Omega Nyanga in a dress she made herself.
In 1992, Omega Nyanga offered to sew something beautiful for Marylee, if Marylee could only find some thread and fabric. That year, Zambia suffered a severe drought and all the workers on Moorings Farm had been laid off. There was no crop, and simply no work to do.
Omega had been training as a seamstress in northern Zambia when her family told her to return to Moorings to care for her ailing mother. But she knew she could still create, if only she had the materials, and that maybe she could make some money using her skills.
The Malambo Women’s Group grew out of Omega’s fledgling idea and Marylee’s own experience of teaching an earlier generation to embroider in the 1950s and 1960s. Neither of them could have guessed how many people would benefit from Omega’s simple suggestion, nor how successful the resulting group would be.
The Malambo Women’s Group was just the beginning of our work in Zambia. We hope to keep expanding into communities throughout southern Zambia.