From The Kitchen Table

Angels over Africa

I’e just been given a lovely present which pleases on several fronts. Firstly, because it’s from a friend who I’ve not seen for 6 years because she lives in South Africa and I don’t and secondly because it is a pretty thing which is designed for a Christmas tree. This means that after its festive outing it will go back in the box with all my Christmas baubles for a year until next time when I will bring it out and say ‘ah ha – Cornia’s angel’. Which will remind me of the person who gave it to me, just as many other tree adornments remind of friends.

The third thing about it is that it is recycled from a drinks can -in this case as so often in Africa, Coca Cola. As I’ve said before I am keen on wasting not in the hopes of wanting not (still to be fully realized unfortunately) and so I like the way that Africans use what it is to hand to make new things. I understand that the Cubans are way ahead on this sort of thing and can keep a 1940 Singer sewing machine in fine order as well as never allowing a little thing like a complete absence of replacement parts stop them keeping a 50 year old chevvy on the road.

My angel is called an Angel with Attitude and is sponsored by Angels against Crime. It was made by a Zulu school child living in Zululand and is part of a project to help AIDs orphans. So it comes with a story and I like that too.
Angel and Dish

YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU MIGHT NEED IT.

It occurs to me that given the consuming nations are going to have to stop consuming so much we could do better than looking at how the ‘make do’ nations manage. Recycling and inventiveness are obviously thriving and they will have skills that we have lost because we have discarded them as technology has made them redundant.

For instance, midwives of my generation were taught to listen to fetal hearts through a kind of trumpet which was placed on the abdomen. The midwives could tell by palpation and listening to that heart how the baby was lying and if there were any gross disorders, a skill that I suspect is almost gone now. And, of course, it was nothing like as efficient or effective as the technology which replaced it, but if the batteries all failed I’m not certain who could do the next best thing with the old ways.

I think that map reading is about to go the same way as GPS systems improve and get cheaper – although as my son found out a week or so ago, if they do fail, it can be quite a problem finding the motorway, especially in a snow storm. That’s the problem with efficient technology – it really is efficient and there’s quite enough for people to know about without keeping a load of unused skills, just in case. Perhaps it’s another aspect of not wanting to waste things -after all some redundant skills are quite hard come by – technical drawing or printing or map reading accurately and it does seem a shame not to use them. I bet the Cubans do. And when the environmental big bang comes, I hope they can remind us.

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Jenny

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3 responses to “Angels over Africa”

  1. Peter Avatar
    Peter

    Not forgetting the old ways…

    Harvey’s model was better than Galen’s.
    Einstein’s model was better than Newton’s.
    Copernicus profoundly revised Ptolemy, and we are better off for every scientific and philosophical refinement.

    But when a 21st sailor goes to sea, he (or she) would be wise to learn and practice the skills of navigation which his (or her) predecessors used for hundreds of years, in case the US Dept of Defense decides capriciously to turn off access to GPS.
    That means compass and chart skills, pilotage and dead reckoning, celestial navigation with sextant, and ordinary common sense.
    I too am sceptical of the depth of understanding of people who can’t read a map, or who can’t do simple arithmetic in their head.
    The stupidest people are those who choose ignorance rather than knowledge.

  2. Irene Avatar
    Irene

    GPS hopeless if you’re on foot – trying to find photographer’s studio in the far reaches beyond the millenium dome and armed only with an elderly A-Z, or trying to find my house – workmen are always saying ‘Just give me the postcode’, and then ringing to say they’re up by the Scout Camp and where is the house?

    All those sewing skills are going too – hems now held with iron on web stuff, new clothes purchased instead of mending – you can’t find those leather elbow patches anywhere. In fact in Oxford you’d be hard pressed to find good quality sewing equipment and threads. I suppose that explains why I’ve found a 20 year old portable Elna sewing machine so useful, can take it to friends’ houses to turn up hems, alter fancy dress outfits, mend tears… the old Elna and Bernina machines are like reliable old Volvos (though Swiss rather than Swedish), you can get them repaired, they purr along, and even when abused (turning up hems of jeans or 4 layers of curtain fabric) the worst that’s going to happen is a bent or broken needle.

  3. Gerry Avatar
    Gerry

    So what’s skivvying and what’s craft Irene? Make do and mend was driven by poverty rather than by the urge to conserve. The houswife versus the artist. I don’t think microfibre fleeces would darn well, but I’m sure your curtains are beautiful.

    As for GPS, it was fantastic using it in South Africa. South African maps are not great, nor easy to read when driving alone. Even better, you can drive after dark to new places, and not be forced to skulk in your hotel to avoid the unknown menace on the streets. Perhaps Jane is a little strict, but she never loses her temper or shouts, even when you totally ignore her. She doesn’t speak Afrikaans mind, but you could get by in Dutch.

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