Friday, April 5, 2019

Gillet Family Donations to the Horner Museum


The walking stick pictured in the last post is just one of many objects from Mozambique which Ira and Edith Gillet donated to the Horner Collection, now part of the Benton County Museum. Other objects they sent include everyday household objects and things used in subsistence agriculture which was, and to some extent still is, the dominant feature of Mozambique's economy.

The Kambini Mission in Inhambane Province taught improved agricultural techniques that the students could then take back to their villages. One of the Gillet's newsletters noted that “Kambini students raise about one thousand bushels of peanuts at the school each year for their own use.  Also two crops of corn yearly and large fields of manioc, sweet potatoes, beans, cotton, and pumpkins—all plowed by International Harvest Company walking plows pulled by cattle trained by the students.” The caption for one of the photos in the newsletter says “This Kambini graduate learned while at school to use a plow. At home he trained two oxen and bought a plow for himself.  Now he not only plows his own fields—formerly his mother and sister had to dig those fields with short-handled hoes—but he plows for neighbors who already aspire to own plows.”

The Gillets donated a winnowing basket that the boys would have used in husking peanuts or corn.
They also wrote that “Each Kambini boy learns to make good grain baskets from local vines.”

Palm trees abound in the Inhambane Province.  Parts of these trees were used in making many household objects. This “water dipper” or ladle is made from a coconut shell.
Mozambicans used the leaves from the palms to make carrying bags of various sizes and patterns. Here are photographs of some of my favorites.
By Martha Fraundorf, Volunteer for Benton County Historical Society, Philomath, Oregon


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