We reflect on Quaker Tapestry Service Overseas panel as relief work remains a life line for people living through wars and disasters around the world.
‘Be patterns, be examples in all countries – places – islands wherever you come that your carriage and life may preach among all sorts of people’
Quakers long held aloof from missionary work, lest it appear as a paid ministry. By the middle of the nineteenth century different views were prevailing, and overseas work began in India in 1866 and in Madagascar the following year.
In 1888 work began in Szechwan (Sichuan), west China. From Shanghai it was 1,000 miles up the Yangtze (Chang) to Ichang (Yichang), then 500 miles through the gorges, the boats pulled by trackers with bamboo ropes, (depicted middle, lower left).
Out of educational work there developed, outside the city of Chengtu (Chengdu), the West China Union University (1910), (depicted middle, upper left). Later came the West China University of Medical Sciences.
When, in 1897, slavery was abolished in Pemba, Tanzania, Friends started to run clove plantations, (depicted right), to help sustain the island’s economy.
First stage relief work often starts with emergency feeding. Self-sufficiency is achieved only by helping people to create a more fertile soil, whether it is the planting of trees or quite simple efforts to improve the garden produce of Ethiopian refugees in Somalia, (depicted centre).
A fertile soil depends on water. During the Indian famines of the 1890s George Swan (1869 -1901), ‘the boy from the fairground’, helped the Gond villagers in mid-India to use simple materials to repair wells or dig new ones. In the 1950s a Canadian Quaker devised a method of concrete rings sunk to the required depth to create wells, (depicted bottom right).
More is needed besides food, a Salvadorean refugee is being taught carpentering skills (depicted bottom left). Bread and skills are not enough: without personal relationships relief work can be arid. George Swan sat with the Gonds, laughing and talking with them and playing his concertina. In the same tradition, a Quaker worker in the 1970s makes music with refugees in the Gaza strip (depicted bottom, left of centre)
The desire to see both sides of disputes continues with the Ecumenical Accompaniers Programme in Palestine and Israel which Quakers organise on behalf of the World Council of Churches.
Designed by Margery Levy; embroidered by several groups.
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