SWBG blog

Don´t let the wind blow our mandala

In this powerful blog, Arantxa Garcia de Sola — a member of the project’s Steering Group — reflects on her experience contributing to the newly published report on Poverty and Inequality in Aberdeen. 

I’m someone who writes. I even find it easier to express myself in writing than when speaking. It’s not because of English—it’s not my mother tongue, no- but it’s the same in my beloved Spanish. And maybe that has something to do with one of the things I’ve really loved about being part of the steering group for this project. For me, it’s been new and fun to work with so many different ways of expressing things — discovering how to pull something out of the brain, the heart, or the gut… without writing a text longer than what fits in a post-it, sometimes not even using words. 

First day: pile of gossip magazines, cut out, cut out and present what problems women with limited resources face in this humid and windy city in the northeast of Scotland, Aberdeen (humid and windy are my words ?). I expressed my scepticism: “With those magazines?” I swallowed my scepticism. There, among the news about British and international celebrities, was hidden the often-present mold in the flats of the granite city, the double workday inside and outside the home, menopause, periods, gaslighting from GPs who see everything as hormonal… 

Ummmm… What’s next? Well, now, coloured post-its. Write down, write down the topics you want to discuss. Right, I wasn’t so sceptical anymore. Now I was more… just curious! Eager to catch a glimpse of new perspectives, because I didn’t use to talk about these things with other women. (Before this, at least) And then… what will happen? The post-its are regrouped, forming clusters, repeated topics emerge. We are nine, all very different, three of us from across the Atlantic; we are older, younger, and middle-aged; salaried, self-employed, juggling kids and the house, that is, working without pay; as fit as a whale or with those invisible disabilities that, because they’re not seen, are perhaps harder to deal with day to day, since one doesn’t immediately get understanding or support… but, oh… Wow! It turns out we’re affected by the same things: the incredible price of the buses, and rising; the lack of street lighting in a country where the night is soooooo long, just, only, nine of twelve months of the year; the cost of housing, the lack of support for those with caregiving responsibilities, have I mentioned the gaslighting from GPs? (yes? Oh, sorry, it must be the hormones). Hey, I thought these things only happened to me—but they don’t. The one 30 years younger, and the one 20 older, the one with no kids and the one with an extra one… no, it’s happening to all of us. 

Yes, there’s room for apps too, and we made a mind map on Canva, to see what stems from each of the themes we’ve identified. Because, yes, all nodes have branches and sub-branches and sub-sub-branches. Bus fare: keeps me from moving freely, I get isolated at home, my mental health miss socialization… or if it’s a must, like having to take the kids to school, well… then I’ll have to cut back on something else. C’mon… yeah, I don’t see that well with these glasses anymore, but they’ll do for one more year. The dentist… Let me LOL. 

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and another idea is to show in a mobile photo what poverty means to us: shopping trolleys full of yellow-label items, cheap, non-nutritious food that keeps the stomach full; the key to a home surrounded by the haze of a long-cherished dream… 

And here comes my favourite: modelling playdough, yes, we go back to childhood. The gatekeeper, the cordless phone… the difficulty isn’t even accessing services themselves but simply getting information about them—this takes shape in volume and pastel colours. What colour are paradoxes? Like those in a leaflet for an ESOL beginner’s course or for childcare grants to attend the course—that are only available in English. A teammate models a grid with little yellow rolls… if you don’t fit into any box… ohhhh… get ready to go round, and round. And round. 

If old traditions placed women knitting around a table… in this project we’ve woven lists of worries, fears, hopes and dreams cut short by the lack of pounds around a paper tablecloth as our canvas, with markers instead of needles. But just the same, with many hands knitting together… 

I also like mandalas. You have that little circle, and it grows, forming a design, intricate, complex, that from an outside perspective reveals clear patterns. That’s how I think our report has grown… like a mandala a collective mandala of experiences, needs, and hopes drawn by dozens of hands, those of the steering group and those of the young women, the travellers… all the other women of Aberdeen who attended the various focus groups, and the ones that answered the survey. I only hope our mandala won’t be like those sand ones created for meditation and then left to their fate and blown away by the wind. 

It won’t be. Let’s not let it blow away. 

May those reading—decision-makers, neighbours, allies—see in it something useful, something worth holding onto. And above all, may the wind not carry it away. 

 And tomorrow, one more parent will be able to choose whether to work part-time to stay home with their children or take on full-time hours, because the kids are well cared for, playing with others their age. And this winter, one more family will spend the afternoon at home, warm, having a nutritious snack, fresh food. And a young person over 22 won’t hesitate to go see that new exhibit at the Art Gallery because they can’t afford the bus fare. And there will be one fewer woman dreaming about the key to a safe, pleasant place to raise her daughter, who, by the way… when she grows into an independent woman will use gossip magazines to make collages of night walks down well-lit streets, post-its for a weekend excursion list in affordable public transport, and playdough to shape dolphins leaping in Torry.