With the season fast approaching, twenty-five-year old Tiffany Adams better known as “Kite Girl” of Haslington, East Coast Demerara, met up with Stabroek News on Thursday and spoke a bit about herself and her interest in kite-making.
She said that her family’s kite business has been in existence for over 20 years and recalled making her first kite at the tender age of 5. She said that she was self-taught as she would watch her parents make kites to sell every year when she was a little girl.
Adams’s mom who died two years ago was the owner of the kite business and she related that ever since she was a little girl, her mother would have her and the other siblings busy throughout the Easter season. “My mother would get me and my brothers and sisters making kites, helping her paste and all the other necessaries and even though she passed away we still continue to run the business”, he said.
The first kite she made when she was five years old was a ‘pointer kite’ which she constructed out of ‘pointer’ (coconut leaf spine), paper from exercise books, kite paper, ‘glamma’ cherry, sewing thread and bamboo. She noted that every year after the Easter holidays while she was growing up, she, her siblings, and friends would usually fly their kites in the open pasture just to have a little more fun. Adams recalled that persons would buy her family’s kite frames for their business and would get a discounted price.
The kites that she has on display are star point, bird kites, box kites, and many more. The prices vary from $300 for kite frames to $800 for the kites that are already pasted. And according to Adams they would source their materials from lumber yards, hardware stores, and Chinese stores.
She urges parents to invest in buying kites for their children because Easter is a special holiday especially for kids, and to be careful when flying their kites.
