00:00As South Sudanese, making these milayas are very important, especially for women.
00:05If you are to be called a woman in South Sudan culture,
00:08the first thing you need to know how to make the milaya,
00:11leave alone cooking, you need to know how to make a milaya.
00:15Practised by the Akoli, the Dinka, Shiluk and Nua,
00:18the craft of embroidering bedsheets or milaya is passed down from generation to generation,
00:24from mother to daughter, even hundreds of kilometres away from their homeland.
00:30In the refugee camp of Kakuma, in northern Kenya,
00:33young South Sudanese women still spend their days stitching away at the intricate designs.
00:39Making milaya shows respect for your mother,
00:43that she really taught you the best way as a woman.
00:46And making this milaya also is a symbol of respect to your in-laws.
00:51When they marry you, you have something to show,
00:53that I came with this, I'm ready for marriage.
00:57My name is Anna Sebit, I'm a South Sudanese.
01:01I came to this camp with my mother when I was just two years old, that was in 1994.
01:07Having spent 30 years in the refugee camp,
01:10Anna went to school here and even studied social work through an online university.
01:15But her refugee status doesn't allow her to leave the camp or earn a proper wage,
01:20and so her embroidery skills are a lifeline.
01:23Making this bedsheet, we keep them as women,
01:26because sometimes when you stay, when there is a need of money,
01:31then you start finding for customers, it's like savings.
01:34One milaya can take over a month to complete,
01:37and while not everyone in the refugee camp can afford a new one,
01:41Anna even rents out her milayas or sells them to customers travelling abroad.
01:47Drawn and designed by local artists, the signature flowers adorn most milayas,
01:52the most personal features, however, are reminders of the cultural origins.
01:57This is for my mother, I kept this bedsheet a long, long time.
02:02This zebra here symbolises the cultural animal that you have,
02:06wild animal that you have, that shows the symbol of unity, strength and all that.
02:11This is a mace, this is my own, I made it myself.
02:15Actually, I'm from Achele and we cultivate a lot of mace,
02:18and we love mace, mace posho,
02:21that's why I just like making this as a symbol of being agriculturalist people.
02:27For the women here, it's this craft that feeds their families and pays the school fees,
02:32and for Anna, it's a way of keeping the culture of South Sudanese and her mother's tradition alive.
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