Yemen Observer, Yemen
It is almost 10 AM and the streets near the suq al-Awaeb are crowded with people, merchants, children, noise and the smell of food.
In this part of the suq the visitor is placed in the heart of the “universe of the jambiaâ€, the dagger many Yemeni men carry around their waist. A “universe,†it can be called, due to the several different pieces that compose the dagger, which many and different hands elaborate: men in minuscule shops sharpen jambia blades; others are dedicated to the handle, which in the case of the most luxurious jambias are made of rhinoceros horns; others focus on the little details that will embellish the handle whereas numerous stores delight the eyes of anyone walking through these streets with beautiful belts made of golden threats and intricate designs.
However, not all the hands that work on these pieces are visible on the streets of the old city: women working mainly at home play a major role in the sawing of each threat that decorates the big and luxurious belts that hold men’s jambias.
In front of the old Samsarat al-Mansurah- what used to be an old accommodation for merchants coming from outside Sana’a – the streets of the suq are filled with shops full of what looks like golden belts: thick belts made of leather and decorated with unique designs of golden embroideries. These belts, like many other handicrafts in Yemen, used to be a handmade piece that now has to compete with its equivalent made with sawing machines. Nowadays, machines sew in five minutes what hands would in a period of one to two months. Not only the quality can be appreciated at a first look, but also the price and the type of thread changes radically: a belt made by a machine is sold at around 1000 Yemeni Rials (YR), whereas the handmade piece reaches 10,000 YR and more. The machine sews belts decorated with thread of golden color that usually comes from China, whilst the hand made pieces need laborious work to sew delicate thread brought from India and made out of actual gold.
But one of the main problems in this eternal battle between the machine and the man, is not only the fact that a culture of handmade work is erased in five minutes by a machine, but also the fact that machines threat the work of many hands that are not at sight in the streets of the old city and that gain their lives out of this meticulous work. The invisible workers that are behind the golden designs of the jambia’s belts are women: women’s hands sew the threads manually and later sell their products to the shops in the suq. Sometimes also prisoners held in jail work sawing the belts that later on their families will sell to the shops in the suq, as explains the owner of one of these shops.
Closer to the big mosque a Samsarat holds a project that tries to provide some solutions to this battle where the machine always seems to win: the National Women’s Center for the Development of Handicraft trains teaches and provides work to many Sana’ani women working with handicrafts. The Center that was established around twenty years ago is run for and by women and now counts with 2800 students, from which 800 are more or less present at the Samsarat that the Center occupies, learning and receiving lessons on different handicrafts techniques.
Once they finish their pieces, these are sold and the women obtain fifty percent of the trade, the other fifty being used to buy more materials and cover the cost of what the piece needs in order to be done.
The majority of the women after they spend from three to six months learning techniques at the center, start working at their houses some of them sawing jambia belts that later on are sold under the same principle of fair trade.
The center faces several problems, explains one of the sawing teachers, one of them being the fact that women sometimes leave the center to go and work at the industries, changing handwork for machines. Also the lack of help from the government, which pays the salaries but does not provide with support in terms of conflicts with workers rights or with the provision of the materials needed, contribute the list of difficulties.
Although handmade work is preferred by Yemenis if the pocket allows for it, machine made products are more and more numerous around the suq of jambias, and their competitive prices and immediate delivery can tempt any buyer not familiar with the delicate and infinite more laborious work behind handmade jambia belts. Not only a sewing tradition is lost when buying machine made products, but an economic source of income and independency for women is also put at risk. Invisible hands get also hurt.