27 Apr 2017

A 34-year-old woman of Xhaxhaba in the Okavango Delta is living prove of the old adage that “disability is not inability.”
Ms Kemmonye Ketsholang has ventured into designing bracelets and ornaments to sustain herself despite her visual impairment.
She said in an interview that she lost her sight after contacting measles when she was only five-years-old. The mother of one said her condition did not impede her from striving to be a better person nor did it stop her from graduating from abject poverty.
After knocking from door to door in search of employment to no avail, Ms Ketsholang said she decided to use the talent she learnt from her mother which was designing bracelets, baskets, traditional mats as well as other ornaments used for decoration in homes and lodges.

She said she started weaving when she was a teenager after realising that she could not find employment because of her visual impairment.
“I cannot see therefore it was a bit challenging since I had to decorate using different colours to create beautiful patterns, but I have developed a strategy to put my materials in different locations. I put a different colour code on my right hand side and another colour code on the other side, but of course I would have asked which one is which from my helpers,” said the jubilant Ms Ketsholang.
Ms Ketsholang said she was working around the clock since the tourists peak season was about to begin, and that her main clientele were tourists from local lodges adjacent to Xhaxhaba, who normally visit their village for the sole purpose of buying local ornaments.
She added that some of her products were transported to Maun to be sold in local curio shops.

Ms Ketsholang said she had not received any government help so far, but that the district council has assessed her situation and was awaiting response in assisting her on expanding her business.
She, however, revealed that her business had already helped her to send her daughter to school as well as putting food on the table. She said she was able to help financially her other siblings in their everyday life challenges.
Ms Ketsholang said some of the challenges she was faced with was obtaining veld products which was primarily the leaves of the fan palm leaves that she was using for weaving.

She explained that she used some of her profit to purchase materials from other people which proved costly at times.
This, she said, was a result of the fact that the materials were taken deep in the forests,  adding that as a visually impaired person, she could not go there herself as it was dangerous.
Ms Ketsholang encouraged other people living with disability to stand up and make a living for themselves.

“Do not despair and remember that disability is not inabililty,” she said, also urging families who were staying with people living with disability to stop hiding them in the backyards, saying they were denying them the chance to benefit from government initiatives.
Ms Ketsholang further said she would like to see her business grow in the next five years.
She said she wished the government could allocate her a business plot to operate from as well as to finance her to build a curio shop that would be able to sell and supply ornaments to local safari companies. ENDS