SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­l­sandy@gmail.com

Prose fic­tion writer and hand­i­craft artiste, Vashti Bowlah, cred­its her rur­al up­bring­ing and her par­ents for her be­com­ing a pub­lished au­thor and en­tre­pre­neur.

Grow­ing up in Cen­tral Trinidad with no run­ning wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty or elec­tron­ic de­vices, with a skilled car­pen­ter as a fa­ther and a moth­er who was a seam­stress, Bowlah says it was no easy jour­ney, but it had its ad­van­tages.

“My dear pa­pa made hand­made toys; even a spe­cial dol­ly­house for me, as he could not have pur­chased the one I liked in a show­case, while he and my mom took me win­dow shop­ping. My moth­er de­signed hand­made dress­es for all,” Bowlah re­called. “It was rare that we wore any­thing store-bought. I al­so re­call be­ing ex­cit­ed af­ter it rained, so that my cousins and I would col­lect mud to mould in­to pots and pans to play dol­ly­house.”

Bowlah said these in­flu­enced her to learn to sew from a young age.

“My moth­er was a known seam­stress in the com­mu­ni­ty, and peo­ple came from near and far with their fab­ric and de­sign, which were cut out from a news­pa­per or fash­ion mag­a­zine, for her to recre­ate. Around sev­en, for my Art and Craft end-of-term test in pri­ma­ry school, I made a doll’s dress, which I pre­sent­ed to my teacher. She re­fused to be­lieve I had made it, even con­sult­ing oth­er teach­ers.”

Bowlah took that dis­ap­point­ment and turned it in­to a pas­sion that soon be­gan to blos­som.

“As I grew old­er, I would pur­chase fab­ric and ex­per­i­ment with de­signs. Right out of sec­ondary school, I worked briefly in a cloth­ing store and asked the pro­pri­etor if I could dis­play a shirt I had sewn. To my sur­prise, it was sold the next day. I don’t think he was very pleased.”

Bowlah re­count­ed an­oth­er proud mo­ment.

“I had de­signed a den­im skirt and was stopped on nu­mer­ous oc­ca­sions by ran­dom women on the street who asked where I got it. They would be shocked to learn that I had made it.”

Apart from be­ing wide­ly cre­ative, Bowlah al­so de­scribes her­self as be­ing ex­treme­ly re­silient, pos­i­tive and a lover of all things lo­cal.

But she re­called that her gift and pas­sion were fre­quent­ly frowned up­on.

“It was a nev­er-end­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of be­ing de­nied op­por­tu­ni­ties, be­ing told that I would amount to noth­ing, dis­ap­point­ments, get­ting my ideas reg­u­lar­ly stolen and used by oth­ers, but I per­se­vered, be­cause women are much stronger than we think.”

Bowlah mar­ried twice and was blessed with a son, Bran­don Man­groo, and a daugh­ter, Jo­lene Bridglal, whom she chose to stay at home to raise. How­ev­er, her pas­sion nev­er dimmed.

“At that junc­ture, to prove my­self wor­thy, I de­cid­ed to ex­plore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of de­sign­ing and sell­ing my orig­i­nal cre­ations. The re­sponse was very en­cour­ag­ing, and I con­tin­ued to ex­pand my cat­e­go­ry of prod­ucts, util­is­ing a lot of up­cy­cling. It’s dif­fi­cult for me to throw out a nice card­board box or bot­tle, and I sel­dom do, be­cause it even­tu­al­ly turns up in one of my cre­ations,” Bowlah ex­plained.

Mas­ter­ing clay, jute, den­im and plush, among oth­er fab­rics/tex­tures, to make her cre­ations, Bowlah honed her skills by be­com­ing cer­ti­fied in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine and al­so earned a diplo­ma in Mar­ket­ing, Pub­lic Re­la­tions and Cus­tomer Ser­vice from the School of Prac­ti­cal Ac­count­ing. An MBA in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion, spe­cial­is­ing in Lead­er­ship, En­tre­pre­neur­ship and In­no­va­tion from An­glia Ruskin Uni­ver­si­ty, SAM Caribbean Ltd lat­er came.

In 2021, she won first place in a Bird Feed­er De­sign Com­pe­ti­tion host­ed by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture (Wildlife Sec­tion) with The Peck­ing Place, util­is­ing on­ly up­cy­cled ma­te­ri­als. In 2023, she emerged as the win­ner, this time in the IAMove­ment’s com­pe­ti­tion for her up­cy­cled, lo­cal-in­spired craft cre­ation/de­sign, Mum­my’s Lit­tle Helper.

Bowlah’s works have been reg­u­lar­ly fea­tured at the Ro­tun­da Gallery, Red House, Port-of-Spain. She al­so au­thored Un­der the Peepal Tree, and Sug­ar­cane Val­ley: Sto­ries of East In­di­an Folk­lore & Su­per­sti­tion and con­tributed to Sunspot Jun­gle Vol 2.

“My pas­sion has al­ways been for cre­ativ­i­ty, which runs through my veins,” re­flect­ed Bowlah. “As an au­thor, I share my hum­ble be­gin­nings and ex­pe­ri­ences with women, chil­dren at schools and pub­lic li­braries to en­cour­age a love for read­ing and to pro­mote lit­er­a­cy. As an en­tre­pre­neur, I re­duce, reuse and re­cy­cle, while cre­at­ing orig­i­nal and unique de­signs.”

Bowlah has paid trib­ute to her late fa­ther and her moth­er through her work.

“In mem­o­ry of my dear pa­pa, I’m in­ten­tion­al about con­tin­u­ing to keep his spir­it alive, and mak­ing both him and my mom proud, so I will do every­thing to ho­n­our their name.”

Bowlah said it takes a lot of self-con­fi­dence to de­fy norms and cre­ate some­thing beau­ti­ful and unique, even in the face of be­ing told “no” or a lack of sup­port.

Her ad­vice to women and girls dream­ing about cre­at­ing through writ­ing, craft or oth­er gen­res of art,

“Pur­sue your pas­sions, learn from fail­ure and trust in your abil­i­ties, be­cause con­fi­dence grows from with­in.”