ART - MARCH 24, 2004

Ancient Art in a Modern World

Buy a basket, help a child, might be an apt slogan for the annual Zulu Basket sale sponsored by local educational partnership, LATTICE, Inc. The story of how the baskets came to be available for sale in the Lansing area is also a story of how the dreams of two women from different nations and cultures have converged to help create a better world.

This story begins in South Africa, in 1989. Thandi Mhlongo, a Zulu teacher and school principal, founded a cooperative that she named Ikusasalethu, which means Aour future. She organized over 5,000 rural women into groups of 30 to promote stable, self-sufficient families through fellowship. Through the cooperative, the women pass on the traditional arts of basket weaving and beading.

The Kwa-Zulu Natal Province, where the basket makers live, has an unemployment rate of about 40%. AIDS infects approximately one in three persons here. Malaria, cholera and tuberculosis also take their toll and many children are orphaned. Since the end of apartheid, tribal children have been allowed to attend school, however, school is not free and parents must provide school uniforms and books, as well as pay tuition. The sale of the baskets supplements the incomes, or in some cases, provides the only means of income, for the people who make them. Until recently, the baskets were sold mainly to tourists by the hit-or-miss fashion of sending the children to stand outside popular tourist areas to solicit sales. There was no market for the baskets with Natives, nor were they desired by white South Africa.

This is where things stood in 1997 when a chance remark at a LATTICE meeting planted a seed of an idea that eventually led to a whole new market and a chance for five Zulu children to follow their dreams.

Sally McClintock, a former teacher and administrator in the East Lansing schools, developed LATTICE in 1995. McClintock says the program began as an idea she had for bringing a global perspective into the classrooms. She began talking to people she knew and the idea took off. Within six months, the groundwork for LATTICE was laid. The program now links ten Michigan school districts with international graduate students and scholars at Michigan State University. Currently, there are twenty-three cultures represented within the group. The Kellogg Foundation, Michigan State University, and individual school districts provide funding for LATTICE.

LATTICE is a program to promote practical links to K-12 classrooms. LATTICE members meet once before each school session for professional development which includes presentations, discussion, food and music. Each participant then takes back to the classroom ideas for incorporating and teaching a global perspective. Through these meetings, teachers are linked with international graduate students who are available to come into the classroom to discuss their culture.

Women from Ikusaselethu were invited to participate in a 1997 LATTICE program. During the discussions following the presentation, a member of the LATTICE group made the chance remark that to provide economic stability to the basket weavers, the cooperative needed to expand its market. On a reciprocal visit to the Kwa-Zulu Natal Province, McClintock and her hostess discussed this remark. The discussion first centered on its impossibility due to the region=s remoteness. As they turned the idea around and around, though, it occurred to McClintock, that LATTICE could provide the means to a new market and she made a commitment to buy Ikusasalethu baskets on an annual basis.

LATTICE in turn adds a small cost to the initial price of the baskets and re-sells them. All profits from the sale of the baskets are used to fund scholarships for Zulu children to attend school in South Africa.

The baskets are made of grasses and palm leaves braided into coils and woven primarily into geometric designs. Every basket is made by hand and can take up to six weeks to produce. Dying the grasses using native materials and methods creates the colors in the baskets, which may include browns, blacks, purples, tans, grays, greens and reds. The baskets, bowls and platters range in size from six inches to thirty inches. Traditionally, they are used to store foods, hold liquids and serve as hot plates.

AIkusasalethu and our partnership with them, says McClintock, Ais a model of what we can do anywhere. It's a matter of people meeting and sharing ideas. When the right people meet, things just click.

LATTICE will be holding this year's basket sale on March 26-27, 2004, at All Saints Episcopal Church, located at 800 Abbott Road, in East Lansing.

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