Wednesday, July 8, 2015 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
5
Artist
Quilt connects U.S. and Uganda
marketplace
will run this
weekend
By Jim Cornelius
News Editor
The lot at the corner of
Cascade Avenue and Oak
Street will be a tented market-
place for artists of all kinds
on the Friday and Saturday of
Quilt Show weekend.
Promoter Richard
Esterman’s Sisters Artists
Marketplace will be held
there, featuring a variety of
arts and crafts, food vendors
and live music. The event is
free and open to the public.
Property owner Celia
Hung will have a booth dis-
playing quilts in honor of
her departed friend Mary
Demante Smith.
The event runs from 10
a.m. to 7 p.m. on Friday, July
10 and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on
Saturday, July 11.
Country singer Mac
McCartney will play from 10
a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday,
and Acoustic Etoufee Band
plays from 2 to 7 p.m. The
Anvil Blasters will perform
their Western Americana
music from 10 a.m. to 2:30
p.m. on Saturday.
Like a giant quilt pieced
by many hands, the rela-
tionship between the Sisters
community and Kapchorwa,
Uganda, has come to encom-
pass multitudes, providing a
sense of warmth and fellow-
ship that spans continents and
a wide cultural gap.
Not only is Sisters con-
nected to the African moun-
tain community through
the bonds of friendship and
commerce, now a fifth-grade
classroom in Nevada is part
of the fabric of this deep
relationship.
Jane and Fred Boyd have
a vacation home in Sisters
Country. Two years ago, dur-
ing Quilt Show, they met
Janet Storton at her post in
front of Sisters Coffee Co.,
where she sells fabric and
quilts from Uganda, raising
funds to further a vocational
program she was instrumental
in establishing in Kapchorwa.
Jane is a fifth-grade
teacher in Sparks, Nevada,
working with at-risk kids.
She asked Storton if she
could contact Testimony
School, established by
Sisters Community Church
in Kapchorwa, and have her
students write letters.
Boyd’s kids wrote to
the kids in Uganda and, as
Storton reported, “The kids
(in Kapchorwa) got so excited
that they had friends in the
U.S. that they wrote letters.”
Those letters included rep-
resentative drawings of life in
Kapchorwa.
The letters showed that the
youngsters had much in com-
mon — but vast differences in
ways of life. The letters from
Uganda inquired as to how
far the kids had to walk to
school and how far they had
to carry water — fundamental
concerns in Uganda.
Though the kids Boyd
teaches are at risk and some
are at the poverty line, “they
realized how much more they
have than the kids in Africa.”
The Nevada students
wanted to do something for
the school.
“They wanted to give,”
Jane Boyd said.
Boyd decided to have
them make a quilt, including
hand-painted symbols that
represent the state of Nevada,
from the state seal to an
image of a bighorn ram, the
state mammal.
“There was an educa-
tional purpose in the quilt,”
Fred Boyd noted. “Fractions,
photo by JiM corneliuS
Jane Boyd and Janet Storton display a quilt made by students in Nevada
to send to students in uganda.
sizing.”
The students — boys and
girls alike — learned to mea-
sure and cut and hand-sew.
“They all thoroughly
enjoyed it,” Jane said. “The
boys would come in on their
recesses to work on their quilt
squares. I never had to force
anyone to do any of it. And I
think part of it was they were
doing it for a purpose.”
Jane is sending the school
a grade-level history of the
state of Nevada so that the
Ugandan students can learn a
little bit about this unknown
place in the United States
where they now have friends.
The quilt will travel to
Africa with Storton on her
next trip.
“I’ll be taking it when I
go to Africa in September,”
she said. “I’ll hang it in
Testimony School.”