Bezalila
Madagascar is the world's fourth largest island, after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo. It's also a country with some of the worlds longest and hardest names to pronounce - the shortened name of one king was Andrianampoinimerina! Thirteen million Malagasy inhabit Madagascar. They have a dual Indonesian and African origin, but in spite of their diversity, they are united by a common language, rooted in ancient Malayo-Polynesian, and enriched by Bantu tongues, Swahili, Arabic, English and French, the most recent colonisers. A beautiful country, it is also one of the poorest and environmentally ravaged on earth.
In 1986 during a visit by S.E.L., a French development organisation, to their aid programmes, a group of women presented exhibitions of some Malagasy handcrafts. S.E.L. was impressed by the work of the women and they sent a craft representative to set up an export structure, so they could purchase and sell their handcrafts in France.
During the next few years, Artisanat SEL (as S.E.L.'s craft division became known) assisted these disparate workshops to form a cooperative structure, which became Bezalila in 1994. The uniqueness of Bezalila's Malagasy handcrafts was obvious, but they had had no experience of western markets, so over the years Artisanat SEL spent much time training the artisans in design and quality control, and they soon received orders from The Netherlands and UK. Now independent, Bezalila has 18 workshops, providing Fair Trade employment to formerly impoverished artisans in crafts such as weaving, woodwork, bone carving, and modelling recycled tin cans, called "Kapoaka" in Madagascar.
Justin Ratsimbazafy's team of 6 artisans, including 2 women, has been a member of Bezalila for 5 years. Their speciality is creating models of old Citroen 2CV cars (the French equivalent of the VW) out of recycled drink cans. With the profits generated by the workshop, they have bought rice fields, and have established a pig-breeding farm.
