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ABATAKA
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Birthday:
June 21st |
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| Emely Namfukwe married at
15, bore a daughter at 16, and was 19 when
her husband died. To support herself and her
child, she found work as a chef – but after
she began getting sick on the job, she took
an HIV test and in 1998 learned she had the
virus. The diagnosis cost her her job; she
moved in with relatives but when they
learned she was HIV-positive, they refused
her food and drove her from the home,
leaving her to sleep in the family's chicken
run. When she was too weak to get up,
friends took her to the Lusaka hospice run
by Mother Teresa's missionary society; nine
months later, she had regained enough
strength to go back to work but could not
find a job. |
| |
 In
2002, she conceived a son,
Tendai, with a man who died
before the baby was born.
When Tendai still was a
toddler, Emely began taking
antiretroviral drugs (ARVs)
to fight her HIV. In 2004,
she remarried; her husband
and Tendai also are
HIV-positive, and Emely says
she works hard to prepare
balanced meals to keep
everyone healthy. She feels
she has witnessed more than
enough death in her 33
years, having also lost both
parents and three siblings.
Since Mary Fisher taught her
to bead-crochet jewelry,
Emely says she has used her
skills not only with The
ABATAKA Collection but to
make items with local beads
for neighborhood markets.
She uses her earnings to pay
for rent, school fees, and
clothes. Through her support
group, she also has begun to
help others as she has been
helped. She assists at the
clinic, cleaning and passing
out medications. She goes
into the community to raise
awareness about disease
prevention, and to help
patients who are too sick to
come to the clinic.
Emely says she will keep
doing both the jewelry and
the volunteer work as long
as she can: "Pray that God
blesses us so we can
continue."
Updated
information following
a visit to Zambia in August
2010:
Emely is
still living in a home with
her son, Tendai, who is now
8 and her daughter who is
19. Emely has carefully
saved much of the money from
her work for Mary Fisher, as
well as her sales through
the Abataka Women Artisans
Association of Zambia (AZ).
She has a dream of owning a
home of her own some day in
the future. She saved enough
money to buy a plot of land
and now is making her own
cement blocks. This is an
arduous process requiring
the purchase of stones,
hammering them into small
enough pieces and forming
them into cement blocks.
Emely is doing this process
block by block. She forms
these blocks at her current
house and has a pile of 400
blocks so far. She hired a
van and took 250 of them to
the plot where she plans to
build. She will continue to
make blocks until she has
enough to build the walls of
her new home. Her rent is
about $70.00 a month now,
with an additional fee if
she wants to use electricity
and another fee when she
goes to the community water
area. Emely is convinced
that she will be more
independent once she owns
her own home. There are four
people living in the 2 room
house with her, including
her husband who is not
employed, her children, and
a niece who is four years
old. Emely had returned to
finish her education (she
finished Grade 8) but did
not make enough money to pay
for her fees as well as the
school fees of her son and
her niece. So, she chose to
give them the opportunity
and she will return in the
future when she has more
money. She feels that it is
more important to have the
future leaders of the
country go to school than
for her to go.
When you buy
jewelry from The ABATAKA
Collection you befriend African
women on a journey. With your
help, they will rise from
poverty to empowerment; from
AIDS and despair to health and
hope. |
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ABATAKA
Website
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Shop ABATAKA
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ABATAKA on FaceBook
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