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.