creative responses

‘Does anyone know how to do a French knot?’

‘I do,’ I said.

In 2001, my husband Iain and I joined our friends Carol and Justus Hofmeyr on a road trip into remote parts of Namibia. Astonished by the beauty of the place, Carol and I sketched the landscapes and the local flora and fauna as we travelled. Then, when time permitted, we picked up our needles and embroidered what we had seen and drawn.

An admission to Carol that I knew how to make a French knot stitch was to have unexpectedly rich consequences. She had just conceived her idea to start the Keiskamma Art Project in the village of Hamburg, situated alongside the pristine Keiskamma River estuary in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. Casually, she asked me if I’d like to volunteer on the Project.

Though I lived in the UK, I was strongly drawn to the idea of working with Carol in this rural Xhosa-speaking community. I had great admiration for her as a doctor, respected her as an artist, and loved her as a friend. I knew it would be challenging as I knew nothing much about art and even less about South African, and especially Xhosa, ways of life. But with the encouragement of my family, my husband Iain’s support and the confidence that I could at least ‘do a French knot,’ I committed myself to helping.

On my return from Namibia, I asked a close friend, Jacky Jezewski, if she would be interested in partnering with us. She was equally excited by the prospect. The privilege of travelling back and forth to South Africa every six months to work alongside Xhosa women appealed greatly to both of us. However, given the country’s fraught history, we were concerned that the community might resent two English women arriving on their doorstep to give sewing instruction. Our aim was to engage with deep respect.

We arranged a trip to South Africa as soon as possible, arriving in Hamburg on Friday 12 April 2002. We were captivated by the loveliness of the Keiskamma River, the long sandy beaches and the shimmering Indian Ocean. The land around the village was lush and hilly and grazed by beautiful, strong Nguni cattle, the likes of which I had never seen before.

We were soon to find out that the beauty of the place we had arrived in belied the immense community suffering caused by poverty and HIV/AIDS at that time. One of the aims of the Project was to give work to as many women in the community as possible and thereby assist them in their role as family providers and caregivers. Often these women had taken on grandchildren and other young orphans whose parents had succumbed to AIDS-related illness. It would involve long-term commitment, which we were ready for.

We were keen to introduce the widest possible variety of embroidery and textile techniques and consulted with the women at length. It soon became evident that there was a groundswell of interest and that not only women from the village of Hamburg wanted to be involved in the new project; women from the neighbouring villages of Bodiam, Ntilini and Bell had heard about it and were keen to join in too.

The first key women we had the privilege to meet were Nozeti Makhubalo, Veronica Betani and Zoleka Matota. The new team would form the foundation of the Project. We quickly bonded with them and relied on them heavily to help us understand not only the language but the social customs and ways of the community. The next group we met were the women of Bodiam village nearby, who invited us to a show of work in their church hall.  As we approached the venue, we could hear the women singing a gospel welcome, the first of many rich Xhosa harmonies that touched the very core of my being.

Xhosa women down the ages have stitched and decorated their traditional clothing and body blankets with buttons, beads and bootlace, producing distinctive and striking geometrical designs. In Xhosa culture, cows are the foundation of family wealth and importance but are exclusively owned by men. In the early days of the Project, the women were encouraged to draw images of cows on cloth to embroider. They would soon become a very important and quietly subversive feature of their artworks.

The women were so skilled at stitching that it became evident early on that I needed to up my act in the embroidery field. I embarked on a five-year journey to learn more about hand and machine embroidery, and to develop a deeper understanding of design and textiles. As I learned new techniques, so I shared them with the women on the Project. As a result of these very meaningful get-togethers, we all learned a lot from each other, not only about sewing but about our respective ways of life.

Under Carol’s guidance, the women created many outstandingly beautiful artworks. In 2004 I was elated when, attending the National Arts Festival held annually in Grahamstown (now Makhanda), I saw the 120-metre Keiskamma Tapestry for the first time. The many hours of teaching and learning had come to fruition in this extraordinary depiction of Eastern Cape histories by a community that had endured years of colonial brutality and apartheid oppression. The names of the supporters and donors who had readily given money for the Project were there too, stitched into the work alongside those of the embroiderers, as a reminder and acknowledgement of people’s faith and trust.

Over a ten-year period, from 2001 to 2011, Jacky and I visited Hamburg twice a year. It was important to us to share our aims, objectives and achievements not only with the donors but also with a diverse range of interest groups. The Project held appeal not only for people interested in embroidery but in South African rural life and in community health matters, particularly HIV-related projects. I wrote articles for embroidery magazines and for medical journals, and a UK website was set up and kept up to date with Keiskamma Art Project developments, in South Africa and elsewhere. To raise funds and awareness, Jacky and I held regular sales of work and I gave countless talks up and down the country, showing not only samples of the women’s stitching but photographs of them at work too. We also helped to organise two exhibitions of the Keiskamma Art Project’s work: one in Woodstock, Oxfordshire and another, an exhibition of the magnificent Keiskamma Altarpiece, in London’s Southwark Cathedral.

Through all this activity I met people who became not only interested in the project but actively involved in it. In this way, many new skills became available to the artists. To mention a few, Luisa Cotardo from Italy taught paper-rose making; the late Zelide Jeppe from London taught dance; Capoeira was introduced and taught by Jonny Hyams from Oxford and a Hamburg group was supported by members of Abolição Oxford Capoeira. Sue McNab of Bourne End, Berkshire started a very active group, ‘The Gogos,’ in support of Hamburg grandmothers.

Funds were also raised to enable visits to the UK by some of the members of the embroidery teams. The late Nokwanda Makubalo, leader of the Bodiam embroidery group; Novuyani Peyi, a project manager; and Eunice Mangwane, a community health advisor, are just some of the women that I feel honoured to have had stay in our home. My life has been greatly enriched by this experience.

I stay in touch with some of the artists and am very pleased that the flagship project of the very successful Keiskamma Trust is flourishing. I am now working on a similar embroidery project with Palestinian women in Gaza. Having helped to spark revolutionary stitching in South Africa, the French knot has spurred me on to support others.