Women of Uganda

These artisans, from the Rufumbira District in western Uganda, were discovered by our daughter Andrea, who spent a year in rural Uganda, delivering health care at the public hospital in Kisoro and in the surrounding villages, and working with and training community health workers. She discovered these artisans at a local craft store/cafe. They work together in the back room, creating handmade crafts for the tourists who visit Kisoro on their way to a guerilla safari. They buy their supplies at the market, and pay a small monthly fee to “rent” their workspace and tools. Some of the income that they earn goes toward hiring someone to harvest the vegetables from their plots of land, backbreaking physical labor that allows these women to feed their family a diverse diet of fresh tomatoes, cabbage, peppers, beans, and potatoes. It also pays for school fees for their kids and sometimes for medical care or for shoes that, while secondhand, have a thick enough sole to protect her feet from the rocks that litter the dirt roads around town.