The seamstress with a spiritual touch

Jun 19, 2011 News

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By Crystal Conway

“To young women, if you love yourself then you will hold out until you are treated with respect in all things…then it will be harder for young men to hurt or mistreat you. To young men, the same principle applies – a man will not hurt himself with drugs or alcohol, nor will he hurt others if he is aware that he is loved and that he is also called to love.”

You walk into the home and there are colours everywhere you look … there are racks upon racks of thread of every shade and hue lining the walls.
There are posters of styles and designs, there are completed and half-done articles of clothing hung up in various spots, and there is a rainbow of cloth peeking out from shelves – scrap pieces, full lengths waiting to be cut, partially sewn pieces.
Anyone who has experience with seamstresses or tailors can tell you that there is a smell which emanates from a sewing machine.
It is evident on the old Singer models and is evoked by the metal parts and the peculiar smell of machine oil. You may also hear about the smell of cloth that has been freshly cut – like newly mown grass, fresh cut cloth has its own distinct smell too.
And in the midst of this colorful riot sits the Reverend Jacqueline Bourne. She sits working on two tiny white flower girl dresses for a wedding all the way in Berbice.
With the pattern already cut out of the cloth, she sews the pieces together as she tells her story.
Born Jacqueline Dow, she became an orphan at the age of nine after losing both of her parents within the space of a year and a half; first her mother and then her father.
The third of three children to her parents, she and her siblings were split up among the rest of the family.
She went to live with her mother’s sister and her grandparents in North East La Penitence. Meanwhile her older brother and sister went to live with other relatives in Berbice and Georgetown respectively.
She attended the East La Penitence Government School and was among the first batch of students to attend the newly opened North Georgetown Secondary. It was at this point in time that the young Jacqueline discovered that her mother had indeed left her a gift before she had passed on. Her mother had been a seamstress by profession and Jacquline grew up surrounded by her mother’s work.
The young girl discovered at the age of 14 that she knew how to sew, with no prior training. She later said that she came to realize that it was a gift from God, a legacy that her mother passed on to her. She admits that today she has still not taken any professional training, but she has read and practiced extensively on her own.
She says that you could largely describe her as self-taught in the trade which is an impressive feat when the heights she eventually attained in her profession are considered.
Despite her aptitude for sewing, it didn’t become her career until much later in her life. Instead, she began teaching at the age of 16, as soon as she left school. She gained a position as a pupil teacher at Dolphin Secondary, but she didn’t stay there for very long before life took her elsewhere.
The young woman left Guyana to live in the islands for a brief period and then made an interesting career choice upon her return to her homeland.
At the age of 21, Jacqueline joined the Guyana Defence Force. She entered through the Basic Recruit Course as a Private and left six years later as a Substantive Corporal. During her time in the armed forces she completed the recruit course and went on to do further training. She also became a mother and started her family.
All this time her sewing had been a tiny part of her life, a skill that allowed her to make her own clothes and curtains and sew for her family, but all of that was about to change.
While she was in the army, a friend found out that she did sewing and asked her to do some work.
After a while her friend brought her mother, and her mother brought a friend, someone brought a cousin and before she knew it, sewing was a side business and she was building up a large client base. So large that the amount of time she needed to meet her work commitments as well as those of her sewing business was beginning to impact on the time she needed to spend with her children.
It was at this point in time that she realized that she needed to make a decision – continue working with the Defence Force or go out on her own and start her own business.
She chose the latter … and reinvented her life. Sewing offered her the opportunity to not only work at home and therefore spend more time with her kids but to have a greater degree of control over her life and her work.
She was now free to dictate how many hours she would have to work, where she could work, how much she was capable of earning, and it gave her the freedom and flexibility to shape her own future.
Using the training she had received in her years in the armed forces, Jacqueline applied herself to her new business and career with diligence and hard work which paid off in bountiful measure. Her little sewing shop set up on the bottom flat of her house soon became a small garment factory for custom sewing jobs.
Her customer base expanded to include companies as well as individuals and it eventually saw her sewing uniforms for the Guyana National Cooperative Bank (GNCB), Bank of Guyana (BOG), Courts (Guyana) Ltd. and the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph (GT&T) Company along with all the countless orders for wedding parties.
In her shop there are albums that show the wedding dresses that she has sewn over the years. As they stretch across 34 years, one can follow all of the fashion trends in wedding gowns over the last three decades.
But that wasn’t the limit of the demand for her skills either, because for many years she was an active part of the pageant and fashion scene.
She recalls sewing for countless designers and delegates in a variety of pageants. Jacqueline is one of the seamstresses who outfits the winners of Miss Guyana Universe for their reign, providing them with suits and other formal wear.
She also sews clothing for pageant use and favours the annual mother-daughter fashion show. This is one of the few fashion events that she still sews for, having chosen to step back from the fashion scene for moral reasons.
At the height of her career as a seamstress, Jacquline had nine seamstresses working in her shop in order to keep up with the work. But then everything changed …
Once again she would reinvent her life. She pointed out that going out on her own, walking away from the GDF and the security of her job there, taking her fledgling business upwards, taking on the immense volumes of work, hiring staff, expanding and growing, all came with one thought – that God would not have sent it if she were not capable of handling the challenge.
Her faith, she said, was what sustained her over all the years, along with her belief that she was truly loved by God, and that belief was her motivating factor for starting a new life.
Jacqueline recalled that at a certain point in her early 40’s, she sat back and reflected on her life, on all the events that had transpired from the time she became an orphan at the age of nine to the high point she was currently experiencing in her life and her business.
She considered all of the wrong turns that she could have made, all the things that had gone wrong and it dawned on her that it wasn’t her doing.
She said that she came to the realization that she had been protected and guided and that it was God’s doing, that it was His love which had gotten her to that point in her life. She said that she became conscious of His love and she was humbled by it.
Thereafter, Jacqueline said that she was moved to serve and love as she knew she was loved. And in her desire to serve she began to see opportunities to do so in her church.
She recognised the needs of her church community as opportunities and so her first move into serving was to become the Sunday School Teacher at her church, then the need for a Youth Advisor arose so she took up that position.
Later on the call for Deacons would come and she would answer that one too, until eventually the Congregational Union of 36 Churches started training church leaders locally.
The College for Ministry and Mission was formed in Guyana and Jacqueline was in the first batch of trainees who started the programme in 2002 and graduated three years later as a pastor after her studies in Theology.
She remembers that year clearly … it was the year that she turned 50, and a pivotal point in her life.
Since that time she has been actively ministering as a pastor, at one time heading two churches. In October of last year, she was ordained as the Reverend Jacqueline Bourne. It was after her service to the church began in earnest, that she realized that there needed to be changes in the life that she led. She pointed out that her observation of the fashion industry led her to realize that Christian morals and values are neither observed nor even mentioned therein. There was a total breakdown in what was important and so she decided that she would withdraw from the fashion scene.
Eventually she managed to settle into a comfortable middle ground where she ministered to her church but she still did her sewing; this time for a select clientele, who asked for her personal service and were willing to wait for it.
Her advice to young people and society in general is based on the precept that made it possible for her to change her life all those years ago.
“I tell young people, learn to love. I believe in real love for self and neighbour as the solution for a lot of the ills that plague society. “To young women, if you love yourself then you will hold out until you are treated with respect in all things…then it will be harder for young men to hurt or mistreat you. To young men, the same principle applies – a man will not hurt himself with drugs or alcohol, nor will he hurt others if he is aware that he is loved and that he is also called to love.”
The Reverend says that domestic abuse, drug abuse and violent crimes are all symptoms of the breakdown of the moral fibre of society which is itself caused by a lack of love.
She adamantly states that the Domestic Violence Act is a farce; that government can pass as much legislation as it chooses, but that until love for self and others becomes a conscious act on the part of people, nothing will really change.
She also notes that adopting this mindset leads to a freedom from fear, and it is fear that drives the engine of many of the evils in the society.
Despite her commitment to ministering and spreading the word, however, Reverend Jacqueline Bourne has still remained devoted to her sewing career and she says that she wants to pass on her talent.
She wants to pass on what God has planted in her and she trusts that the doors will be open for her to do so in the near future.

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