Five years ago, Tamara Johnston probably would’ve had a hard time finding Togo on a map.
Today, she says of the women there, “We belong to each other.”
Tragedy brought them together; the insistence on a better, more meaningful life made them family.
In 2004, a 26-year-old Tamara was headed for a career in film and had landed a plum job at DreamWorks. Her twin sister Shelby was a college professor while Shelby’s husband Steve worked as a laser scientist at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Shelby was pregnant; Tamara engaged to a man all of them had known since they were five. Life seemed full of promise. And then Tamara’s fiancé Matthew was killed, hit by an elderly driver.
“Life did not make sense after that,” says Tamara. “We all felt this incredible void. We made a group decision to quit our jobs and devote ourselves fulltime to making an impact on this world. It was do that, or implode.”
In a brainstorming session around the kitchen table, they decided they would manufacture fair trade goods. That way they could help people struggling to survive while also helping the planet.
“We had a few things guiding us in what to manufacture,” says Tamara. “We wanted something that would bring customers back to us again and again. You can’t do that by importing baskets. So we settled on beauty products, figuring it would be easy to make soap.”
It wasn’t. With his chemistry background, Steve became the de facto head of product development. Their laboratory was the Moser’s kitchen. Their funding came from plastic.
Four years later, they have yet to make a profit, but their beauty line has grown to over twenty-five products. All of them are natural and more importantly to the group, all of them sustain communities of people who formerly lived in poverty.
Three years ago, Tamara felt compelled to visit the co-op in Togo. She wanted to see for herself what effect their commitment to these women was having. “I didn’t tell them I was coming,” she says. “Where they live is so rural – there is no physical address and no way to communicate. It took me days just to find the village even with the help of locals.”
When she got there, she found herself so overcome with emotion that she could barely bring herself to speak for the first two days. All of the women were widows, people who would have been social outcasts without the co-op.
“Now they were looked up to,” says Tamara. “Fair wages provided them with good food, proper shelter, healthcare and the ability to send their children to school. They worked reasonable hours in a clean environment and everyone took care of each other.”
Because she had been through a loss as profound as these widows, Tamara found herself “spiritually drawn to them.” Watching them navigate the world in spite of their individual tragedies gave Tamara the first peace she had known since Matthew died.
When she returned to the United States, the three partners decided it wasn’t enough to just use products from co-ops; they wanted to set up sustainable co-ops of their own. Presently, they are attempting to do just that in Liberia, a nation with 85% unemployment.
Interestingly, when you ask Tamara what her life goals are now, she never mentions the words money or profit. She judges her success only in terms of how many people she can help, how many co-ops the group can create.
It’s a little bit easier now as they have a new partner. A year ago September, Tamara married the cameraman who was shooting a documentary of the company’s story. “It’s like loving two children when you are a mother,” says Tamara of her feelings for Matthew and her husband Jordan. “The feeling is different but equal.”
In spite of the extra jobs all four partners take on the side just to get the bills paid; in spite of the long hours, uncertain future and financial instability they face, they all feel profoundly blessed. Life is filled with meaning it never had before and they have become citizens of the world.
To find out more about the anti-body product line, go to their Web site at www.anti-body.com.
By Jamie Simons for PeterGreenberg.com.
Read more inspiring stories from the Grateful Traveler series:
