Independence Day - Mar 6 2009

Now...Ghana has an unusual number of public holidays and I never know what they are for. I will come into work on Wednesday and my counterpart will advise me that "tomorrow is a holiday, the office will be closed". During my 6 months here, I think I have already experienced 6 such days. Finally we had a day off that made sense....

On March 6th, most of Ghana was shut down to celebrate Ghana’s 52nd year of Independence. After a painful history of rule under the Portuguese, Danish, Swedish and British, ultimately the people of the Gold Coast, Empire of Ashanti and British Togoland merged to become the first democratic sub-Saharan country in colonial Africa: Ghana! Ghana’s first president was Kwame Nkrumah. He was anti-colonial as well as the first African president to push the ideals of Pan-Africanism. Nkrumah laid most of the formal groundwork for Ghana even as it exists today. Ghana is built on the principles of freedom, justice, equity and free education for all, irrespective of ethnic background, religion or creed.

To honor the day, two of the volunteers and I went to Edumafa, a little village right on the beach where we are starting a new cooperative that will make paper out of pineapple fibers. First we stopped by to visit the school which was celebrating by having the children parade and then line up in ranks. After all of the classes were at attention the headmaster set us forth on an obruni parade to walk in between all of the classes to honor the children. It was a little awkward, but funny to see all the little ones giggling at our rhythm-less march.

Then we spent the rest of the morning out on the beach, enjoying the company of some goats and watching fishermen haul in a catch. One of the village girls, Suzzy, invited us to join her on a trip to the Coconut Forest! Now, I have experienced my fair share of forests…mostly of the temperate variety. A Coconut Forest though was something entirely new in my book! Several boys joined us and offered their services to climb the tree and cut down the coconuts. Here is a picture of one of them scaling the GIANT tree!!! Look closely he's on the tree in the center of the picture...Can you believe it?

Then he cut them open and we all partook in wonderful fresh coconut milk and “flesh”. It was quite an expedition and a solid way to celebrate independence if I do say so myself.

Walking on Broken Glass - Mar 1, 2009

Yesterday I made the journey east to a little town called Odumase-Krobo which is an area renowned for their beads. I had to take 3 tro tros and 1 cab about 7 hours to get someplace that would have taken only 1 car and about 3 hours in the States. The reason for the trek was to visit another cooperative site that we have established and to participate in a run-through of our new bead making workshop before it is available to customers. I attended the workshop with our finance intern and two visitors from Sweden who came on a Fair Trade tour.

We met with our bead making expert, Moses at 8 am and walked to his home/workshop. Moses has been a bead maker for 25 or so years and he learned the trade from his brother. Until our organization started buying his beads, Moses had to take on a second job as a farmer to provide for himself, but he has seen his orders increase drastically since joining the cooperative.

The workshop is about 10 wooden posts with a woven palm leaf “roof”. It hosts 1 working (and one crumbling) kiln made out of local clay. The kilns bear a vague resemblance to an Egyptian sarcophagus (pictured here). There is one work table covered with white clay molds and about the floor are bowls of dyed glass powder, broken molds and finished beads. The ground within and surrounding the workshop is embedded with a mosaic of glass shards that miraculously all of the neighbor children manage to run around without even a scrape. It would be hard to place the purpose of this workshop if you just stumbled upon it and did not understand the process.

What I find most exciting about our bead collection, and most of the beads made in Odumase-Krobo for that matter, is that they are made from recycled glass! The process goes a little something like this:

1) Collect used glass bottles (we have bags and bags that the embassies in Accra allow us to collect) and old window panes.
2) Pound said glass materials using metal pestle and mortar (pretty sure we used old car parts) until they are a fine powder. It’s just like pounding fufu! Here's a picture of me. Moses said I showed “good force”…ha…which I think means… “you are strong for an obruni woman”
3) Mix fine powder with dyes with fun names such as Danger (red), Sea (bright blue) and Forest (dark green).
4) Cut cassava sticks and place them into clay molds. They will burn away and leave the hole in the center of the bead.
5) Fill the mold with colored glass powder, make sure that there are no air pockets and blow away excess.
6) Place molds into Kiln for about 20-30 minutes and take them out to flip over the beads within the bold
7) Place molds back in for an additional 10-20 minutes
8) Remove beads, cool and polish them
9) String beads and take them to the market for sale.

Within a day it is possible to make around 1,000 beads with one small working kiln. During our workshop we made about 250 beads with “character”. Here is a picture of the bracelets we made with our beads. We decided that they gave us a power similar to Captain Planets’ Planeteer rings! J

After the workshop we rounded out our education with a visit to the bead market. The market as a whole was amazing; it felt like going back in time. Many of the sellers were stationed under gigantic and likely ancient trees that provided a much needed shade. Each stall had it’s “specialty” that the neighbor to the left and right also specialized in. The bead section of this market is exceptional because it is one of the largest Ghanaian bead markets (nearby Koforidua boasts the largest West African bead market within Ghana).

The stalls were fascinating. Some of them had very unique beads and very expensive prices to match. Many of them did begin to blend with their neighbors, much like the banana sellers we had just passed. The most common types of beads were the painted beads and the powdered beads (like what we made). The rarest beads are the “old” beads, also called trading beads. The trading beads that are currently in existence are all that will ever be (supposedly) and they come from Europe as far back as the 13th Century. A bracelet size strand (about 10 beads) could cost around 40 cedi. But I fell in love…they are amazing! The colors and designs are incredible!

Here is an interesting Link that will give you a visual and some more information about trading beads:
http://www.africadirect.com/productsdesc.php?ID=36257

Beads in general are very important in Ghanaian culture. For women, they start wearing waist beads at a very young age and only her husband is allowed to see them as they are said to be essential in giving women their curvy figure. Beads are also important to the chieftaincy and in various rituals such as puberty rights, weddings and funerals.