The young girl paused when she reached the open door of the plane. Was she really in a foreign country or was this all just a dream? Could it really be true that she, Babita Shekhawat, 23 years old, had been given a chance to go to Africa all by herself? To think that mere months ago when she had to travel 16 kilometers by bus from her village to Jaipur, her mother went along as chaperone…
It began a couple of months ago, when Dastkari Haat Samiti asked her to be one of the 20 craftswomen in an Indian delegation to Ethiopia for a six-day gender empowerment initiative called Handcrafting Hope. Selected carefully to showcase the diversity and vibrancy of Indian crafts, the delegation was to consist of women in the rural handicrafts sector from across India — basket makers, carpet weavers, block printers, folk artists and more. The idea was for them to interact with craftswomen from Ethiopia, and figure out ways in which crafts could provide them with sustainable livelihoods. Dastkari Haat Samiti and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were to bear the costs of the entire trip, as well as provide a daily allowance to each delegate.
It was an opportunity of a lifetime, but it caused great consternation to the family-run elephant dung paper-making unit in which Babita worked. “While my sister and I’ve made paper from elephant dung for the last seven years in our family-run business, we hadn’t ever stepped out of the house alone,” Babita recounted, “not just my family, but I, too, was scared about this…” Eventually, her brother and mother decided to let her go, and Babita, a village girl who’d only been as far as Delhi until then, found herself on another continent!
While in Addis Ababa, the 20 Indian craftswomen were paired off with their African counterparts. “We had to work together and display our products on the same table,” said Babita, “my partner was called Kinme and made photo frames. I found that everyone there was very interested in learning about Indian crafts and that we had much to show them…” The most important thing Babita learnt, she said, was about the value of her own work. “I’d always thought that my work was very dirty as I constantly had to handle animal dung! But in Ethiopia, when I made a presentation about the technique of making paper from dung, people really appreciated the innovativeness of my work,” she said. At the small exhibition there, Babita sold all the products that she’d taken. “If I’d carried three times the quantity, I’d have sold that too. People were that interested in my work…” she said happily.
When she returned, Babita was sparkling in natty jeans and a new found confidence. “I feel really proud of the fact that in my own small way, I showed the world how wonderful our handicrafts are!” she said. She said her African sojourn taught her how lucky she was to live in India: “Ethiopia is very nice but India definitely has better markets and work opportunities,” she said. She was also gung-ho about taking her work to another scale, having learnt there about the importance of sampling and R&D in handicraft. “I want to create lots of new products,” she said, “and maybe, who knows? One day I could have my own line of products made from elephant dung …”