FRANCINE
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“At the beginning it was very hard, when you start something, you know, it goes slow by slow. Before coming here, I was a tailor and did everything by taking individual measurements. But when Monica came she brought a new way of doing things, making things by paper patterns. It was not easy.” A kitenge baby blanket was the very first product produced and sold by Umutima Cooperative in 2013. Francine was the seamstress in charge of those blankets. Four years later, Francine now sews a menagerie of products for the Cooperative, whose production has boomed in the intervening years. |
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“Now this thing that used to take me like four hours will take me an hour and a half. Now, if one of us knows something, then she can help the others learn…now we are making many things."
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The income that Francine earns through Umutima is the income that supports her household: her husband, eight children, the handful of relatives she’s raised, their yard full of chickens, and their cow.
With a quiet gaze and a tentative laugh, Francine is the unassuming matriarch of this family. 
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When she talks of Umutima, she speaks of the ease of the work, which she doesn’t find tiring; the magnitude of financial agency she has earned through that work; and the support she has discovered in this workshop full of women.
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“It’s good for me to work with other women because it’s like we are in a family, sharing ideas. Even when one of us faces a problem with our families, we can not bury it but instead bring it to our friends and share and see how it can be resolved…I don’t know how much I can say about NWC but I’m still very thankful for it because it’s helped my life to change a lot. There’s no gift I can give to them. I can talk for the whole day, but all I can say about the Center are good things.”
Written and photographed by Meade Inglis.
Interviews translated from Kinyarwanda to English by Mary Nyangoma.