Mansfield Couple's Beads Weave Change in Zambia

How did a side business run by two local professionals go from hobby to helping and empowering people thousands of miles away?

Simple. They just kind of fell into it.

Rich and Donna Golemme started the Bead Cache in Mansfield in 2004 after Donna compiled a huge beads collection.

“Before we knew it, our house looked like a bead store,” Rich Golemme said. “We just decided to start the business on a whim really. Before we knew it, the thing took off.”

Rich Golemme works as an accountant and used to work for a mutual fund company. Right now he says he offers tax advice and services when he can. Donna is the executive vice president at WGBH’s Public Broadcasting Service’s distribution department. Golemme is a native of Norwell and his wife is a native of Mansfield. The couple currently live in Foxborough.

The couple sells bead necklaces and other products made in Africa by a small tribe in Zambia. All proceeds from the sales of the beads go directly to the women of the tribe, who make the products based on designs from the Golemmes.

The couple got involved with a group of people within the company working with outreach to a small village called Muchila in Zambia.

The village, populated by about 35,000 people, is a two-day drive from Zambia’s capital Lusaka. Golemme said that the first day of the journey is on paved roads, and the second is a ten-day ride by jeep.

Golemme is now the treasurer and on the board of directors of an initiative called Options for Children in Zambia.

Two dentists from Tufts Medical Center and a Harvard hematologist started the organization.

Through his wife’s affiliation with PBS, the couple started to get involved. Golemme said that the first time the group (he and his wife were not involved at the time) went out to Zambia in 2006, they had to first be invited to the village by the tribe’s headman. The organization’s coordinator, Max Gabala, convinced the chief to let their group in the village.

“They were in desperate need in overall health,” Golemme said. “It’s a very remote village of about 35,000 who live off the land. They were the first white men they have seen.”

The group wanted to help bring up the quality of life for the village by building a health center, but it wasn’t that easy.

“It seems silly, but in order to provide the health services [center], they had to agree with the headman to do something else that the tribe wanted,” he said.

The tribe not only got a health center, which has started construction in June of 2012, but the group drilled three wells for clean water, started a commercial farm and leased a tractor to the tribe.

The women of the tribe make baskets and OCZ was looking for an outlet to sell them. Bead Cache stepped up and took the baskets to sell.

“After a year of doing that, we suggested that if we could do something with beads we could raise more funds for them,” Golemme said.

He said it wasn’t all that easy. Beads in the Muchila culture represent an intimate and sexual nature between a man and a woman, and it was difficult to get them to agree to their proposal. 

The couple asked if they could teach the women in the tribe once a year to make certain designs and patterns. They would take the finished product back to their shop and sell them, giving all proceeds to the women. It was an empowering experience, Golemme said, as the role of women in the tribe is not as progressive as other cultures.

“Women now have independence because they have money,” he said. “A lot of them use it for their family or themselves, but they now have a choice on what they want to do with it. Normally the men have control of money. We now see a different type of relationship.”

The couple sends about 100 pounds of beads a year to the village and personally goes over to Zambia to teach them how to put them together.

Golemme said the cultural divide was as surprising to him as it was to the women of the tribe.

He related a story from the last time he went to Zambia in which his wife was showing the women how to make a design of beads. Golemme said he went to his wife with some laundry and asked her if she needed anything else.

He said when he left the women were talking and giggling in Tonga, which is one of 73 languages spoken in the country.

“They wanted to know if all the men in America were like her husband and do the wash or anything like that that was not considered a man’s chore,” he said. “They were all just amazed that a man would come up and ask to do a simple chore like laundry. Through our contact, they’re seeing just how different life could be and how the different relationships could work.”

Education is also a key factor in the work that OCZ does in the village. They are now taking students from the local elementary school in the village (which is the highest education in the area and is a paid institution) who want to become dentists.

After they’ve gotten their grades high enough, OCZ is paying for them to go to dental school. This year, they have put two students up from the village to the Lusaka University for dentistry.

The deal is that the students must return as dentists to help their village for a time. 

Golemme said that Zambia’s government wants to use what they’ve done as a model for the area and other remote tribes. He said they want to set up a self-perpetuating system of progress in the area.

“Once they’re done, we’ll move on to another village,” he said.

As of about 4:30 p.m. on Aug. 8, Golemme and his wife set off for this year’s trip to Zambia. To follow their trip on Twitter, click here