Genuine Made in Africa Bambara Mud Cloth

Description

In your mind you creep into a dark green hammock and let the hot, wet air close in around you. Vines sway slightly in a almost nonexistent breeze and mosquitoes buzz past your ears. Cicadas chatter and buzz in the backdrop like theme music and somewhere in the distance the cry of a strange bird rises to the forefront. Lead singer….
Drums beat under your feet and a strange feeling begins to come over you. You no longer know where you are but you still have not opened your eyes… Are you still in Florida? Still safely contained in the United States of America?
The answer is yes… and no….
The Earth is much, much older than we are able to prove with science. With that said, Gaia has changed her clothes many times over many years; but we will begin with 300 Million years ago, when the idea of our very existence as humans, floated around on large land masses in an infinite ocean. Florida was once part of those lands.
Gondwana, the continent which would later split apart to become Africa and South America, and a land mass that would become the world as we know it.
It took three world events to break Pangaea apart completely. It was the first one that left behind a small portion of that continent and country that would later be named Africa.
Florida would be that small portion.
Approx. 37" wide x 62" long. Heavy Fabric.
These mud cloth pieces, which are made in Mali are "Lapa" size. Sizes may vary as these are hand made. Traditional African mudcloth sheets are handwoven and made one at a time. No two pieces of mud cloth are exactly alike, so the colors shown are available, but the exact patterns vary from one piece to the next.
Please check out the supplier, Africa Imports, website to see all the meanings of mud cloth patterns
In this particular cloth, the black strip with beige x's means: Wealth and Luxury. Supposed to represent the cushions of rich women from the Mauritania area.  Such women are so wealthy: they don’t have to work. Just rest their heads on pillows such as these!
They're great for clothing, home decoration, crafts and other creative pursuits. African artisans hand-dye symbols into these fabrics in order to tell stories of their villages and African proverbs. Mudcloth has a long tradition of being used by West African warriors and hunters to camouflage themselves. Nowadays, people across the globe are wearing them to stand out and celebrate their connection to the African continent. M-F050
Best to wash by hand.
All mudcloth is individually hand spun, hand woven, and hand painted. Each piece is different. Photos shown here are representative of colors only.
There is a super crisis happening in the Tigray region of Ethiopia right now. A political conflict has erupted into acts of violence that are incomprehensible. As usual in these events, the innocent people of the region, have become victims of horrible crimes against humanity and now must run for their lives.
In November of 2020, the
Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in
Aksum
, keepers of the
Ark of the Covenant, were attacked and dragged out of the building. Some 800 refugees who had come to the church for safety were massacred trying to defend the church with sticks. Since news of this atrocity came out in February of this year, things have only gotten worse and do not seem to get better. Of course, there is no intervention from other countries.
There is some help available for the thousands of refugees though. Many charitable organizations have entered the region and have set up camps and peace zones where possible in nearby Sudan. One of those is the United Nations and their
High Commissioner for Refugees
, otherwise known as the UNHCR. The UN Refugee Agency.
It is hard to sit in comfort while one knows that their fellow man runs in terror, being chopped and shot down as they go. I sell these products handmade in a land that has seen better days. Days without violence, days of gold and prosperity.
A donation of 10% of the sales of this product will go to the UNHCR USA Ethiopia Tigray Emergency Fund. They have currently set up shop and are not going anywhere any time soon. Thank God.
A purchase is not needed either.
Donations can be made at this website:  https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/ethiopia-tigray-emergency.html
Thank you, for paying attention, saying a prayer, making a donation, giving a thought….