Latest update February 22nd, 2025 2:00 PM
Latest News
- $277.9M Mabaruma Magistrates’ Court commissioned at Mabaruma
- Min. Indar scolds contractors over unsanctioned works days after VP Jagdeo called out ministry’s shoddy management of construction sites
- White House expects Ukraine to sign critical minerals deal soon
- Simplify cash grant distribution processes
- Peacemaker chopped after intervening in argument
Thomasina Benn is an enterprising and independent woman
– a hobby that became a business
By Enid Joaquin
Thomasina Benn is not your average senior citizen. Like good wine, this lady has simply mellowed with age, and gotten better at her craft, which is making and decorating cakes.
Adding the finishing touches to one of her creations.
Today at seventy plus, she is still very much the same enterprising and independent woman, that she was fifty years ago.
Her focus these days however, is primarily on managing her internet and stationary business, and baking and icing cakes.
And that is what makes Thomasina unique- her ability to manage two businesses at a time in her life, when most women her age would be relaxing.
But that is nothing strange, as Thomasina has always been involved in more than one economic ventures at a time. She began by making garments for family, friends and customers. Then she started making cakes and icing them.
These two activities, she pointed out, greatly supplemented the family’s income.
“I started sewing first, though, since I was in school. I used to sew doll’s clothes for my friends, and charged them a penny apiece. So you see I started to earn from an early age.
Later, after I left school, I started to sew for myself and later family and friends.”
Thomasina proudly admits that she taught herself to sew, as well as bake and ice cakes. “I was living with my elder sister, who used to sew and bake and ice cakes, so I used to look at her, and I learnt just from looking.
My first icing thimbles, I made them myself, using cardboard, which I cut out and shaped, because my sister never wanted me to use her thimbles.”
She would practice with those cardboard thimbles, until she could afford her own. Today Thomasina has acquired all the paraphernalia that she needs. And boy, does she practice!
Looking at her creations, I was simultaneously awestruck and humbled.
Humbled because, I had always felt that I was some sort on authority on creativity; but now I had to admit, this lady certainly took the cake, when it came to creativity.
Thomasina seems to breathe creativity, and over the years that preoccupation has translated into dollars. She is so creative that in 2003, her cake was adjudged the best at exhibition at Le Meridian, Pegasus in Georgetown. The exhibition was organized by an internationl organization called the International Cake Exploration Society.
“My cake won, because of my creativity and my neatness, the judges said. The piece I did was of a church on the top of a hill, and I got the inspiration for it while I was sitting at my sewing machine; so right away, I got up and started working on it.
That exhibition would result in Thomasina joining the International Cake Exploration Society.
“My current passion is cake decorating and the making of sugar flowers.
I don’t know where this journey will take me, but at the moment, I’m trying to get as much as I can out of this, and I’m enjoying every moment of it”.
Presently, apart from enjoying her lifelong hobby, which also earns her some money, Thomasina is also the proud proprietor and Manager of “Ebusiness”, an internet, stationary and document Centre at 191 Wisroc, Linden.
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
The clock and the cloud
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News- Time, as the ancients knew, is a trickster. It slips through the fingers of kings and commoners... more
CARICOM Nations Should Respond Together To new U.S. Policies
By Sir Ronald Sanders Ambassador to the US and the OAS, Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News-Two Executive Orders issued by U.S.... more
Weekend Cartoon
