Zainabu Hakili is an expert creator of coil work baskets who also does fine embroidery. She came to Worcester about 10 years ago from a long time in a refugee camp after she was forced to flee her home in the Democratic Republic of Congo (the DRC). Her resettlement years in South Worcester have sometimes been difficult for Zainabu and her children. She has painful memories of extreme violence done to her family back in the DRC. Craft making brings her a bit of respite from this. Zainabu and her children have also received strong and generous measures of support from the Worcester public schools, the sports coaches there, and the family’s case workers. The family now has a son in college and the youngest has just entered public grade school.
Zainabu learned the art of weaving coil baskets in a crafts school in the DRC. This school taught many skills including making bed covers, embroidered curtains, blankets, and the sturdy coiled baskets. After her family’s forced exile from the DRC she used these skills in the refugee camp in Uganda. In fact, she served as a role model for the other women there, as someone who was an expert maker and who was happy to teach her various craft making specialties to the other camp residents.
Memories of being a craft teacher in the camp are pleasurable ones for Zainabu now that she lives in Worcester, where some people do not know or appreciate much of her background or appreciate her accomplishments in past years. She is also an expert embroiderer and decorated bed sheets in festive patterns.
Her baskets are made of reeds, which she first softens in warm water. Then she uses a needle to bind thick groups of reeds together with thin strands of Madagaskar raffia. The raffia covers the basket. She makes her designs by alternating among different colors of raffia. This produces patches of different hues. Zainabu finds vivid colors aesthetically pleasing. She varies the sizes of her baskets a good deal. Her son Markus told us that she is a particularly fast weaver. She can start making a basket at 8 a.m. and have it finished by 1 p.m.! She draws on years of practice and determination.
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Johnson, Nathaniel. 2008. Grass Roots: African Origins of an American Art, a teacher’s guide. New York: Museum of African Art. (explores connections between West ad Central African coiled baskets and baskets in the Low Country area, South Carolina, US).