Monica Shongwe: “Working with Gone Rural gives me freedom and protection”

We would like you to meet Make Monica Shongwe, who is involved in numerous aspects of Gone Rural and Gone Rural boMake. Make Shongwe lives near our workshop and she belongs to the Mahlanya community. Living nearby and having great talent in converting desgn into crafted products, she works as a sample maker for the Gone Rural Product Development Team, getting paid a daily wage as she works with our in house designer.

As well as producing her weekly order for Gone Rural, Monica also works at the Gone Rural Shop on weekends, located on site with the workshop. Customers can enjoy seeing the traditional technique that she uses for creating our beautiful products.

Monica was born in South Africa, and was brought to Swaziland by her husband. She is the second of three wives, and between them they have 25 children to support. The boMake School Fund ensures that all her children receive an education at school. The father of the children is unemployed which means that Monica and the other two wives support the 25 children on their own.

Make Shongwe is also part of the pilot project Organic Trench Gardens organised by Gone Rural boMake and the Moya Center (please visit the section non profit for further information about our projects). At her homestead she has dug a garden and built a fence and she is growing spinachs, onions, lettuce and cabbage. These vegetables means that her family can become more self sufficient. Unfortunately they still need to collect water from the river which is 1 hour away.

With no electricity and many hours of cooking and cleaning Monica works by the light of kerosene at night.

Gone Rural is Monica’s sole income: she started working at Gone Rural in 1999, hearing about it through her neighbours. Back then she got trained on techniques by our Lavumisa Group, and Mahlanya group was only composed of 15 women: now the group has grown over 45, and every week out of their own initiative each woman gives E10 to a group savings account and after a year they use their savings to buy rice and cooking oil in bulk. Gone Rural has created a sense of community for the women and at the same time has given them a steady income. She is extremely happy to be part of Gone Rural, saying that it gives her freedom, something that she would not have if she worked as a maid or even at the market selling vegetables, which is what she did before working with Gone Rural.

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Lomtandaso Hlope: Policewoman educated through grass placemats

Make Lomtandaso Hlope is one of the first 700 women to wrok with Gone Rural. She is now a mother of seven and a grandmother of four, all of whom were educated and out through school with the money she earned from making grass placemats and baskets for Gone Rural. She cannot remember exactly when but many years ago through determination she and other women from her community decided to take matters into their own hands and travelled to the Gone Rural workshop in Malkerns with their grass placemats.

The women met with Jenny Thorne, the founder of Gone Rural, and Jenny was impressed with the quality of work and the initiative of the women. As our main material is Lutindzi grass and it only grows on the mountain areas, Jenny decided that this was a match made in heaven: Gone Rural could buy grass from the women as well as the finished products. Their initiative was the start of a long relationship working together, as they became Gone Rural’s first rural group. Gone Rural works now with 13 communities across Swaziland.

Make Hlope lives in Lamgaphi, an area in the east of Swaziland. She still needs to fetch water from the river which is far away and shared with cattle, making it unfit for human use. Lamghabi is thirty kilometres from the nearest shops and clinics so only essential travel is undertaken as bus fares are so expensive. Over the years that Gone Rural has been working in Lamghabi, new stores, schools and other micro enterprises have sprung up around our groups. On buying days women from the community come to our meeting place to sell second hand clothing, fruit, backed goods and in the summer they also sell ice creams.

The women meet under a tree, selling their products to the Gone Rural team on a predetermined date. Houses are scattered all around the mountain side and so the meeting is in a central location chosen by the group. Make Hlope lives near the meeting place at a Swazi homestead where she supports 4 of her 7 children and 4 grandchildren plus her aging husband who is too old to find work. Gone Rural is her sole source of income.

Make Hlope’s eldest daughter is now a policewoman thanks to her mother being able to send her to school. Making grass baskets has become daily work for Make Hlope, her skill is honed and her quality is great. Sitting under a tree she finishes off her order, trimming stray ends, ready to sell. She enjoys her work, complaining only when her hands are sore. She admits that times are hard, and without Gone Rural there would be no education for her children.

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 Zodwa Ngcamphalala: The story of a woman’s determination and entrepreneurial energy

We are so proud to tell this story as this is our dream for all our Gone Rural women.  Zodwa Ngcamphalala, from the Gone Rural Ngwavuma group, used her earnings from Gone Rural to start her own business.

With money she saved from making baskets each month she bought a car battery, an electric converter and 2 solar panels. With the help of two gumboots she has created her own unit for charging cell phones in one of Swaziland’s most rural areas. Cell phones are the only communication available in the remote areas where phone lines and electricity do not exist. Make Buthelezi is charging E5 per charge and she is able to support her family through Gone Rural and now this additional income.

Gone Rural boMake team met her at her house while testing locations for borehole drilling, to support Make Buthelezi and her community with the supply of clean drinkable water. So far they use the nearby river together with cows, crocodiles and hippos. Gone Rural boMake is fundraising to drill and install the borehole. Learn more about Gone Rural boMake.

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