Women's Stories

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WE Center for STAR Women

WE provides technical support, business training, and access to microcredit loans to refugee women in San Diego.

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With help from the WE STAR Center, Hajia has helped create a beading cooperative.

Leaving War Behind

Hajia Kangame fled civil war in Somalia in 1991 and spent eight years in a refugee camp in Kenya before being resettled in San Diego. She now participates in the Somali Bantu Women's Cooperative that creates and sells Bantu jewelry and linens.

For five centuries, Somali Bantu women have maintained their family stories and community values through creation of beaded jewelry and embroidery. Now, with business assistance from the WE Center for STAR Women, 16 San Diego Bantu women, including the leader, Hajia Kangame, have formed a cooperative to offer these intricate crafts for sale. The cooperative allows the women to preserve this beautiful aspect of their culture and also to ease their families' transition to new lives in San Diego.

The Somali Bantu are descendants of slaves who were taken from Mozambique and Malawi and transported on Arab slave ships to Somalia in the 18th century. Without clan affiliations with mainstream Somalis, the Bantu were forced to flee when civil war broke out in 1991.

In Bantu culture, intricate woven beaded necklaces, belts and bracelets tell the stories of birth, marriage, feast and famine. Newborns are adorned with strings of black and white beads celebrating new life. In the same way, embroidered bedding and drapery are traditional gifts celebrating new life. Bed linens, adorned with brightly colored flowers, butterflies, rainbows and birds, are often given as wedding or birth gifts.

Traditionally, learning the art of embroidery prepared a young girl to marry. In San Diego, the art continues - mastering it marks the passage from girlhood to womanhood.