With less than two weeks left of school break, we are gearing up to take kids back to school. I am also preparing to launch the next term of Full Circle and am so excited to get started with activities. But before I get ahead of myself, I wanted to give you all a quick update on our three girls who participated in the beading classes. Happy, Irene, and Nancy, all of Form 3, attended beading classes for two weeks this break. The beading classes were hosted by Blues and Chutney, a new restaurant in Arusha that is associated with Riverblues and Rivertrees. Their teacher, Elizabeth is extremely skilled and artistic and endured countless pleas of “EEEEEELLLLIIIZZZAAAA! My string got knotted again!” Blues and Chutney is a lovely environment to learn beading or, well…anything else for that matter. Every time I went to check on the girls’ progress, I was tempted to just hang out in an over-stuffed, upholstered chair and forget all about returning to the office. Rest assured I didn’t get carried away by the lovely atmosphere, but perhaps one Saturday I will make use of their coffee cups.
Every time I dropped by, they were hard at work, threading, knotting, unknotting, and color coordinating. I was totally impressed by the ferocity with which these girls tackled the beading projects. While they kept busy with making jewelry, they also kept classes lively with lots of conversation (Can you imagine? Teenage girls talking?). I took the opportunity to listen in and try to improve my Kiswahili (yes, I’m still working on that project). When they asked if I could understand them, all I could say was “You said something about a dog?” or “Well, I heard my name, so you better have been saying something nice!”
In addition to the chatting, they were able to produce quite a lot of lovely jewelry! I was so impressed by the intricacy of the patterns and their ability to remember the steps in making a specific piece. Once I sat down by Irene and asked her to teach me. She was a kind and patient teacher, but as hard as I tried to anticipate what the next step would be, I was always wrong. Happy, Irene, and Nancy have a great start to a new hobby, or even a new business. Melissa and I made sure we told them our favorite color combinations and styles…but I’m not sure that they took the hint. We will have to be more obvious in the future.
Between Irene, who can teach us all to bead, Happy, who hopes to become a business woman, and Nancy, an up and coming fashion designer, I’m sure you haven’t heard the last from this trio on the subject of beading. I will be sure to keep you updated with their progress, designs, and plans!
Until next time,