Thatta Kedona

AeFeA - Anjuman-e-Falah-e-Aama, NGO that started in small Punjab village TGD is now working in cooperation with other NGOs in the country at different levels. Women from other villages and towns (Village Wan, Village Drie, Village Chak 31, Gogera and Okara) are also coming for training in Vocational Training Center being run by AeFeA.

AeFeA is working with the Needlework (Karimabad), Sozan (Peshawar), Behbud (Islamabad), Better Tomorrow Welfare (Rawalpindi) and Al Falah, APWA and Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre (Karachi) at two levels – selling as well as production. At level one AeFeA sells products of other NGOs at different bazaars and expositions and the money goes back to the parent NGO and at level two AeFeA gets different item used in dolls and toys made by other NGOs.This network has also extended beyond borders.



AeFeA is working with similar NGOs in Cameroon (since 1998), Colombia (1999), Iceland (2000), UAE-Dubai (2001), Greece (2003) and in Germany (since 1995).

Thatta Kedona, in addition to producing dolls, toys and other cultural handicrafts has been a center of leaning since its inception over a decade ago. Students from different universities have been visiting Thatta Ghulaka Dheroka for research, orientation and or for sightseeing.

This time a group of 55 students from Lahore College for Women University (-Dept for modern languages, -Dept for Home-Economic and Dept for Ceramic) visited the Dolls Village on Mar 28, 2010.

Group arrived in university buses. In the villages they explored cultural complex, Women Art Center where they were briefed about activities of AFA and TTTC (including pottery workshop and Appropriate Technology) by Farooq Ahmed and Ms Farzana. They also visited localy designed Mud House. 

In addition to the village walk, students were taken around on Tonga 

Stay tuned, students from Beacons House University are also visiting the Dolls Village in the first week of April.

A pre-condition for development of future-oriented housing concepts is the capability to be open and to question what is currently available.


Introduction

This long-term project of the IPC has its roots in the beginning of the 60's of the last century, which was characterized by continuously improving technological possibilities and enormous changes in the psychological and social behavior. These refer apart from raising of children, family life and way of cooking, practical methods of production and problems of intimate areas (discontinuation of shower and WC-paper) and clothing (different forms of fashion) also to furnishings and fixtures, which follow different compulsions. Similarly, the designs are more function oriented and therefore differ totally from the traditionally known and usual forms of design.

What has technology to do with culture? a question asked by many professional technology fans. A more exact consideration will however reveal, that culture is the larger dimension and technology is just a part of it. In different eras, some areas have been more influencial and in others less. This way of considering things in itself testifies to a technical way of looking at things. Technical way of thinking is characterized by representation in a manner, the roots of which are to be found in mathematical calculations. There, where abstract thought cannot be explained due to missing power of imagination, we make use of drawings in order to achieve clarity in understanding. It probably never happens that a development process runs as a straight line, rather it is more like a chaotic structure in which now and then a certain regularity becomes visible, which is lost once again after a certain period of time to once again appear as a logical pattern at a later time (see illustration below).

Special Guests Mr and Mrs Froehlich from Germany

Volunteers are doing wonderful job passing skills to those who need it. It is like “repaying what I have been bestowed upon” said one of the volunteers who visited Thatta Ghulamka Dheroka.

Monika Kuppler (on the left in top image) has been passing along this the best way. She is very energetic and keen – working hard with local girls and women in Women’s Art Center Monika. Monika is here for the fourth time. She conducts pottery workshop with groups of women and starts every time where she had left the previous time. That has resulted in stream of new products and enhanced skills.

What is more, once she had brought her daughter Sophie Kuppler - another very bright student and volunteer who conducted English language classes). She has also conducted another workshop with paper.

Thatta Kedona Annual Summer School is being held for two weeks in Bhurban (1-14 May 2005) and one week in Khanspur (15-22 May 2005). Marleen Hamid, Volunteer Teacher from Germany is teaching spoken English (plus basic arithmetic and calculations) to qualify 5 TGD women from WAC. This is one of the annual features for the workers of WAC. Village women are successfully working and learning in WAC since 1993 where dedicated volunteers come and teach. This year following women are attending the summer camp:

The amounts allocated in the federal budget for development aid say it all, namely that too much is being done and too little at the same time. How can that be, -only one thing can be true? And still, both are correct because for one it is too much and for the other too little.

Now, how does it look for the actively engaged people in development aid? They are mostly not thoroughly acquainted with the problems of the developing countries because they constantly make comparisons between their home and the project country und therefore very quickly develop a certain way of thinking, namely to develop themselves so much in the normally three years of participation in an overseas project, that they can build a small house of their own at home.

To these actively engaged persons also belong the diplomats, who –given the bad experiences- have to posess certain qualities, namely: be gladly in the home country and be in a position to use the German language in the foreign country. Now what does that mean? – foreign languages are learn t only later during the training process for the official post. Those posted in the foreign countries appear to hate their mother countries and therefore wake up early in the morning. Since they love security and safety of their official premises, they leave these only on arrival and departure and otherwise they are too busy in the table work or are participating in enormously important conferences and are therefore totally overloaded to even think of taking out time for not so important matters. To these not so important matters also belong the development aid projects. Their activity is mostly limited to finding paragraphs which speak against a project and to ensure employment at the base station for processing the incoming project proposals.

A pleasant side-effect is the official therapy. At home subjected to otherwise long and tedious therapy, these officials obtain official and free psychological treatment in which they are required to look after the visitors and applicants in a friendly manner and thereby ascertain their importance, which can be summed up to be zero. This strengthens the officer and makes him resistant to inter human contact.

The projects most successful are the ones in which the families involved in the project are well looked after; that’s also a sort of development aid.

Employees of the population and immigration offices are called human smugglers. They have improved their image in the meanwhile quite a lot and now offer complete immigration packages. The concerned family has to pay a certain amount of money and with that it gets a guarantee that one person from the family will get an entry visa to the desired country even without any knowledge of the language of the host country. A lot of advertisement is done in this context; the diplomatic representation or the embassy on its part does not keep one eye closed here. On the contrary, they keep their eyes wide open on their work tables and avoid in case travel in such a dangerous country.

In short: how bad it would be if these officials of the foreign ministry and the ministry for development aid were not there? - The country would have additional unemployed persons, not much but still. Moreover, the expensive therapy costs are saved by way of the residence in the foreign country, where aggressions and humanly mistakes can be let out without anyone making a fuss!

Dr. Senta Siller – mother of dolls and moving spirit soul of Thatta Kedona – did not come to the village this year. Friends of the project and readers here were wondering where is Dr. Senta Siller?

Dr. Senta Siller is doing a lot. She has been winding up Pakistan House Potsdam that was founded by her in 2001. She Pakistan House is closing down and Gross Behnitz - another international project is starting.

Along with winding up of Pakistan House, Dr. Senta Siller has been training a group of women in handicrafts and making clothing for Gross Behnitz project. Dr. Senta Siller will start the next training course from Gross Behnitz. During this period, she with other volunteers has also managed 30 bazaar days in ethnological museums in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

Stay tuned, more will come on Pakistan House and Gross Behnitz project?

Friends of Thatta Kedona already know about our beautiful tradition of "one child one tree" that is practiced in Toys Village since last decade. A-e-F-e-A presents one fruit tree on the birth of a baby and one flower tree to a newly married couple. Results: almost every household in Toys Village has a fruit and flower trees in their yards. And it looks so good. Here are some of the impressions from tree distribution ceremony in BHU.

Young Aslam displays his art work (bedspreads sheets, table cloth, wall hangings, a melee of colour and an extravaganza of design) in Thatta Kedona show room at Lahore under the approving gaze of Dr. Senta Siller. Aslam needs no coaxing to display the finished pieces. As quickly as he spreads his art pieces, he rattles off the names. Persian 1, Persian 11, Masjid Wazir Khan, the palm tree, peacock palm, dancing parrots, the elephant tram and six peacocks, also naming the prestigious places where these designs are in use at the moment.

Aslam represents fourth generation of the family carrying forward the art of block printing that is at the verge on extinction. Block printing represents an age when mastery over art was the struggle of a life time of hard labour and Aslam does not seem to forget this philosophy even thought he has ambitious to innovate and diversify the art of his forefathers in a big way.

Jhando, the master craftsman exported hand painted and printed cottons and silks and velvets to agencies in London and New York. An international nomenclature some seventy years ago and now Calico Prints in Lahore is representing the family name and craft which once enjoyed international repute. Aslam is carrying the tradition further.

Indeed today Aslam with his skill of colour and stroke work, epitomizes an art technique which Jhando had carried to the pinnacle of perfection. Jhando -- the legendary great grandfather of Aslam -- was of course a figure of epic stature so to say. It was he who left to the family a collection of over twenty two thousand blocks drawn from diverse cultures like Muslim, Mughal and Punjabi cultures and Hindu mythology. The grandfather was illustrious too to be sure with his collection of awards and accolades kept zealously safe even today in velveteen cases.

Block printing is a very fine art that has matured over time. So intricate are the patterns that a single motif may need anything from two to twelve blocks to complete the details. Different block motifs cater to different colours in the same pattern. All this requires dexterity of hand to prevent them from running the other. The grand finale of course is the intricate brush work. Fashioned from local needs these indigenous brushes with all their quaintness high light of the motifs.

It goes without saying that Aslam’s exotic collection that I saw at Thatta Kedona is a treat for eye. Ironically, block printing is a cultural heritage reduced to penury under the influence of a mechanized industrial society and bulk production phenomenon. Yet one has to see it to believe the richness of this art from which even in its quaintness excels the grandeur of modern printing.

Preservation of the craft is a very noble passion but there is a difference in the preservation methodologies and objectives. “It is different to preserve the ancient cultural heritage for the sack of its perpetuation as an art and to do it for commercial purposes,” says Dr. Norbert Pintsch. Thatta Kedona is trying to patronize in order to preserve this (and many more) arts for the sack of those arts in their own original contexts.

Dr. Senta Siller and Prof. Dr. Norbert Pintsch called on the Governor Punjab Lt Gen (Retd) Khalid Maqbool in the Governor House on April 19, 2007.

Prof Dr Norbert Pintsch (M.CE., M.Arch., MBA), Lahore

The term Housing 1) was discussed in some of our recent articles and we referred there to the Cultural Model 2), in which the human effort is actively promoted, -the traditional one as well as the so called traditional one.

Although it was not possible to completely avoid the conflict between religion and science, still we were able to describe in one go a new cultural formula 3).

The Inter-dependencies 4) between the individual areas can be epoch-making, for example currently the economy.

Is an individual area so important, it can be compared with a cold star in the astronomical terminology.

In our example this would mean that the economy does continue to play its role but not in its current ly known form.

The history of science amply proves that followers of a certain surviving form or method cannot be easily convinced through arguments. As the Nobel-prize winning scientist Max-Planck once said, the next generations will be "normally" working with things that today appear to be cimpossible or non-sensical. This should mean that it takes only one generation to make unthinkable quite normal.

The technology is extremely dependent upon the economy and therefore economic considerations appear always to play a role, which however is only short-term and short-sighted and actually based upon a postponement of the problems and actually assumes the problems of Resource-wastage, environmental pollution and destruction of cultural values 5), which however also requires the ability to recognize these losses. One cannot and does not want to recognize something which one cannot see !