For Linda January being weak is not an option. “You have to be strong or you are going to cry every day,” she said. As a single mother of four, January knows the severity of hardship but also the need for a solid foundation in the home.
For Linda January being weak is not an option. “You have to be strong or you are going to cry every day,” she said. As a single mother of four, January knows the severity of hardship but also the need for a solid foundation in the home.
It is this solid foundation that she has seen to be lacking in the households of her neighbourhood in Extension 8, Joza, and she hopes to cultivate it by sharing her particular skills with the youth in her immediate community.
Learning how to sew when she was a young girl, January has managed to turn her talent into an enterprise. From initially tailoring from home, and then at Birch’s for 10 years, she has marched through adversity to finally occupy a space in 40 High Street, under the italGrocott’s Mail/ital offices.
In this hub of activity Linda mends, alters and designs outfits with four other women, while Veliti Qohole operates his leather works and shoe mending business in the same space. Qohole has used the leather work know-how imparted on him by his father to carve a niche for himself in the difficult economic terrain of Grahamstown.
Being parents themselves, January and Qohole understand the traps that young people can fall into. Their aim, as Qohole puts it, is to “organise all the loose kids together,” and every Saturday afternoon January welcomes at least a dozen children between the ages of seven and 14 into her home. Here she and Qohole teach them the basics of sewing and shoemaking. Each child receives a light snack before beginning the workshop, and they all pray. At 5pm before they leave, the children eat again and pray once more.
The project only began a few months ago but is developing with each meeting. “There are new faces every week,” January said gladly, although she is worried that there will soon be a shortage of space, limiting the number of children that can attend.
Along with the difficulty of space, finding affordable material for the workshops can also be a challenge. However, members of the community have been happy to contribute to their efforts, the pair said, as seen by the recent donation of six isiXhosa bibles.
They intend to keep the workshops open to as many children as possible, and are hoping for some English bibles as well to include youngsters who do not speak isiXhosa.
After the last workshop, the participating children expressed a wish to take the Saturday afternoon activity out of Joza, and into the Makana Botanical Gardens for a change of scene. January and Qohole said they want to arrange this and provide balls for the children to play with.
In working closely with the youth of their community in Joza, January and Qohole said their ultimate goal is that the children learn to find positive ways to occupy their time, or at least their weekends. As January told italGrocott's Mail/ital, “There are many taverns in Extension 8 – we don’t want them to go to the taverns.”
