MARGAO: A 30-year-old Abeleena Luis may be a challenged person but it is through this challenge that she along with her family has prepared a mesmerising Christmas Crib entirely out of plastic that is thrown away as waste thereby proving that wealth can be created from waste.
Abeleena, who lost her left hand in her childhood, along with her husband Godwin Luis and two daughters, 11-year-old Lavina and 8-year-old Lavita, have prepared a beautiful crib that depicts Goa as it was a couple of years back without any buildings.
In fact a typical Goan village as it was seen in the past is depicted just by the side of the Luis family and it took them 20 days to prepare this tableau that has 6 brick houses, three straw houses and four houses made up of wild grass. While the brick houses are on the low lands, the straw houses are on a higher place and the wild grass houses are on the hilly area.
The tableau depicts fields that are prepared using straws, orchard land where the bushes and plants including cacti are prepared using the coconut flower called “xevok” in the local language and tiny mushrooms made from coconut shells are found in the fields.
While cows and bulls are made using plastic bottles of different sizes, what is amazing is the cashew fruits prepared from plastic bottles that adorn the branch of the natural cashew tree that hangs over the tableau.
One can see cowdung cakes that were used as fuel earlier heaped near the fire place and also the pit where the dung was collected. A very impressive salt pan shows how salt was collected before consumption of iodised salt became a lifestyle.
The family has been preparing the crib for the last six years and it can be seen at Damon West just near the SVD Seminary. The family survives on daily wages as Godwin undertakes work of cutting grass with the weed cutter and Abeleena cuts bigger trees that cannot be cut with the machine with a chopper.
