This has been a pivotal year for us in terms of our decision to find new ways to market the artists’ products and expand our reach. Our little RaRa storefront in Wellfleet, MA had kept us afloat for years but now we needed to be more than “afloat”... we needed wings.
Not being of natural entrepreneurial blood, I asked our board to approve my enrollment in an intensive 5-day “Market Readiness” program in Manhattan given by Aid to Artisans, an established source for artisans world-wide.
I emerged from that extraordinary experience grasping what we need to do to grow, and with the fire to do it.
Fortunately for us I learned there that people are more and more interested in buying truly handmade things that are making a difference in someone else’s life.
This encourages us and fills me with respect for the growing awareness in our culture that we can choose how and why we buy something.
With this new knowledge, we created so many new products and refined some of our favorites...look for these new products to be in our online market very soon!
Thank you for your support,
Ellen Raquel LeBow
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Thanks to the intrepid Arielle Berrick we were so swathed in Deet products that the mosquitos sent out an S.O.S whenever we breezed by. Thus we remained virus-free. Which almost didn’t seem fair.
Nearly all of the artists, nearly all of Matenwa, had gone through it. People would laugh a rueful JUST- you-WAIT laugh when we said we’d ducked it so far.
The artists were still lethargic and feverish, with ongoing arthritis-like pain in their joints, so we didn’t press them hard, but still we managed to make some fun prototypes of new products in the short time we had.
Often Arielle and I complain to each other that, while in Haiti, we are so caught up in “business mode” we rarely have time to enjoy the culture that drew us to begin with. So one of the best things that happened this trip was returning to the “Iron Market” in Port-au-Prince.
A famous landmark designed over a century ago in Victorian France, the Iron Market (“Mache de Fe” in Kreyòl) is a major indoor center of commerce where vendors sell everything from food products to sorcery products.
It’s a huge, ornate presence in downtown Port-au-Prince, walled outside with wrought-iron openwork, inside with a maze of serpentine tunnels of makeshift booths.
The shadowy rafters of the original market (which burned down, to our shock, a few years ago) were black with a century of thickening soot. Its hidden world of rats, cockroaches, and pickpockets only made it even more attractive to the likes of us. We explored the market so often the ubiquitous market “guides”- skinny men who befriended you as you came through the doors - already knew our names when we walked in, and what we were looking for.
After a few years the market was resurrected but the new booths were too sanitized, too white, too frighteningly airy.
Waiting for non-existent tourists, its meager scattering of new vendors had little to offer but cheap paintings and Chinese-made trinkets.
But things change - or revert - quickly in Port au Prince. This time to our delight the Iron Market offered Arielle and I that aspect of Haiti in which we’d longed to immerse ourselves again.
We had returned once more to the Mache de Fe, this time with a purpose.
Having had enough of lugging heavy fabrics from the U.S. to Matènwa we invited two group managers, Josyan and Kalin, to come to the city with us to search out materials in-country.
To my relief I saw the market was once more blackening. Commerce teemed inside and out.
The only change was a gated parking area for the SUVs of the wealthy protected by glowering, I.D-checking guards heavy with assault weapons.
In a Fellini-like scenario, the new black and red painted market was now flanked by the remains of buildings caved-in by the 2010 earthquake.
Massive cement roofs tipped at frightening angles from sky to ground as if toppled by Samson. Blithe merchants nestled their wares between the knocked out walls and looming columns as if it had always been this way, using the shade to protect their stuff from the rain and sun.
The Market has always been skirted by a burgeoning over-spill of vendors squatting in the sun. It was through this labyrinth outside the gate that we had to steer now, searching for the area where bolt fabrics were sold.
Led by Kalin, we seemed to fall down a fabulous, twisting rabbit hole from which we could never, on our own, return.
We followed each other between vendors through pathways as wide as a shoe. Crouching between great, gray mounds of indistinguishable rotting sludge, incongruously clean market women offered incongruously neat stacks of balancing mangoes or toothpaste tubes, plastic utensils or chickens’ feet. They hawked big trash bags filled with cornflakes, hand-lathed mortar and pestles, reams of baby barrettes and lengths of false hair.
Only the charcoal vendors stood out. In most Haitian open markets they always sit in a line of their own, always clothed in signature black with wide-brimmed black hats. In the black shade of a black-stained container truck they stretched their coal-blackened arms over black baskets of black charcoal probably made from the slain trees of Matènwa.
We walked on. Castles of cheap shampoo and illegal DVDs loomed next to an arrangement of pig snouts. Vodou bottles full of herbs and moonshine, cell phones from China and hair straightener vied for our attention. A serpentine stream of opaque gray water wound itself through the marketplace - The city’s foul “Blood,” I used to call it. If you didn’t watch your step your shoes could fill with its frightening mystery.
We tunneled through it all. Then, suddenly, we emerged in the cool cave of the fabric vendors insulated within their towers of bolts, buffered from the madness, and waiting for people like us. We wandered from seller to seller in a fabric trance, accepting small samples clipped from one bolt and another. We found exactly what we were looking for and didn’t buy then because the same meter would be 10 dollars for me, 2 dollars for a Haitian.
But we achieved our goal: now both Kalin and Josyan know what we need and where to find it.
Finding our materials as much as possible in Haiti is an important next step toward streamlining the artists’ business as we move into our future. Sometimes it takes us a long time to think outside the box, but we’re always trying to. So stay tuned.
Thank you for your support, Ellen Raquel LeBow
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For almost 17 years, ART/MATENWA, a grassroots group of Cape artists, teachers, community volunteers and Nauset High School students, supported only by local donations, have made the challenging trip to this remote part of Haiti.
ART/MATENWA joins forces with women in the Matènwa community to lift their families away from the worst of rural poverty by honing their artisan skills and selling their unique work.
The MERCI D’AVANCE DANCE has become a much-loved winter tradition all across the lower Cape.
This year’s party features a live performance by the cutting-edge comedian and social commentator JIMMY TINGLE!
In addition ART/MATENWA welcomes CAPE AND ISLANDS STATE SENATOR
DAN WOLF as quest speaker.
Besides light fare and a cash bar there will be:
We encourage everyone to come, bring your friends, defy the winter, give from the heart and keep this Cape Cod/Haiti connection going!
The MERCI D”AVANCE DANCE will take place Saturday, March 29 7-11:30 pm at Wellfleet Preservation Hall, 335 Main St., in Wellfleet.
$20 at the door.
For more information email Ellen at: ellenraquel@verizon.net
Download a pdf to share here.
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This year was their introduction to all these "firsts". Their first bike ride, first Hallowe'en, first class filled with white kids, first snow, and now, first love holiday.
They are completely baffled by the idea, wracked with guffaws. You mean you give love letters and presents to folks who are not even your boyfriends!?
I reminded them that there are many kinds of real love: love for mothers, best friends, animals, home towns, love of oceans, of learning, of all that's good in the world...so much love to send out.
They're still puzzled but are into the idea of chocolate and are slowly getting the idea of telling it out loud so to speak.. Woodmyha asks, "You mean I can give one to someone I might really, really have in my heart?"
They have so many they love who have no mailing address. I'm going to buy little valentines we can write to those friends and family (and ideas) we can't see and hang them on the live Christmas tree that's still in the living room.
]]>They’re different from his past pictures and, to me, represent his long-time struggle between evangelical Christianity and the Vodou that surrounded him since birth.
Edens, bone thin, 6’5,’’ high, with long eyelashes, long limbs and a languid gait, has an arresting, unschooled talent. He combines bold compositions and dynamic gestures with minute, fastidious detail. He also has a poet’s propensity to brood over big, unsolvable issues like heaven and hell.
Now 26, he began working with us as an abused 13-year-old when Wellfleet designer Deidre Oringer taught several Matènwa students to make jewelry.
He also learned to print and paint but soon it was clear the source of his creativity lay in drawing. I brought him the materials I’ve been working with for the past few years: Claybord, an Exacto knife, a brush and a bottle of black India ink (in accordance with the Sant’s “low-tech” philosophy).
Claybord is a hard, thin board coated with a layer of white kaolin clay. Edens brushes India ink over its surface, and then draws with the knife tip through the black ink back to the white clay beneath to create a sensitive white line.
The titles of these new drawings are as compelling as the pictures themselves:
“DENYE BATAY SATAN AK ZANJ BONDYE YO”
(“The Last Battle Between Satan and God’s Angels”)
“MEN SE SATAN KAP VICTIM AMAGEDON. APRE 1000 ANE LI TE PASE FEMEN NAN YON TOU TANKOU YON PRIZONYE.”
(“But this time Satan is the Victim of Armageddon. For 1000 Years He is Locked Up in a Hole Like a Prisoner”)
Then, in English:
“READ THE LAST BOOK IN THE BIBLE SO YOU CAN UNDERSTAND MORE ABOUT IT.”
In this one a warrior-like angel wearing a belt strung with arrows aims his bow at a recoiling dragon that roars back at him in fear and defiance.
Edens grew up in a world of Catholicized Vodou, where local and grander gods bled effortlessly into images of Christian saints. When his sister falls ill, like many Haitians of the countryside, she goes to dwell at the local Vodou practitioner’s house in hopes of a cure.
I’ve watch Edens on the sidelines of Vodou celebrations, reticent but as spellbound as anyone, familiar with every chant, dance, and ritual.
Eventually his search for moral grounding in the face of an existential universe, mixed with fear of sorcery, led him to the Evangelical Baptist church.
The Evangelicals preach that the old Vodou religion, morphed from West Africa, is demonic and scorned by God, that its Satan-born spirits live to lure souls away from Jesus. The congregation doesn’t stop believing Vodou exists but that Jesus will protect you from its powers if you like him, and more importantly, if he likes you.
In his initial religious zeal Edens began to suffer over the act of art making.
The Bible, he told me, decreed no idolatry, no graven images. He cited, for instance, Aaron and the golden calf.
Desperate for him to keep working, I argued:
“Your drawings of boys carrying water or working in the fields, they’re not false gods!”
“God the Creator gave you the rare gift of being a creator too. Isn’t it a sin to deny a gift from God?”
“Make pictures of Jesus, then. Make Bible stories like in the Sunday school books.”
But he was too afraid of sinning to listen.
I fell into frustrated despair as my friend who used to quietly question everything spouted Biblical verse as brute fact. I did not hide from him my opinion that the Bible and the Koran, un-contemplated, broken into sound bites, are the cruelest brain-washers on this sad planet.
As time passed and Edens’ pictures got admired and sold in the U.S. he began to reconsider the practicality of his choice. Slowly he loosened his grip on his fear, overtaken in part by artistic curiosity and maybe a belief he could turn people towards God with his work.
He started playing with Vodou images again, drawing celebrations of Bossou the bull god, La Sirènne the goddess of fresh waters with four arms, inspired by my pictures of the Hindu god Ganesh, an enormous “Angel of Love” rising like Our Lady of Lourdes in the cornfields, surrounded by villagers.
To my disappointment his output is sporadic, but always rewarding in its original takes on classic themes.
There is a new one called:
ESPRI KRIMINEL (The Vodou Spirit, “Criminal”)
In it a young man very much like Saint Sebastian stands in a pair of ordinary briefs, tied to a stake and pierced with arrows and a machete. He is wearing a delicate, ornate crown on his head and his face is filled with holy wonder.
I hope this is not Edens in disguise.
]]>The notebook will be personal. It’s where you can read in depth about the lives of the artists as well as about how our products evolve. You’ll be able to check on upcoming events but you’ll also read about what it’s like to create an ongoing collaboration between two cultures.
These will be my own observations and associations and occasionally those of others both Haitian and American who are intimately involved in the project.
I don’t intend to limit myself to the surface of things except where we hit up against it, so be warned: this may be a roller coaster ride.
Yours,
Ellen Raquel LeBow
PS. From time to time I will augment the notebook with relevant notebook entries from past months and years to fill in the portrait of our times in Matènwa.
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Arielle and I got back from Haiti a few weeks ago and I wanted to tell you a little bit about the visit, which, as usual, had its dramas and pleasures.
This was a very short trip, mostly to bring more materials and celebrate with the silk artists who had been awarded a very large order from the Fetzer Institute. The organization intends to give the scarves as gifts to participants during their summit meeting in Assisi, Italy.
One evening we were approached by a group of local neighbors, all men, who wanted to tell us about their organization and its goals.
We sat down together, the rose-colored walls of my room, lit by oil lamps, cast everyone in a deep, warm shadow glow. From our long years visiting Matènwa we knew each person well.
They said they were calling themselves "Gason Kouraj" (Courageous Men), a name inspired by “Fanm Kouraj,” the first women's activist theater group in Matènwa, made up of teachers from the local school.
“Fanm Kouraj” as well as the artists’ theater groups have been sending very clear public messages with their plays: It’s unacceptable for men to beat, neglect, abandon, impregnate without protection, or otherwise maltreat their wives and families, especially young, vulnerable girls. And women can’t get away with violence either.
In these plays men (women actors) have been invariably portrayed as cartoons -- bopping, macho, mercurial, clueless, arrogant, or violent – while self-educated, women take a stand against victimization or suffer the results.
The “Gason Kouraj,” called together in 2009 by the LKM school principal Abner Sovè, admitted that the theater groups deeply influenced their decision to take action.
They believe that because men are responsible for much of the issues, the women's groups depend on men in the audience to hear them, but the “Gason Kouraj” think men will listen to other men easier than to women.
They also feel if children aren't taught to act differently they will just do what their parents did, continuing the unthinking cycle.
As a group they are ready to intervene. They say they will approach any man prone to family abuse and get him to sit with them. They’d explain that they are men who have chosen not to do what he is doing and why. If he refuses them they would turn to the authorities.
They also want to council men to take fiscal and physical responsibility for the children they often leave behind.
Admitting the government’s laws are impossible to enforce, they feel community pressure can be more effective.
They are adamantly against child slavery, a tragic result of impoverished parents feeling they must give away children they can't support on their own.
The “Gason Kouraj” believe that encouraging education is the way to keep children from this brutal fate.
Besides ethical issues the “Gason Kouraj” are interested in several physical projects.
They want to organize men to fix the broken and dangerous roads (something the government ignores), to build composting toilets and to start a program that will allow them to bring vulnerable people to the hospital and be their advocates.
We were touched and energized by the courage it takes for this group of men to push against the odds in order to make life better for everyone they know.
It’s a testimony to the circling-out effect of strong-voiced women, artists and teachers, who have stretched their creative capacities into the future.
A less happy story is Venez’s prognosis.
Venez Kasimir, one of the most talented of the silk artists, a great mother and long time friend of ours is dying a brutal death of what, in the US, would probably be a curable disease.
In spite of our efforts to get her medical help she seems, like many others in poverty, to fall through the cracks in an already overburdened and under-aided hospital system in Port au Prince.
If we lose Venez it will not only affect all of us who love her but will threaten to dissolve her extended family of which she was the hearth and center.
It seems no matter how long or short the visit, we always arrive to some things very sad and some things very hopeful happening in Matènwa.
]]>Good things had happened. The artists finished their biggest order yet from the Fetzer Institute. The Gason Kouraj (“Courageous Men”) began, with our funding, to repair the failing road with shovels and pick axes. The scarf painters planned a journey to the main island where they were invited to preform their grass roots theater.
But this was one of our sadder visits.
Some months ago we’d raised some emergency funds for the family of one of our best-loved silk painters and my longest friend in Matènwa, Venez Kasimir.
Venez had been suffering from a mysterious, advancing mass in her head that caused breathing problems and severe pain. By the time we were able to organize “Western” medical help she was unrecognizable; bone thin, toothless, sightless in one eye, deaf in one ear, unable to eat or sit up and in terrible, constant head pain.
The money was enough to buy the medications her doctors still thought could reverse her path, as well as feed the little girls she and her husband Wolan left behind when they went to seek care in Port au Prince.
But the healthcare system in Haiti, it turned out, was still too makeshift, too limited, to deal with what was wrong with Venez and two days before Arielle and I could get there to see her Venez died.
Except for Wolan she died away from the family and community she’d wanted to be near at the end.
Venez was a singer. She possessed a pure, holy soprano that flowed like soft water. She and her daughters used to harmonize hymns on their front porch under the quiet stars, and she’s sing as she swept the yard and prepared food.
She had told her closest friends that if she had to die she wanted them to sing “Dieu Puissant” her favorite, most tender hymn, at her funeral.
Because she was known to everyone and loved by the artists at the Sant Atizana her funeral was a huge community event.
A traditional Haitian funeral includes an animated 24-hour wake/party/dance than can go on for a week.
Within days a flood of family and friends began to arrive from other parts of Haiti. They set up sleeping areas in every corner of Venez’s home and took over our own rooms at the Sant.
While Venez’s body rested in the morgue waiting for her brother and sister to arrive from Florida the men slaughtered a cow in Wolan’s yard and we donated massive amounts of rice, beans and vegetables. The mourning women cleaned, cooked day and night and served everyone who showed up while the men danced to a boom box DJ and played ferocious, marathon rounds of dominoes.
On the day of the funeral everyone came in their finest clothes. Venez’s littlest daughters were dressed in white, virginal crinolines and high heels with frilly socks. All forty-three artists wore hand-made paper banners that read “Venez Atis Yo Pa P Janm Bliye W” – “Venez the Artists Will Never Forget You.”
The night before the artists had swept the LKM school clean (the event was too large for the local chapel) and tied green branches to the window grills with purple ribbon.
As the guests were settling in the coffin arrived on the back of a pickup truck along with a funeral band called “Fanfè”– Fanfare – who sat in wrinkled suits with their battered horns and fraying drums ready to lift us up.
When the morticians formally placed Venez’s blue coffin in the center of the room her oldest daughters and friends began to wail, keening as if their souls were being turned inside out. Many had to be forcibly carried from the room, prostrate in traditional, funereal collapse.
The preachers preached, guest choirs sang, but the most moving moment was when all the artists stood up together, many pouring tears, and sang their rendition of “Dieu Puissant” filling the room with her intimate memory.
The procession that followed was worthy of New Orleans. The horns of “FanFare” led, followed by men wearing Venez’s silk flower wreathes like turbans on their heads, followed by friends bearing high the green and ribboned branches, followed by the rest of Matènwa, moving in a wave down the rock-strewn and gauged- out dust road.
We were headed toward the ruined graveyard where Wolan and friends had spent the last 3 days building his own wife’s tomb.
Before approaching the grave site the band stopped at the foot of the path to Venez’s house and played “Old Lang Syne” - something people in Haiti used to sing to visitors when they were about to go home.
And there we were.
Venez was 50 years old.
The silk artists, who had painted Venez’s scarves for her while she was sick so she could still be paid, decided to offer her place in the group to two of Venez’s oldest daughters, Matine and Seret.
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Fanm Kouraj as well as the artists' theater groups have been sending very clear public messages with their plays: It's unacceptable for men to beat, neglect, abandon, impregnate without protection, or otherwise maltreat their wives and families, especially young, vulnerable. Fanm Kouraj as well as the artists' theater groups have been sending very clear public messages with their plays: It's unacceptable for men to beat, neglect, abandon, impregnate without protection, or otherwise maltreat their wives and families, especially young, vulnerable.
]]>Several years ago the director of the local school together with an American artist tried to find a way to tap the great creativity of the women of Matènwa. Several years ago the director of the local school together with an American artist tried to find a way to tap the great creativity of the women of Matènwa.
]]>Several years ago the director of the local school together with an American artist tried to find a way to tap the great creativity of the women of Matènwa. Several years ago the director of the local school together with an American artist tried to find a way to tap the great creativity of the women of Matènwa. Several years ago the director of the local school together with an American artist tried to find a way to tap the great creativity of the women of Matènwa. Several years ago the director of the local school together with an American artist tried to find a way to tap the great creativity of the women of Matènwa. Several years ago the director of the local school together with an American artist tried to find a way to tap the great creativity of the women of Matènwa.
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