About the St. Katharine Monastery
About Mount Sinai
The Bedouin Sugar Bag
Once upon a time all bedouin families used to have a sugar bag. The women used it to bring sugar (a lot) and tea (in a small inside pocket) when they went into the mountains with their goats and the men used it on their camel trips.
When having a break they would light a fire, heat water and prepare the refreshing very sweet tea.
Traditional Bedouin Sugar Bag
In 1998 a project called Fansina was started with funding from the European Union. Women now use the traditional bedouin motifs that they used to decorate the sugar bags to create a range of modern products such as bags, cushions, pillow covers and bracelets.
The project developed over the years and is now a successful business that supports up to 450 households in the village of St. Katharine.
A modern sugarbag looks like this.
Modern Sugar Bag
Many more colors, decorations and new forms are of course available.
Find more information about Fansina on www.fansina.net
Thanks to Fansina and other small projects that support bedouin women in doing handicraft, there are a quite a few women that have taken up handicraft work again, regularly work on bags or cushion covers and have also developed their skills.
However, some women seem to have forgotten where it all came from. On my trips I would like to go back to the original sugar bag and take it as the blueprint for our own small piece of art.
With the help of the bedouin women we will braid our own cord with the pompon for a small bag and choose a design to stitch on.
We will also enjoy the warm hospitality of the bedouin, get a small insight into their lifes and maybe start to exchange our views and/or skills on handicraft and more.
