Beads of life
By Jenny Deam
Denver Post Staff Writer
Sometimes the most profound things in life happen when you're not looking where you're going.
One April morning in 2003, two Boulder psychotherapists, Torkin Wakefield and Ginny Jordan, were in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, visiting a young mother dying of AIDS.
Distracted and saddened, they all but tripped over another woman sitting on the sidewalk who was making brightly colored jewelry.
The Colorado women were transfixed by the woman's skill as she rolled strips of discarded magazine pages into tiny paper beads.
Her name was Millie Grace Akena. Wakefield and Jordan struck up a conversation. Such beautiful work, they said. Did she have more?
The Ugandan woman smiled and ducked into her one-room hut. She re-emerged, arms draped with sparkling bracelets and necklaces. The Coloradans instantly bought a handful at $1 each.
Over the next two days, as the women wore their new jewelry, people began stopping them, complimenting the unusual beads, wondering where to get them.
"That was our 'aha' moment," says Wakefield.
She was in Uganda with her husband, Dr. Charles Steinberg, as he helped train African doctors to treat AIDS. Jordan, her two daughters and Wakefield's daughter had come to visit and volunteer. Starting an international nonprofit business was not on the agenda.
But the women knew they had literally stumbled onto something big: a way to shrink the distance between two worlds.
Jordan returned to Boulder with about 100 pieces of jewelry. Purchasing them for about $1 each, she began peddling them at farmers' markets and craft fairs for 10 times the purchase price. They sold instantly.
With Wakefield remaining in Africa and Jordan in Colorado, the two women founded Bead for Life. Akena trained more beaders and production expanded.
Profits from the bead sales fund a nonprofit foundation that will finance projects in Uganda, such as improving medical care and providing school tuition for children living in the slums.
About 90 Ugandan women who only could aspire to make $1 a day crushing rock in a nearby quarry now have jobs making beads.
While salaries vary based on production, some beaders can make as much as $100 a month. And though that may seem paltry by United States standards, in Uganda it is nearly a third of what most families make in a year.
Uganda is one of the poorest nations in the world. The life expectancy for men is age 42; for women it is 43. About one in every eight children dies before reaching age 5. Only slightly more than half of the nation's women can read or write.
Most of the beaders live as squatters in a refugee slum, displaced by more than a decade of civil war.
Many are widows, raising children alone. Some are HIV-positive. Fourteen are AIDS orphans. The youngest is a 6-year-old who uses the bead money to buy milk for her 3-year-old brother.
Recently, some of the foundation profits enabled the beaders to buy specialized mosquito netting to combat malaria.
The money also has allowed one jewelry maker to bring her child home from an orphanage. Before, without work, the woman had to leave him there because she could not afford to raise him. Others are able to send their children to school. In Uganda it costs roughly $50 per year per child to attend school. With the average family income at about $300 a year, most cannot afford education.
Ten percent of the proceeds from the jewelry sales goes directly to the beaders, 30 percent pays for overhead costs in both the United States and Uganda, and 60 percent goes to the foundation to help the community.
Neither Wakefield nor Jordan draw a salary from the project.
Wakefield, who plans to split her time between Boulder and Uganda over the next few years, rejects the stereotype of affluent white women swooping in to "save" poor, African women.
"The Ugandan women are rich in so many ways. I always hate to hear an entire group labeled as 'poor' when we are really talking about not having things or money," Wakefield explains. "They are rich in family connectedness, in their tribal and clan relationships, in their identification with place. North America is starving for those things."
She says she has learned much from the beaders. "It is compelling to see the beauty and brightness of people who live amidst so much personal loss and suffering. I have learned that happiness is not about things but about heart and courage and helping others."
Part of the goal of Bead for Life, Wakefield says, is to forge camaraderie among women no matter how much geography separates them.
"It is about creating a flow of energy from Uganda to North America and back to Uganda that blesses everyone," Wakefield says. "It is about empowerment."
Recently the fledgling venture got a big boost when Oprah Winfrey's magazine heard of its efforts.
"It was like opening a floodgate," says Jordan.
"A lot of people have given up on Africa," she says. "There is so much need, so much to be done, it is like, 'Where do you begin?"'
She smiles and answers her own question.
"You just begin."
Staff writer Jenny Deam can be reached at 303-333-9143 or at jdeam@denverpost.com.
On the Web: For more information about ordering jewelry or hosting a bead party go to www.beadforlife.com.
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