Isatou Ceesay: Queen of Recycling

Jerejef (Jerr-uh-JEFF), thank you, Isatou Ceesay, for being a climate hero by fighting plastic pollution! Let’s take a few steps back and meet this amazing woman. Isatou (pronounced Ay Sa Tou) Ceesay is from N’jau, a village in the Gambia, the smallest country within mainland Africa. From a young age, Isatou used her creativity to solve problems. Most families in the Gambia are poor with limited resources and in Isotou’s family there wasn’t a lot of money for toys, so she would find bits and pieces of cloth and wood and make toys to play with and share with her two sisters, her brother, and her neighbors. She had a way of bringing everyone together. Isatou also loved learning at school, but sadly her father passed away when she was just 10 years old and she had to leave school to help her mother support their family by making things to sell and getting a job to bring money into their home. As Isatou grew up, she paid close attention to everything around her. Isatou noticed her village people used plastic bags to get to and from the market instead of handmade baskets. Disposable plastic bags had become popular to use in the nearby cities, and now they were being used more in her village, too. In N’jau, there are no garbage trucks to drive around the village to pick up trash. In Isatou’s village, people had to deal with their trash on their own. Many people would throw away their trash behind their homes. So when plastic bags broke, people had nowhere to put them except on the earth. Isatou would walk and see mountains of plastic bags everywhere! When villagers sat on the ground, plastic bags towered over them. The bags were a big problem. The plastic smothered the ground and collected pools of water, attracting mosquitoes carrying disease. N’jau has many farmers, including Istaou’s family, so it’s not uncommon to see a farm animal walking through the village. Goats, who will chew on anything they can find, would eat the plastic bags, which damages their stomachs. The bags also choked the earth and prevented vegetables from growing. Isatou resolved to do something about this harmful waste! Jerejef (Jerr-uh-JEFF), thank you, Isatou Ceesay, for using your education to improve life in your community. When Isatou was 20 years old, she sold the cow that she inherited from her father and used the money to continue her education. She learned about recycling from the Gambia Technical Training Institute in the Gambia’s capital, Banjul. After Isatou finished school she volunteered for the Peace Corps . The Peace Corps is an organization sponsored by the United States that sends volunteers around the world to help countries develop schools, teach important skills to make people’s lives better, and assist in life saving projects like access to clean water. Isatou brought what she had learned back to her village, N’jau. Isatou had a plan! Just like when she was a child creating toys with materials from her environment, she would use the polluting plastic bags around her village to create something helpful and beautiful. Isatou had long ago learned from her sister to crochet by looping yarn with a hooked needle. She thought, “Why can’t we crochet plastic strips from plastic bags into something useful?” Isatou gathered a committed group of friends under the shade of a tree, and together they began to collect and wash the dirty plastic bags piled up in their village. Next, they cleaned and dried them, then they carefully cut the bags into strips. In this way, the discarded plastic bags became plastic yarn or plarn. Isotou and her friends then crocheted the plastic yarn into reusable purses to carry coins. Making the purses was complicated at first. Working with plastic was new to them, and other people in the village laughed and made fun of them and called the group dirty for gathering and cleaning the piles of plastic bags. They didn’t understand what Isatou and her friends were doing. Also, to crochet a single purse took eight hours! But it was worth it because the creation of one purse would remove ten plastic bags from the ground! So Isatou and her group moved their meeting place from outside under the tree to Isatou’s home at night. They worked tirelessly, squinting in the dim light of candles. After some months, they had enough purses to sell at the nearby market. They had done it! Isatou and her friends were working together to solve the pollution problem, and it was much easier to solve it together than doing it alone. Much to Isotou’s delight, the crocheted plastic purses were a hit! The city people loved them and demanded more. Isatou and her friends continued to make coin purses and shoulder bags to sell at the market. The money they earned from handbag sales supported families in N’jau, and soon more women joined to help the cause. The group, now known as the N'jau Recycling and Income Generation Group, grew from 5 women to 50 women. The women were earning income from selling the crocheted bags, saving money, and opening bank accounts for the first time. They could now afford to allow their daughters to continue their education instead of asking them to quit school to help make money for their family to survive. Through Isatou’s leadership and a great collaborative effort, the village women had helped reduce plastic waste in the village while creating more job opportunities. Isatou said, “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” Jerejef (Jerr-uh-JEFF), thank you, Isatou Ceesay for bringing people together to make your village N’jau, your country, the Gambia, and the planet a healthier and more beautiful place to live. Isatou Ceesay continues to spread the message of recycling and reducing pollution. In 2015, the government banned single-use plastic bags in the Gambia! The N'jau Recycling and Income Generation Group is now called The Women’s Initiative Gambia which Isatou Ceesay co-founded. The organization continues to empower women to work together in the Gambia to improve their communities through projects beyond recycling bags. For example, one group works on a project that teaches citizens of Gambia to use mango leaves to cook with instead of burning charcoal, which causes air pollution. Jerejef (Jerr-uh-JEFF), thank you, Isatou Ceesay for sharing your curiosity, creative problem-solving, and generosity with others! From the time you were a little girl making toys to share to spearheading a large project to reduce pollution in your village, your dedication brought everyone together!