Lucy H.
My name is Lucy Heyes and I am 14 years old and I live in Cape Town, South Africa
T-Bags= an international commodity
‘Commodity’: noun a useful thing;product
My Mum collects tea-bags!
Yes, you read correctly, she collects tea-bags and not new ones, but used ones.
In fact we have boxes, cupboards and a garage overflowing with T-bags.
We even find them lying on the grass or stuck in the odd bush. My Mum dries them outside on trays in the garden and then when the wind decides to blow, they land up decorating our garden.
You may be wondering how much tea my family drinks, but it is not just my family that donates to the never - ending collection. Many families, schools and hospitals in Cape Town, people from other cities in South Africa and even families from other countries, save them and dry them out for my Mum. We often find bags of them, some dry and some wet and mushy on our doorstep. My sister and I get really excited because we think we have a parcel but to our disappointment we find it’s stuffed with empty T-bags! T-bags, T-bags, T-bags, they are everywhere! With so many T-bags, one may be thinking what on earth is the point of this strange exercise?
Well in actual fact, our collection of small brown bags has had more of an impact than you would think.
The five women my Mum works with live in an informal settlement called or"Imizamo Yethu" or "Mandela Park”, which covers about a seventh of Hout Bay, a beautiful residential area of Cape Town where I live. It homes thousands of tiny shacks squashed together, constructed out of cardboard, corrugated tin, scrap pieces of wood, plastic bags and any ‘left over’ materials or rubbish that can be found and turned into homes.
Walking down a dusty, dirt track from what others would call a ‘squatter camp’, are different aged men and women trying to catch taxis or just walking to their day’s work, whether it is gardening, painting or housework. Beauty, Sweetness, Pamela, Thelma and Nomsa, make their way to a wooden hut on the other side of the valley for their days work.
Before this T-Bag project they were like many others who have no hope of employment. They were the same as those who today, stay in their shack all day with no chance of getting work. They look after small children do the washing and finish chores and never stop wondering whether they will have enough money to buy an evening meal for their families. Every day is a struggle for survival.
When the "T-Bag" ladies arrive at the hut, once a week on a Wednesday morning, you never know what state they will be in. Sometimes they are just damp and sometimes they are soaked to the skin from the heavy Cape winter rains that invade their unstable homes through the many leaks and cracks. One woman might bring her baby with her because there is no one at home to care for the child. No matter how their previous night unfolded, whether their house has been blown away in the wind or whether they are ill with flu or some unknown bug, a result of the cold, they still come to the project. They cannot afford to miss that one morning of work, as for some of them it is the only job they have.
It has taken my Mum a few years of hard work, determination and prayer to fund this project. Materials are expensive but my Mum never gave up as she really believed that she could make a difference and so with the help of her T-bag ladies, she has produced a line of T-bag cards, note-pads, gift packs, boxes and bags. All the products have a distinct African feel. The women make up different designs and patterns that they then paint onto the dried, emptied and ironed T-bags. They also have the responsibility of sticking their T-bags onto the card, putting the card together with an envelope in a plastic bag and making up the notepads.
From never having held a paintbrush or taking part in activities most of us would consider ‘beginner’ art activities, the ladies have slowly but steadily improved their skills and the cards have become more and more professional. My Mum went from shop to shop looking for a market for the cards - she kept on showing them to people and now her T-Bag products are being sold to many different shops in Cape Town and are even being exported around the world. Newspapers and Magazines have written articles about the project, which has even led to a few documentaries on television.
Although there are often problems and difficulties with the project, my Mum never gave up on her dream of helping to make a difference to a small group of women that had very little money, no employment and a quality of life that very few of us can even imagine.
The potential and value of the project is slowly starting to be seen by locals in Cape Town and indeed by people all over the world.
However with more support, this project could give these ladies and potentially many more like them, a house that would keep them warm and dry.
In the future, we hope that these women will be able to send their children to a playgroup and eventually to school. That they will be able to provide food for their families without worrying where tomorrow’s meal will come from.
Who would have thought that a silly little thing like recycled T-bags could help change and improve the quality of someone’s life , but it can.
Job creation is something that needs to be encouraged and supported around the world, but especially here where I live. We need to create jobs because that gives people the best chance of improving the quality of their own life.
We don’t often open our eyes to the poverty and living conditions that are sometimes just up the road from us. We become complacent about how lucky we really are and we don’t think about how others live and what a struggle for survival their daily lives are.
Maybe we should all start thinking about how each of us can create more jobs and so solve the problems of poverty in this world.
So much time, money and effort is spent on ourselves and pointless things that make no positive impact and difference to the world and the people around us.
If people really care about others, anything is possible.
Look what a simple tea bag has done!
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