The Blue Dress (Teboho Moja)

For her 4-year-old birthday, Keitu receives a dress, but not just any dress, a blue one with a pattern chosen to represent her family! In South Africa, family members make clothes from one identical fabric, so it shows that they belong to the same family.

The Blue Dress celebrates some of the traditional South African fabrics, named seshweshwe, that are used by black families to make dresses for special celebrations.

Teboho Moja is a native of South Africa who now lives in New York City but maintains a strong l ink with South Africa. She is a native speaker of the Setswana language. She is a professor of higher education at New York University.