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Miss Carmela Ebejer was born at Dingli on the 28th
February, 1900. She was the daughter of John Baptist
Ebejer from Dingli and Clara nee Sapiano from Mdina.
She had three elder sisters and a younger brother.
At the age of three, her father died and the family
was brought up by her mother who, however, never
married again, thus Carmela had a poor childhood and
had to struggle a lot to become a teacher
particularly because her physical condition in early
life was rather feeble.
She attended Dingli Primary School and later the
Central School at Floriana. She started her teaching
carrier in her mid teens. From then on up o her
retirement at the age of sixty, Carmela always
taught at Dingli Primary School. She taught students
of different classed but in her later years she
concentrated in teaching Stage 1 pupils.
Her teaching vocation did not end on her official
retirement. In fact she continued to teach up to
such an elderly age, first because she loved
children very much and always yearned that the
children from t the Dingli Area receive a very good
education and also in order to be able to help the
missions with the money she earned.
She was a widely learned and travelling person. She
spent a good part of her spare time reading
literature and becoming so well versed as to be able
to quote large excerpts from Shakespeare and Dickens
as well as renowned Italian authors like Dante and
Manzoni. She was also very familiar with the Maltese
drama being provided by her relative Francis Ebejer.
In her past time Carmela would also spend much time
making a large variety of embroidery, which skill
she also taught to many youngsters.
Most of all she liked breeding silkworms for
pleasure purposes and many children from Dingli
would come to her house with handfuls of mulberry
leaves to exchange for silkworms. From the silkworm
cocoons she used to make silk threads with which she
used to work lace. This procedure required very
delicate handling and much patience. From one spring
to another, some of her cocoons were left for
breeding purposes, that is, to let the caterpillar
metamorphoses into a flightless white butterflies
which would in a few days lay hundreds of eggs and
then die. The remaining cocoons, which she need for
silk purposes, were put in a low heated oven so that
the silkworm would die and from he cocoon she would
extract the silk threads and make them into silken
threads for lace purposes. She used to work the lace
on a "trajbu" which was sort of bolster
holding several bobbins "combini" with pins.
She could make original patterns, the most renowned
one was the under part of a priest's "alba".
All throughout her life Carmela Ebejer was a humble
and religious person. She died on the 18th August
1984 at the age of 84. |
