The Chitsanzara Knitting Group comprises forty-eight women from 18 to 65 years, who live with their families in Epifany close to Ruape, a small town about 200 km east of Harare. They cultivate the "plots" that they have leased from one of the oldest Anglican missions in Zimbabwe. The families live mainly off of their harvest yields, which must last till the following year. As the men seldom find employment in the villages, they often live in distant cities and send very little money home, if at all. The actual responsibility of running the family is borne by women. They do all the work, often with help from the children. The women gather wood at sunrise or even earlier, fetch water, make tea and porridge (from maize) for the children, plough the fields, then sow, weed, harvest and pick the fruit.
The women of the knitting group try to portray their living conditions and their traditional culture through their work. They do not work from pre-designed patterns or sketches. Often an idea or an image is directly knitted into the required design and representation. This is why each of their products is unique.
1. Three wives are outside their houses.
2. They are going to the fields. Two of them are pregnant.
3. Poor children are playing outside, while father is talking to the mother. She is cooking sadza.
4. Father is beating one wife with a loop. The two other wives are going and the children are playing.
5. One wife is divorced and goes home with her two sons.
6. The two wives are suffering. The father is herding the cattle. One wife goes to the clinic to deliver her baby, the other one goes to sell her knitted things.
7. The divorced wife talks to her mother about her home affairs. The father comes back to collect his wife. After discussions, the wife goes back again.
8. The wife who was selling her knitted things now has money to look after her children.
9. The father talks to the children while the wives are looking after the household, collecting firewood, and taking care of the baby.
This piece was commissioned for the Fourth World Women's Forum in Beijing in 1995.
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