Peace Corp Volunteer in Tonga
Sewing
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For those of you who know me, you were probably wondering when I would write about sewing. I planned on buying a sewing machine when I moved in to my house, but it proved to expensive and a fan and plates and such were more important. Plus I have been rather sick so no time to sew. Well now that I am feeling better I get a call from Alexis another volunteer. She has been working with a group who want to learn sewing and they are looking for a teacher. I am in! We talked and it was decided that first they needed someone to look at/ fix/ troubleshoot their machines. So we set up a date (which was canceled and rescheduled last minute, ahh Tonga) and I went to fix machines in Lapaha. It was like a dream to see so many sewing machines! Of course they were all broken. There were treadle and electric, womens group and personal machines. I started setting up and looking at the treadle machines and came up with a new rule, I will look at your machine, but you need to clean it first. I spent 1/3 of my time cleaning. There was plenty of help and we cleaned and looked at all the salvageable machines. One treadle machine was falling out of it’s table, we didn’t work on that one. I fixed 4 machines and found the broken part to one. Not sure where she can get a replacement part, but I found the problem. Another woman who was working with us fixed 3 machines. All in all a very productive day!
When I was ready to leave there were still two machines that I couldn’t fix. They both needed to be taken apart and I would need several hours if not days of them laying open with screws out and such. One of these machines belongs to the princess so everyone wanted me to do all I could to fix it. I agreed to take it home along with the other broken machine and look at them when I had time.
The next week I went to MAFFF (Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries Farming and Food) to do essentially the same thing. I fixed 4 machines and again took one home. We are working on setting up a regular time so they can announce by district for women to bring in their machines. It looks like I may be fixing a lot of sewing machines in Tongatapu. Hopefully it will be helpful. It feels good to do something concrete, quite the contrast from teaching English where the changes are very gradual.
Now I can relax back in my house and when I have some extra time I can work on the more time consuming machines. Funny how I tried to manifest a sewing machine and instead I got 3 broken ones. Be careful what you wish for right? Maybe I should have been more specific with my request. I would like to manifest a WORKING sewing machine. Oh well I will just work on fixing these and getting them back to their owners (I wonder if the princess is missing her machine?). I did manage to fix one and the next day in town I saw the woman who owns it. She of course asked about it and I was so happy to be able to tell her it works now. So happy in fact that she lent it to me for the next 2 years! Yea, I have a sewing machine to use! She said if it wasn’t for me the machine would be trashed so she thought I would like to use it while I am in Tonga. I was so exited I immediately went and bought fabric.
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