The Rest of the Story

Making a quilt for Dumevi from scrapes of left over fabric

 So yesterday Dumevi was picking up banana bread and stopped to tell me a story about the origins of the weigh trousers. 

In 2019 his wife came back from the clinic where a well-baby check was given to their little daughter and he saw the muslin weigh trouser that was used to weigh her. For some reason this image stuck in his mind and while he was in the temple doing work, the image of the weigh trousers with a colored fabric came into his mind. They were a little different than what his wife had used that day. 

This image was interesting and different and he talked about it with his wife and even drew it in his journal. A while later he looked it up on line and only found colored trousers outside of Ghana. He saved a YouTube of a tutorial on his phone. He had no way of making or using the information from his mind. COVID struck and nothing happened even going back to the temple for months.

In December of 2020 we were the first couple back from the states since all the missionaries had been evacuated earlier in the year. I met Dumevi the second Sunday after we arrived. He offered to be of help and aid to us in our efforts to settle in Accra. Shortly after I found he was the Elder Quorum president and the business of giving meals to families came about.

I looked into a sewing machine the first month because that is one thing (besides a camera) I can't really do without. I got one and was happy.

I'm not sure how many months it was until Dumevi first asked if I could help him make up the trousers when he saw I had a sewing machine out. He gave me the YouTube and I made it up. But it needed tweeking because it wasn't exactly what Dumevi was looking for. He gave the prameters and I did some tweeking on a pattern and ta-da! a business is born. He wanted two sturdy handles instead of the side fabric straps of the original version from the hospital clinic, he wanted it in colored children's fabric and later he made sure it was wider than the test trousers were. 

He told me there is no one else in Ghana making these kind of trousers. He wants to register his pattern for his business. All trousers in hospitals now are flour sack or muslin white and have one fabric strap coming up from the sides. His have two straps from front and back and are always made of colored fabric. 

I am amazed that the vision he had has come to be a business for him. He is getting all kinds of orders, has found people to sew for him, he and his wife are practicing and sewing up trousers, taking orders and visiting hospital clinics. He has a dream of an air-conditioned room with tables for cutting and some tables with sewing machines in it. People working for him and a successful business. Wow, God let me be a little part of it!