This morning I joined Diwia Thomas at her proverbial kitchen table for breakfast. After the meal Deepa arrived for a lesson in newspaper bag making. For those with experience in origami, paper airplanes, paper boats, or paper hats, this would be a relatively easy task. Even gift or school book wrapping experience would come in handy. (Unfortunately very few of those skills rank highly on my CV.) I could also see how Henry Ford’s assembly line theories could assist in this case…precision is important and that often is more easily achieved through repetitive action.
During the hands on tutorial Diwia spoke about the evolution of the bag process. She had taken a course some years ago and then used those skills to teach others. But like a game of telephone the process has developed, with each “generation” of folders refining the systems to work more cleanly and speedily. Diwia commented that she stands amazed watching some of the women working so quickly in their own style with such precise results.
What is so wonderful about the bags is their essential simplicity. Made from newspaper, wheat paste glue and basic hemp string, they transform items found in most home kitchens into a useful and desirable commodity. So useful in fact, that when they’ve been taken to a meeting in South America an argument ensued as to who would get to keep the bag as a sample. So combine that simplicity with the steady piecework income they provide and one has the perfect recipe for a community development project.
