Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Painted tea bags become a tourist drawcard
TEA bags are changing lives through a craft shop in Hout Bay that has tourists touting its products all over the world.
Jill Heyes began Original T-Bag Designs as a project to offer people from Imizamo Yethu informal settlement a way out of poverty by making cards, coasters, bags and artwork decorated with painted tea bags.
Soon she converted it to a shop. “I passionately believe that is the way to empower people: through business... we make products that can sit on the world stage and be a credit to SA.”
Heyes came to South Africa from England 20 years ago and was shocked by the poverty in Imizamo Yethu. She had no idea her efforts to help its residents would blossom into an enduring business with fans worldwide.
“I really want to empower the people who work here. Some people have grown hugely.” Employee Nomsa Ndabambi, who initially worked as a domestic worker for Heyes, has transformed her life through the company.
“I started to clean her house once a week, and I saw the tea bags were everywhere. I didn’t understand, I thought, ‘disgusting tea bags’,” Ndabambi said.
One day Heyes asked her to take 10 tea bags home, empty the leaves, iron them and paint them.
“Those 10 tea bags were horrible,” Ndabambi recalled. “My designs are fantastic now; it’s stunning.”
A few years later, Heyes opened the shop and Ndabambi began working there full-time.
Apart from working in the shop, staff can take tea bags home and create their own designs for the business, for which they receive additional pay.
“Painting tea bags is extra money, so I started saving,” said Ndabambi, now manager of the shop. “I’ve got a house now, with three bedrooms and a lounge, through painting tea bags.”
Heyes said the shop relied on the custom of tourists who found out about it via online sites such as TripAdvisor, or through word of mouth. “On the whole, people are blown away by our products,” she said.
Not many locals visited the shop, perhaps because they assumed its products “will be boring”. “We’ve Hout Bay’s best-kept secret.”
Tourists, “keen to help alleviate poverty”, send Heyes parcels of used tea bags – and especially prized are those with strings, more popular abroad than in South Africa.