The Labirynth

July 26th, 2009
Written by Tara Hawks, Director of Sewing Hope (a Fount of Mercy program)

One surprise highlight of the day was entering Jinja's central market for the first time today. Basically, it is a labirynth of booths in the middle of Jinja, surrounded by a wall. It can be a little scary. But, assured that we could find knitting needles inside, we bravely entered like we had done it a million times. Unfortunately, the first section we came to was the butchery/meat section. I averted my eyes from the tables of guts several times until we came upon shoes...a section I was MUCH more comfortable in. After asking several times where to go and wandering a bit, we found a woman, who low-and-behold, was actually knitting!!!!!! We begged her to tell us where she got her needles and she said that we can't get them here....she had made hers out of a coat hanger! ha! She was really cool....after leaving her and deciding maybe we can find something else that will work for us, we stumbled upon the spice section....my favorite. That was such a cool place with bags and bags of great smelling curry's, all types of beans, some barks and rock salt, etc....so cool. We then went to the paper section and bought some cement papers to make more patterns for our class tomorrow, and eventually made it out the gate. So cool....it actually brought my spirits up quite a bit after such a draining day.

Being able to find the things you need in a new town and a different culture is one of the things that is most empowering to me. So, finding yarn and machine needles, combs, and pattern paper was really fun. It is a comfort.