Gamal Nkrumah chances upon an artist that taps new reservoirs of talent for the peasants and unemployed girls she encounters I always wanted to work with my hands and see the result of my handiwork," says Hemat Salah, director of Toratheyat (Traditions), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) designed to maximise the benefits for peasant women of instruction in income-generating handicraft skills projects. To get the lay of a particular locality, Salah sets out to walk its entire length chatting with the peasant women and gauging what they really want out of life, appraising their hopes and aspirations. Currently the bulk of her business is in the middle Egyptian governorates of Beni Sweif and Fayoum. It is not as if there is a bewildering array of options available to these young women. "Life is too short to waste away behind a desk," Salah muses. She is one of the very rare journalists and artists to have carved out a parallel career as a self-help NGO. She resigned from her post at Al-Ahram to concentrate on her NGO. Salah is interested in sustainable income-generating activities that do not harm the environment. "Economic activities that degrade the environment are not sustainable," she insists. She moved to Dahshour to escape the frenzy of Cairo street life. "Despite the fact that I am a frequent traveller and I love to travel and participate in seminars, conferences and exhibitions, I'm still at heart very stay-at-home," she told Al-Ahram Weekly. The raw materials she prefers are simple peasant staples such as date palms and indigo rushes and a plethora of herbs and shrubs. Salah encourages her students to use practically every part of the plants. "Take the date palm, for instance," she extrapolates. "This was a very special tree venerated by the ancient Egyptians and the fronds, fruit, seeds, trunk and roots are used for a variety of purposes." Salah has chosen a well-known ancient Egyptian motif of the palm tree with a prostrating man as an emblem for her project. "I adore the palm tree. To me this beautiful being is a symbol of love because it gives unconditionally, every part of the plant is beneficial in some way. The date palm is also the eternal symbol of Egypt: it is inseparable from the Nile Valley." A very different and much-maligned plant is the woad, or nila in colloquial Egyptian parlance. It is a plant closely associated with the River Nile and hence its name. Alas, it has over the years acquired negative connotations because of its distinctive blue-black dye, closely associated with mourning and misfortune in popular mythology. Ancient Egyptians tattooed themselves with woad since Neolithic times. The practice survives to this day in remote rural backwaters and in the oases. They also used juice extracted from woad to dye cloth. The spinning, weaving and dyeing of flax was a fine art in ancient Egypt and the country was renowned for its exquisite linen cloth. The leaves of woad were also used for medicinal purposes since time immemorial. Today, medical research has established that its glucobrassicin-rich properties are unparalleled for combating cancer. The flowering plant Isatis tinctoria, otherwise known as the Asp of Jerusalem, produces a deep navy blue pigment used in dyes. Another plant that exudes the chemical compound indigotin is the herbaceous tropical plant Indigofera. "I have been fascinated by indigo for sometime now. Plants yielding pigments suitable for dyeing such as indigo used to be grown extensively in ancient Egypt. Egyptian inks and natural dyes were world famous. It is my dream to revive such traditions," Salah stresses. She believes that the unemployed youth, especially young women, can become the vehicle through which the revival of this ancient industry would be facilitated. Salah's activities have already attracted the attention of policymakers throughout the Arab world. For instance, Sheikha Hessa Saad Al-Abdalla Al-Sabah, head of the Arab Businesswomen Council, in conjunction with the League of Arab States nominated Salah and her NGO Toratheyat to receive a special award for her work with women and development. Private investors are increasingly being courted to finance a host of traditional crafts. For her part Salah has mixed feelings about the intervention of entrepreneurs in the voluntary sector. She has reservations about philanthropists meddling in charitable works with a hidden agenda. She has faith in sustainable development, pure and simple. "I am killing two birds with one stone if you will -- although I hate the expression because I am a firm believer in environmental protection," she says. If we zero in on the needs of the unemployed youth we find that their interests are best served when they are in line with environmental conservation and sustainable development that takes environmental factors into account. Organisation is a prerequisite for advancing their interests. They search for a partnership, not charity. Meanwhile, Salah devotes much time to her own art. She divides her time between her art and her NGO activities. "Artistic endeavours and NGO activism are not contradictory, they are often complimentary," she explains. But what about the charge that many professionals now turn to NGOs specifically in order to supplement their income? Indeed, the public often assumes that NGOs are a means of making a quick buck and that NGOs have become a lucrative business. The patience of the artist vanishes at this suggestion. "What economic advantage," Salah snapped, "are we expecting to obtain from impoverished peasants?" Salah is also involved with the Egyptian Education Initiative endorsed by Egypt's First Lady Mrs Suzanne Mubarak and targeting 100 schools in Al-Salam city. Salah instills the spirit of entrepreneurship among students in deprived shantytowns in the Greater Cairo area. "I encourage the children to take an interest in small- scale industrial development, and to set up their own businesses." Salah doesn't deny stereotypes, even though she appreciates them with a complicated kind of irony. "We teach the art teachers and they in turn teach the students," Salah explained. She is soon scheduled to stage an exhibition of the products of both rural young peasant women and urban slum dwellers at Al-Sawy Cultural Wheel, Cairo. Has she got time for a private life? "Feeling overwhelmed at work can leave you less excited to pursue someone after hours. If you are lacking the energy for a social life, you may want to rethink your career," Salah discloses coyly. She promptly invites me to see the peasant girls at work in Fayoum, two hours away from Cairo. The infernal road was soon forgotten as we approached a village where her project thrives. We passed by the famous shallalat, or waterfalls of Fayoum. "This is all part of their cultural heritage and is the inspiration for their artistic work," Salah points out. The waters gurgling from the Earth's belly tell the tale of a lush land that was once the breadbasket of ancient Egypt and a hunting ground for the aristocracy. Today, the lush tropical vegetation supports one of the country's most populous and poorest governorates. Mercifully, this is also a time that is not without its comic potential. Children, oblivious to their disheartening surroundings, are at play. A whole less funny is the plight of the urban unemployed youth. Salah thinks that it would do them a world of good to get back to their rural roots. She does not believe it necessary for them to relocate to the countryside, rather to revitalise the skills of their forebears who were invariably of peasant stock. Things look pretty bleak elsewhere, too. The global financial crisis means that donor agencies are less willing to part with their money. The quest for all things sustainable has presented Salah with a youthful opportunity. But her unassuming words mask a cultural pride in all things Egyptian. So what can Salah do next? Salah loves people. She is an incurable romantic. Her state of mind reverberates through her work. Salah has no political agenda but to treat women's employment in a serious fashion. So what does she consider worthwhile advice for the peasant girls? Salah's project has brought some relief, but she does not want her peasants to simply postpone the next crunch. She defines her work as promoting sustainable development. Her particular project has been subject to far less rigorous scrutiny than other such schemes precisely because her work is all out in the public. Peasant company accepted, Salah notes that there is no fundamental opposition between town and country. Incorporating two different viewpoints, she makes the most of the two inextricably intertwined worlds. Salah shows little or no sign of easing up. Where she thinks that journalists and peasants have a point in common is an understanding of the ephemeral nature of life itself. That same year, evoking icons she had seen in Africa south of the Sahara and South America, Salah embarked on yet another whistle- stop tour she made of South America. She has also been to southern Africa and has fond memories of Zimbabwe. "If more artists and journalists could start to put forward programmes on these lines there would be a real chance of reducing unemployment," Salah notes. She was driven by a burning sense of curiosity. Salah highlights the strain the indigenous populations labour under. Her travels in South America and Zimbabwe made her more conscious of the indigenous peoples closer to home. She was among the first journalists and artists to travel to the southernmost region of the Red Sea governorate of Egypt, one of the remotest corners of the country, near the border with Sudan. The nomadic desert dwellers like the peasants are slum residents. "These people gave me so much, inspired me and advanced my career. I've always felt like I had some kind of debt to pay," Salah said.
