Garments for Good
Joanna Bresee and the WWF use ‘lamba hoany’ to help protect Madagascar’s environment
By Katharine Euphrat
This article was printed in Abroad View magazine fall 2008
Joanna Bresee sits on the floor of a house surrounded by large wooden frames. Stretched over each are thin pieces of fabric—the focus of Bresee’s semester studying in Madagascar. For hours, Bresee patiently stands over the outstretched sheets, using ink to create powerful pieces of artwork that will soon be used to impact the environment and the people around her.
The fabric, however, is more than a mere canvas for her work. Each sheet is actually a wrap-like garment called a lamba hoany, or lamba for short. In warm, coastal regions of Madagascar, women wear them as dresses or skirts for both style and a statement, as each lamba contains a message printed on the back so that it can clearly be read. The images and text, written in Malagasy, usually convey specific messages: “happy birthday” if the lamba has been given as a gift; images of livestock to show off wealth; or even an insult such as, “I am better than my rival,” when two women are feuding; and in Bresee’s case, “Well-managed marine ecosystems are a source of wealth for all.”
As a requirement of World Learning/SIT Study Abroad’s Madagascar Culture and Society semester abroad program, students are assigned a 20- to 40-page research paper one month earlier. As an interdisciplinary junior at Carnegie Mellon University majoring in art and anthropology and human computer interaction, Bresee wanted her project to be more of a challenge than just a paper, and the lambas became the perfect creative outlet.
“We had taken a trip out to the coast, and we saw all these garments that were really beautiful and different, and each one was unique,” Bresee says. “I’m interested in the visual arts, and I was intrigued because it was something I was really unfamiliar with.”
Working with a translator, Bresee interviewed people in the markets to learn what made them choose one lamba over another.
“When I found out they communicate something, I thought, ‘What if they could communicate something positive, something for social change…[something] to raise awareness for environmental issues?’”
Deciding this could be a good topic for her research project, Bresee contacted Thierry Razafindralambo, a communications officer for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and the Regional Network of Marine Protected Areas of the Indian Ocean Commission Countries, and told him her idea. “It turns out they were looking for some visual materials to promote awareness about marine environments,” Bresee says.
In order to protect Madagascar’s many indigenous species, the organizations are trying to create a new marine reserve from a group of islands north of Madagascar, called Nosy Hara. To start, they needed the support of the locals. “It ended up being sort of a partnership and it worked out really well,” Bresee says.
“They were looking for something to distribute in villages that surrounded Nosy Hara to help spread awareness of the importance of marine reserves and also the guidelines for caring for marine reserves.”
Choosing to work with artist Joé Rakotomalala, who creates the traditional garments for a living, Bresee’s designs sought both to encourage environmental conservation and to contribute to a local community in a country where 150,000 animal species found nowhere else in the world live alongside some of the world’s poorest people.
Working closely with the two organizations to decide on three messages that would effectively communicate the importance of saving Madagascar’s unique environment, Bresee completed her final designs. She included Malagasy text and images from a Madagascar WWF calendar that she modified. The three designs were: a picture of tourists that said, “Tourism which conserves the environment is a treasure for all”; a map of countries working to protect marine environments that said, “The islands of the Indian Ocean united to sustain rich marine ecosystems”; and a picture of fishermen and their catch that spoke of the economic benefits of protecting marine ecosystems.
Her designs contained messages she printed onto 130 local garments that were then distributed free to Malagasy locals by WWF. Bresee sold 10 more to other American students on her program, and she gave two of them to her academic director to put on display. The rest of Bresee’s lambas were featured in an exhibit of interdisciplinary artwork at Carnegie Mellon in February 2008.
By the time she finished, Bresee had spent $350 of her own money and many sleepless nights of hard work. But with the clothing she provided for the locals, the potential to protect Madagascar’s unique environment, and the WWF’s consideration of continuing her project, Bresee says that the result was worth
the effort.
“My favorite part was the whole process of getting feedback from the WWF and then implementing it into designs that I think were pretty successful and I was really happy with,” Bresee says.
The WWF was impressed with Bresee’s work and has since asked for permission to continue her project. If money permits, the WWF plans to use her designs to make more lamba hoany that help educate Malagasy villagers about the importance of protecting the precious marine ecosystems surrounding them.