Ascent of a woman
We mark International Women’s Day by celebrating women who #pressforprogress not for themselves but the communities in which they live.
SOMETIMES villagers would ask Mah Meri weaver Maznah Unyan why her head is always bowed.
She’d reply, “How else would I weave?” But recently the Pulau Carey villager was overhead retorting, “So I can count my money.”
After all, the 50-year-old Maznah founded Tompoq Topoh or the Mah Meri Woman’s First Weave Initiative, and turned the womenfolks’ unpaid skill of weaving into an income-generating enterprise.
In their tribe, the art of weaving is passed down from generation to generation but it is mostly to craft items for household or ceremonial use. The Mah Meri men’s carving has always garnered more attention and value.
Even as a teenager, Maznah had harboured ambitions of starting her own business but she had no access to the market outside and was at the mercy of middlemen.
So when researcher Reita Rahim met Maznah and asked if she could supply Mah Meri women’s handicraft for sale, she grabbed the opportunity and started Tompoq Topoh in 2004.
Reita had just started Gerai Orang Asal (Gerai OA) then to sell handicrafts from indigenous communities, and together the women would forge a strong partnership.
“She said surely it’s not only the Mah Meri men who have their craft, the sculptures. She wanted to know what our women’s craft are. I told her we have weaving, and I got my mother, sister and niece to make the handicraft for Gerai OA.
“At first, only a few of us were doing the weaving. But we’d talk to other women about selling our weaving wherever we met them – at weddings, gatherings, funerals – and slowly more and more joined us,” recounts Maznah, who never looked back because their crafts sold well from the start.
Fourteen years on, there are now 50 women weavers from all five Mah Meri villages in Pulau Carey producing handicraft for Gerai OA and earning an income. They are now not merely housewives, farmers or fishermen, but artisan weavers. Weaving is also certainly more lucrative than making lidi brooms for 70 sen each.
“We are not used to sitting and doing nothing. When our chores are done, we don’t just sit down. We sit down and weave,” says Suhaini who makes pandanus bookmarks. The Mah Meri women also makes pandanus baskets and pouches.
Some weavers are more skilled than others.
At a recent Gerai OA craft pick-up gathering in Pulau Carey, the women took turns admiring Ramlah’s finely woven pouches which Reita immediately classified as blue ribbon items.
Her pouches will be sold at a higher price, and customers will queue to grab them as they sell out immediately even though Gerai OA rations the sale of such premium items.
What’s most remarkable is that the women will pocket 100% of the sale proceeds.
They are paid half the amount when they submit their work, and the other half after their items have been sold.
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Gerai OA is not a business or a social enterprise.
It does not have a shop or staff, and only sets up stall when they have free space.
It takes no profit from its craft producers, and nor does it receive funding.
It’s run entirely by volunteers who bear the operational costs, but Gerai OA has sustained its business model for 14 years, improved the lives of the community it works with and made indigenous crafts relevant to modern society.
“When we started, I just wanted to help keep the orang asal’s craft going for one more generation. You can say preserve the heritage all you want but it’s not going to work.
“We have to sell crafts because that’s the only way to keep the production going. We can document all we want but if nobody’s making the craft, it’s going to die off anyway,” says Reita, who first went into orang asal communities for the purpose of doing research.
Gerai OA now works with indigenous artisans from 25 villages; it takes time to build rapport and trust with the communities.
“There is no master plan. It literally evolves as we go along. The village coordinators will look for the craftspeople among them and we