African Village Quilt Top Completed

My Grandmother's African Village quilt top is finally complete. Below is individual pictures of each block and the story of why I included them.

Girls braiding Hair

I remembered the girls braiding each other's hair. They did a style called "goddess braids". It was really beautiful and lasted a long time.

Pounding Rice

First time I ever pounded rice was in my grandmother's village. It was hard work. I remember getting callous in my hands and it really hurt. The rice was pounded in a hallowed out piece of wood called a moter. Every African home has a moter. It was the African equivalent of a blender. My daughter saw this block and thought the girls were drinking out of a straw.

Gio Devil

The village had this thing called a Gio Devil. It was really scary. Its job was to scare evil spirits out of the village. The people in this village believe that there are two worlds. The world they lived in and a spiritual world in the forest. They believed that evil spirits escaped from the forest and came into their village. When the evil spirit came in the village, they believed that people would get sick and die, or their crops wouldn't grow. About once a week this thing would come around and make scary noises and jump around. Seems to me like the only thing it scared was the little children.

Fetching water

Fetching water was really really hard work. I grew up in Monrovia (Liberia) and my house had indoors plumbing, so I had never had to fetch water before. To make matters worse, the village was a the top of a hill, so carry water was extra hard. I remember that sometimes by the time I made it to my grandmothers hut the bucket would be almost empty.There was a well in the village, but the people believed that water that didn't move was not clean so we had to go to the river daily. We always went to the river early in the morning. People were warn not to go to the river in the middle of the day because that's when the animals went to drink. In the evenings we all went and bath in the river. One of the girls in the block is not wearing a top because nudity was consider not being cover from the waist down. Most of the girls and women did not wear a top.

Mother carring child

The mothers carried their babies on the back. The babies were tied with a cloth called a "Lappa". The babies took naps on their mothers backs and spend most of their days there. There were no cribs for the babies to sleep in so they slept on their mothers back.

Lion Block

I never saw a Lion during my time in this village, but the one question I always got when I moved to America was, "Did you ever get chase by a Lion"? I always answered this question with have you ever been chased by a bear. Once people saw how silly the question was we would talk about something else. One day I went to the doctor, he looked at my name and asked me where I was from. I told him Liberia, and of course he asked me if I had ever been chased by a lion. Boy was I pissed. I went home and was telling my mother how crazy this doctor was and my mother said she didn't think the question was that crazy. She proceeded to tell me how she used to work for the United Nations in the rural areas. One day she was driving to a village on her motor cycle and she said she was chased by a really large cat like animal. She said she wasn't sure if it was a lion or not because she was trying really hard to get away from the animal. After that conversation, I stopped getting snippy with people whenever they asked me the Lion question.

Zebra block

This is one of those crazy but true stories out of Africa. One evening two men went hunting in the forest. One man shot and wounded the other man. The man who did the shooting came back to the village and told everyone that his hunting partner had turned into a zebra. After he shot his friend he turned back into a human. All the elders in the village said that the man who had been shot was practicing witch craft and had tricked his hunting buddy.

Monkey block

My grandma found a monkey on her way to the farm one day. It was an infant and it was sick. She brought it back to the village and nursed it back to health. We tried to release it back into the forest but the thing would never go. It never learned how to behave like a monkey. The monkey was always causing trouble, biting the little kids etc. Grandma got fed up and tied the monkey to a tree. One day I was messing with the thing and it bite me on the chest. I still have the scare from the incident. I don't care for monkeys any more and definitely don't think they make good pets.

Elephant block

I love, love, love elephants. I just think they are beautiful and strong. I was complaining to my mom about how I never saw an elephant while we were living in Liberia and how I didn't think that elephants even lived in Liberia. My mother told me that in 1973, the men killed an elephant and brought it back to the village and they ate the meat for a couple of months. I was beyond shock, and kept asking her how she could eat and elephant. She said she didn't feel like she did anything wrong. She said back in the days the attitude of most people in her village about animals was that they are food. Of course I was curious and asked her what an elephant tasted like. She said the meat was very tough and chewy.

Giraffe block

There were two rules all the children had to follow in my grandmother's village. One was, don't go into the forest alone. The other was don't go to the river in the middle of the day alone. My cousin and I forgot this rule and went into the forest to collect firewood. While we were talking we started hearing shaking in the trees. The noise stared to get louder and come closer towards us. We dropped everything and started to run back to the village. I was screaming so loud, I thought I was going to die. My cousin told everyone we had been chased by a giraffe.

Hut block

I loved my gran ma's hut. It was a very simple, one room round hut. Food harvested from the farm was stored in the top section of the hut. Mice and other rodents didn't get to the food stored in the top. In the middle of the hut was a fire place. During the raining season when the weather was a little cool, we would sleep with a fire burning. I remembered once a snake crawled into the hut to be warmed by the fire. My grandma picked up the snake by its tail and slammed it on the ground killing it. My aunt cooked the snake that night for dinner.

Tree block

I was very afraid of the forest and didn't like going into. It was always dark and cold there. If you go into the forest there's always food all around. All kinds of fruit and vegetables trees grew there. Snails would be all over the ground and crawling on the trees. We would pick up the snails and carry it back to the village for dinner. Those things are slippery and nasty. When someone got sick grandma would go into the forest and come back with medicines. There was one plant (I don't remember what it was called) that when boiled could replenish the blood. Another plant was pounded and mixed with clay. The clay mixture would be applied to my skin (I was always sick with malaria) and was suppose to remove toxins from the body. We were given a plant called joloblow once a month. It was suppose to clean the insides of the body and also remove parasites. Ugh that thing tasted so nasty.

I had a lot of fun making this quilt. It brought back lots of memories. The only problem I had was with the fabric. It kept unraveling. I don't know if maybe the fabric was too old or what. I bought it about five years ago and has used it in everything I've made. I also notice the fabric turning yellow sometimes when I Iron. I hope I will be able to get rid of the yellow stain once I wash it. Hope you enjoy looking at the quilt and reading about life in my grandmother's village.