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Israel
Lakiya – The Negev Weaving project Many of us are familiar with images of the nomadic Bedouin lifestyle with woven tents, rugs, belts and other domestic items, but it comes as a welcome surprise to find in the St Andrew’s Church of Scotland gift shop in Jerusalem, which promotes Palestinian crafts, samples of rugs and bags woven by women in the Negev Desert. They now produce top quality rugs and cushions for the commercial market both in Israel and overseas.
When I first visited Lakiya village twelve years ago, the Negev Weaving Project was small, based in one or two houses and sheds established with help from a British NGO as an income-generating project for Palestinian Bedouin women. There were many obstacles to be overcome such as the consistency of weaving, dyeing and sizing as well as the problems of language and marketing. On my return last month, I was delighted to find that they had made enormous advances. It is an inspiring story of how women from one of the most economically and socially disadvantaged societies in the Middle East have been able to develop new prospects by developing their traditional skills.
Lakiya’s contemporary ethnic rugs are hand woven from pure hand spun wool by Bedouin women in villages and homesteads in the Negev. Due to the lack of water, the wool from the hardy desert sheep is good only for rugs. Lakiya purchases a large amount of its yarn from shepherdesses who spin the fleece of these local Awassi sheep on drop spindles. The shepherdesses hang a bag containing carded fleece on their backs and pull the fleece over their shoulder to spin as they tend their flocks in remote areas of the Negev Desert. The spun wool is wrapped into balls, two strands skeined together, dyed and mothproofed, hung in the sun to dry, reballed and plied together on a larger spindle. The yarn is then ready for weaving. Warpface ground looms are constructed from stones, ropes, sticks and cans. Traditionally the width of a loom was measured by hand spans, and the length by circumference of the head. Few women knew how to set looms and the loomsetter was usually a woman of high social esteem who was often also the community midwife and herbalist. Today, all of Lakiya’s weavers enjoy the special status of independent loom setters and independent earners.
The Weaving Project now falls within the Sedreh Organisation (the Sedreh is a strong desert tree with a wide span of shade believed by the Bedouin to have medicinal properties for women). Sedreh is working to advance the Arab Bedouin women in the Negev and to strengthen their status by operating a variety of projects for personal, social and economic empowerment.
The new showroom was packed with rugs of traditional and modern designs in a multitude of colours. An Israeli woman was buying for her store in New York; in the office, negotiations were underway on other shipments. Behind the showroom huge cauldrons were bubbling away dyeing yarn to a customer’s specific requirements. Hadera, the Bedouin manager, says that they have six full-time salaried staff and 150 piece-workers and weavers. Not only have they learned the intricacies of the weaving and rug-making process, many are now computer literate. They can do bookkeeping, sales and marketing. Some have learned to drive. Some have learned English as well as Hebrew. Of course the empowerment of the women has inevitably aroused resentment among some of the men. Local instances of theft and abuse may reflect tensions caused when traditional relationships are upset.
But overall it is an exciting success story.
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