A retired English teacher is aiding Senegalese communities, selling African bags and repurposed T-shirts.

Jenny Webster is a retired Marina High School English teacher, a lifelong poet and a mother of two adult children. She lives in a cute house on one of the sunniest streets of Marina, with her stranger-sensitive dogs and her affectionate black cat Bob.

Her living room is the One Woman Two Fires headquarters, production space and storage – nothing more than a large rack of clothes and bags, and a big box of fabric, each attracting the eye with an intense color.

“That’s basically how my rack looks,” Webster says about the growing inventory of African bags she designed and has made for her by tailors in Senegal, and the upcycled T-shirt line she started to make by hand in 2022.

She is wearing a T-shirt of her own work with her logo sewn on, and she has another one in process, draped over the sofa next to her. The name of her initiative – it’s not a company, not an organization – comes from her observations in Africa, where “women would cook over the open fire and take care of all kinds of other family and community business at the same time,” she says. “Two fires. That’s important to me.”

Webster has been selling African bags, on and off, at local farmers markets since at least 2012, but her adventure with the continent started with an entirely different art form: African dance. “There was just something about it that was so compelling to me, from the first time I saw it as an 18 – or 20-year-old,” Webster says. “I heard the drums, I saw that style of dance and I just thought, ‘This is for me.’” She has been performing with an African dance circle in Santa Cruz for many years.

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Webster traveled the world. She first visited Senegal in 2004, and then she found herself returning there every year.

“You always hear about aid going to Africa,” Webster says. “But it is mostly distributed close to where the airport is. So the areas around Dakar [the capitol] will get aid. Other places don’t see much of it.”

She decided to establish some kind of program that would help women and local businesses. She tried selling African jewelry in the U.S. and eventually ended up with Senegalese bags.

“One of the things I like the most about them is that they stand on their own,” Webster says. Made of heavy cotton, they are durable totes – as well as works of art, if you like patterns. Whenever she sells one, she passes her profit to The Senegal Health Institute, founded and run by Jill Diallo, originally from Carmel.

Webster felt a kindred spirit to Diallo in terms of recognizing the need for help in Senegal. “That was the goal,” Webster says about her determination. “It’s just life-saving work.”

T-shirts are a recent addition to what she offers at local farmers markets in Marina and Pacific Grove and soon, perhaps, Monterey. Webster wanted to somehow incorporate her poetry into the project so she took a class on how to print on clothing at Slowfiber in Monterey. She finds her T-shirts in secondhand stores, washes them and stamps or stitches on letters by hand.

“I don’t know where it’s coming from,” she says about her urge to upcycle T-shirts. “But I remember when I was a child and my mom taught me to sew my Girl Scouts badges.”

Webster is always on the lookout for a fabric that will look good when combined with her African fabrics.

She has clothes for men, women and children. She points to sweatshirts and T-shirts in all sizes, and even baby clothes.

Her goal is to connect with craft fairs and maybe sell some of her stuff in a store.

“We each have to choose our own corner of the world that we want to help,” she explains of her motivation. “If you go to rural Africa, you see that that’s where the most extreme poverty is. I made many friends over the years. I love the culture there – so communal. They don’t understand the need for alone time there.”

ONE WOMAN TWO FIRES can be found at local farmers markets.