to prepare the pandanus leaves used to craft each colourful bookmark, the bookmarks are only priced at RM2 each.
Gerai OA pays the weavers a guaranteed RM1 per piece (50 per cent of the price) during pick-up with the remaining monies (if any) returned during following visits after sales.
Gerai OA is able to return 100 per cent of the selling price of each craft they sell to the weavers because everything is run by volunteers who do not receive any form of salary for the work.
Each bookmark is carefully labelled with the name of the weaver who created it for two important reasons. The first is because it helps the group to keep track of sales by each weaver so that the appropriate sum of monies can be returned to them.
The second is so that people who buy a bookmark will know the name of the person who wove it.
Gerai OA believes that creating connections between the people who buy traditional and heritage crafts and the artisans is a more effective and impactful way of raising awareness about the crafts and the indigenous communities they come from. The group often posts stories and photos of artisans and the places they live in on their Facebook page.
Reita emphasised it was important to respect the indigenous people’s way of life. Much of what they do to help the artisans is about empowering them to earn a living with dignity.
Harmful stereotypes
Most of these communities plant padi bukit so their activities tend to centre around the cycle of sowing and harvest seasons.
It is not practical for the artisans to leave their homes for days, weeks or even months to attend development programmes – ironically meant to help them – which often fail to consider the duties of these individuals, especially the womenfolk who have families, because they could not afford to leave their fields and dependents behind.
“To develop crafts in a rural setting is difficult. If you’ve never done it before, the rural mindset can be difficult to work with if you don’t know why they are stubborn. There are so many things involved that outsiders can have a difficult time understanding why certain things work the way they do,” Reita said.
Common obstacles include the preconceived stereotypes that indigenous communities are lazy and not interested in producing high quality craftwork.
Reita pointed out that in her experience, it was just the opposite. (Indeed, thesundaypost found it hard to argue with the evidence afforded by the Gerai OA stall in the hall downstairs overflowing with fine weavings and detailed craftwork.)
“There are a lot of nice things in there (the rural indigenous communities) but because some agencies don’t know how to appreciate what the village people do, they talk down at them,” she shared.
“When they have workshops, there’s usually one official standing in front, giving a lecture, while the participants are expected to sit quietly and listen.
“On the other hand, at Gerai OA workshops, we’re all sitting on the floor, children are running around — it’s all very informal,” she said.
“If we are at the kampong working, we will crash at someone’s house – there’s no need to stay at a hotel. From staying at the kampong, you can actually see what the problems are, and you can understand them better.”
Changing mindsets
There is little doubt that one of the reasons why Gerai OA is often able to punch many times above its weight class is its respect for the lifestyles of the indigenous communities and their no-nonsense approach to getting on with the job, using whatever resources they have in hand.
CRAFT DISPLAY: Some of the crafts which can usually be found on sale at a Gerai OA stall. The pandanus bookmarks (seen here at bottom right) are best sellers because of the wide range of designs and colours they come in as well as the affordable price (RM2 per piece). -Photo courtesy by Reita Rahim & Gerai OA
If it is not practical to expect the artisans to leave their villages to learn how to craft better, why not go to them?
Interestingly, a similar respect for the lifestyles of their volunteers may also be the reason why volunteers are willing to go the extra mile, literally.
Take Yap Mun Ching, for example, who willingly took a few days off work in KL just to fly to Kuching to help staff the Gerai OA stall during the recent Second International Beads Conference.
She opined that a possible reason why young Malaysians don’t seem to volunteer as much as compared to their counterparts in North America and Europe wasn’t that they were not interested, but that they don’t have the opportunity.
“Reita has a very laissez faire way of doing things,” said the former journalist, now self-employed in the media and corporate responsibility line.
“Understanding the way how people’s lifestyles are nowadays, you have to be quite flexible like how Reita runs it – that is if you have time, you volunteer.
“There’s no fixed “you have to be here” because people travel a lot for work, and you have other distractions. If you make it easy like that, people will do it.
“People may not be able to give full time but they still want to do as much as they can,” she observed.
On what motivated her to go as far as to travel all the way to Kuching to supervise a Gerai OA stall for three days, Mun Ching replied aside from the personal satisfaction, volunteering had helped her understand a lot about issues affecting indigenous people and how they live.
“Giving money is easy. People give money all the time. But it’s always the effort (which counts). This is the least of the effort I can do … it’s not really a big issue,” she said.
“In general, when it comes to volunteerism, there’s always going to be a mixed batch between people who are really committed and people who only volunteer like once a year, once every few months.
“That’s why spreading the word is important. You never know, some people who have never volunteered before may just do it to try out, but as they do more of it, they become more and more committed to what they are doing,” she added.
“It’s a mindset which needs to be changed. Unfortunately, Malaysian kids are not that exposed to it, but at the same time, we don’t want to let it get worse.”
Mun Ching – who also volunteers on a weekly basis to teach English to Burmese women back in KL under a programme run by the UN – hoped more people would make time to find out what volunteer groups like Gerai OA are doing and, perhaps, even try out as a volunteer as it can help them to feel more connected to the place they live in.
Finding a way
When it comes down to it, the stories of the Gerai OA volunteers and the indigenous people who work with them are actually two sides of the same coin.
If anything, they offer proof that when people are given the right opportunities to rise above their circumstances, extraordinary things can and do happen.
This cuts both ways — for the indigenous participants as well as the volunteers.
To learn more about the Mah Meri weavers and the pandanus bookmarks they make, visit Gerai OA on Facebook (www.facebook.com/geraioa) and click on “Gerai OA’s Notes” or follow this link to read Reita’s note:http://on.fb.me/yE7eqs.
Gerai OA is always on the lookout for school, college, public or corporate events in and around KL city which can spare a complimentary booth for them to set up, whether it is for an hour or a day.
They also encourage the public to buy directly from the artisans. To contact Gerai OA, send an email to geraioa@gmail.com
