Elize Sikujuwa adds to the conversation during a meeting of a knitting group for New Americans in Winooski on Thursday, September 12. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
BURLINGTON— Fatuma Hussein, 61, had never knitted before she started coming to the third- floor classroom of an Old North End community center. But there she was on a recent Thursday evening, sitting in a beige armchair at the back of the room, working away on a fuzzy green and gray child’s hat.
“I like it here,” said Hussein, who came to Vermont from Burundi in 2007 through the refugee resettlement program. “Before I didn’t know what to do. Now I can make hats.”
The Association of Africans Living in Vermont runs the knitting group as part of its weekly community “cafe” in the ONE Community Center, created to give refugee women a place to gather and learn skills.
Originally started to help refugee women from Africa find community, the cafe has helped scores of refugees and immigrants from all parts of the world find their footing, according to the organizers. The gatherings help the women integrate in the area and learn new skills through programs offered there, often in partnership with area organizations.
On the evening of Sept. 5, about a dozen women gathered at desks and on couches in a third floor classroom, knitting needles clicking in tune to merry banter.
Instruction and conversation were punctuated by laughter, bouts of singing in Swahili and breaks for sweet black tea and bread. Children ran around the classroom and in the corridor outside.
Sophie Essengaya watches closely as Elin Melchior demonstrates stitching technique during a meeting of a knitting group for New Americans in Winooski on Thursday, September 12. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
Most of the women are refugees from conflict zones in Africa or survivors of war. But they don’t come to the Thursday stitching sessions to talk about it.
“We call this the community cafe because we don’t want to call it women survivors of trauma or domestic violence,” said Irene KeruBo Webster, who goes by KeruBo and leads the AALV community cafe.
At the front desk, her back to the blackboard, was Miriam Block, executive director of the Heritage Winooski Mill Museum, trying to make balls of yarn with strings of wool while errant little hands tried to touch the spinning spool.
The knitting class really started as a stitching class more than a year ago when the women wanted to participate in the Heritage Winooski Mill Museum’s Welcome Blanket project, Block said.
The project was a collaboration between the museum and the community cafe, which runs several grant-funded programs to provide opportunities such as language skills, computer literacy and gardening. The five blankets made by women in the cafe are on display at the museum’s fiber arts exhibit, which is open through Oct. 18.
KeruBo, a case manager and social support program manager for refugees at AALV since 2018, said the group renamed the class the Stitch Together group and interested knitters began showing up for the weekly drop-in class as word spread in the community.
Elin Melchior, a teaching artist with over 50 years of knitting experience, leads the class. On the evening of Sept 5, Melchior circulated among the knitting women, offering tips and advice. Just a few knitters spoke English, some spoke French, but language did not seem to be a barrier.
Melchior leaned across a table to show three women how to make a pompom for their hats.
KeruBo, who sometimes helps translate, said there wasn’t really a word for the circular tool Melchior was using. And in the process, the women were also learning new words. “Learning English can be challenging but it can also be exciting,” she said.
Elin Melchior of Bristol, right, a teaching artist with over 50 years of knitting experience, demonstrates making a pompom at an African women’s knitting class on Sept. 5. at the Association of Africans Living in Vermont on Allen Street, Burlington. Photo by Auditi Guha/VTDigger
They learn by watching and Melchior often uses common words and phrases they can understand. “Sometimes when she’s working with them, I don’t need to be there. They find their own way of communicating together,” she said.
A longtime Bristol resident, Melchior once lived and worked in West Africa as part of the Peace Corps. She became friends with KeruBo in Champlain College and said she appreciates having a tie back to Africa through the knitting class.
Among the class participants is Therisa Shams el-Din Rogers, who is African American and lives in Marshfield. After reading about the AALV group class, she called to see if she could visit. Rogers, who joined in a few times last year, said she greatly enjoyed “the sisterhood” of knitting with other Black women.
“Those are our people,” she said in a phone call Tuesday. “It’s important to me that my Blackness isn’t just an American Blackness, but that it is part of a diaspora and idea of identity.”
The class was also a good way for her to practice her French and Swahili, said Rogers. And she even brought along her neighbor, who is originally from Tasmania, she said.
While the women come from different places, have different backgrounds and different reasons for being there, knitting has been a great leveler, Rogers noted, and AALV seemed to be a place where their needs were being met.
Rogers said she isn’t aware of any other Black knitting groups in Vermont so, despite the 1.5-hour drive to Burlington, she hopes to be back in the classroom with her knitting bag this fall.
The Stitching Together program costs about $6,000 a year to operate and has been supported in part by the Vermont Arts Council, Vermont Mutual Insurance, Ben and Jerry’s Foundation, Northfield Savings Bank, and VT Federal Credit Union, according to Block.
Sophie Essengya, center, works on her handweaving skills during a meeting of a knitting group for New Americans in Winooski on Thursday, September 12. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
As part of the program, the women have gone on field trips to a sheep and wool festival at the Billings Farm in Woodstock and to Must Love Yarn in Shelburne to pick out yarn for a hat project. Block hopes to secure the money to continue the class, and she’s also hoping to expand it so they can explore using natural dyes next summer, she said.
Partway through the Sept. 5 class, Helen Asava, 78, who came from the Western Province in Kenya in 2011, had finished a little purple hat and had moved onto her second one using orange wool.
Unlike some of the others there, Asava already knew how to knit. But she never misses a class and enjoys the community cafe every week. “I like it for the company,” she said. “It keeps me busy.”
And although many of the women in the class picked up a knitting needle for the first time when the class began, they have advanced to a point where Melchior can leave the room and they wouldn’t notice.
“Now they are pretty good at what they are doing,” she said. “I think knitting is therapeutic.”
That’s important for people who have faced trauma but will not typically seek counseling, said Yacouba Bogre, executive director of AALV, which was created in 2016 to promote equal opportunity, dignity and self-sufficiency for refugee and immigrant Africans in Vermont.
As Vermont welcomed more refugees and immigrants, the organization expanded in 2009 to provide services to those coming from other countries to help them adjust to and gain independence in their new community.
At least 655 people have relocated to Vermont from African countries in the last three years, according to refugee resettlement data. A majority of them have arrived from the Democratic Republic of Congo where worsening conflict has internally displaced 7.2 million people.
Elize Sikujuwa crafts a child’s hat during a meeting of a knitting group for New Americans in Winooski on Thursday, September 12. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger
“They’ve gone through a lot of challenges so giving them opportunities to share their experiences and support is very important,” Bogre said. “It helps them overcome some stress and trauma – and teaches them valuable skills to give back to the community.”
The building the classes are held in also helps in that regard. It’s one that they and their children are familiar with, where they receive a variety of services from education and translation to pediatric and immigration help, he said.
Back in the classroom, a woman sitting next to KeruBo knitting a beige wool suddenly burst into song.
“I can’t believe she’s singing now,” KeruBo said with a laugh.
The woman had not been in a good mood when she walked into class at 5 p.m., KeruBo observed, marveling at the change in her outlook within two hours.
“It’s the most amazing thing – suddenly there’s laughter, suddenly there’s singing,” she said. “It’s been healing for them, for us all.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: African women find community and healing at knitting group in Burlington.