I was an illegal alien

We have returned from the Kente festival. We returned to the festival from the hotel to do some more shopping. Just what I needed!

After that, Whit wanted to "find" Togo. We were quite close to the border and the GPS said there should be a border crossing just up the road - so away we wnet. We drove east from where the festival was - only about 5 miles. The GPS showed Togo to the left and what looked like a cross road that should go in that direction to the border, but we passed it and realized it was a stream.

Disappointed, we turned around and as a last effort, pulled over to a small village to ask where the border crossing was. Max, still unused to Ghanaian pleasantries like "good afternoon", just said out the window, "Togo?" and the woman said "Yes". He said, again, with a bit more detail, "Which way is Togo?" She again said, "Yes." It turns out that the east side of the road was Togo and the west side was Ghana. We were in Togo, illegally, of course (none of us had a visa) - so we took our pictures in front of the immigration office and went on our way.

XO

Tourism and Technology

On the way to the Kente Festival, we made two stops. One stop at Cedi Beads, a factory that makes glass beads and buttons like those I’ve shown before in villages where we have agents and clients. The factory uses pretty much the same techniques on a slightly larger scale. It’s not really a high volume factory, but rather a small operation not too dissimilar from the villages except that they have brilliantly made it a tourist stop and incorporated a tour which turns into a sales opportunity. With a few more stops like this, Ghana could be well on its way to being a tourism destination.

The second stop was at an antique shop alongside the road. On a Saturday at mid-day, on the way and less than an hour from a major festival, the shop was closed and we had to send a ‘small boy’ to find the shopkeeper. This is the flip-side of the bead factory. Not all shopkeepers have figured out how to maximize their business from the tourist trade.

Anyway, I loved Cedi Beads for many reasons. The first was that the name reminded me of the children’s book, C D B, which begins CDB DBSABZB (See the Bee. The Bee is a Busy Bee) and continues on in alphabetic fashion. It is a favorite of dear friends, so the factory instantly touched both my funny bone and my heart. The billboards and advertising also demanded admiration so all in all it was a lovely visit.

There are four types of glass beads made in Ghana. Recycled, Transparent, Powdered with the design in side, and Powdered with the design painted on the outside. All are made from used glass – windows, bottles, etc. – pounded to varying levels of granularity.

Recycled and transparent are made with glass pounded to chips. Transparent beads have all chips from the same glass, where recycled are a mix of chips from all types and colors of glass – the leftovers, if you will.

The beads that are made from powder are much more involved. The glass is pounded with mortar and pestle, then shaken through a sieve, separating the larger from the smaller pieces. Both are pounded and filtered again and again until the glass is a fine powder like talc. As I felt it between my fingers I couldn’t help but think that no matter how much it felt like talc, it was still glass and people were handling it, pounding it, and breathing it day in and day out.

Once the powder is ground to the right consistency, it can be colored, using small amounts of colored powder dye, thoroughly mixed into the glass powder. The powder is then loaded into molds. These molds are made from termite clay (see post at XXX for a photo of Leslie in front of a termite mound), which is a combination of the very clay-heavy soil here and termite saliva and processing enzymes that give it a consistency well suited to high-temperature firing. The molds are coated with a fine powder of river silt, which is also in powder form and prevents the glass from sticking to the mold, sort of like flouring a cake pan, I suppose.

For the beads with the design inside, different colored glass powder is layered into
the mold to form the design as shown in this video – resulting in a bead like the one in the subsequent still photo.

For the beads with the design on the outside, a single color of glass powder is used. After the bead has been fired and cooled, the design is painted on the outside using a paste made of glass powder and the beads are fired again to meld the design on the bead.

When beads are finished and cooled, they are polished by being rolled over and over in the hollow of a rock in water full of the same river silt used to powder the molds. As the river carves the mountain, the water and rock gradually smooth and polish the beads.

This factory also made some glass buttons which were very fun. Max and I went a
little crazy picking over their selection.

The antique shop was a bust. Although a representative of the shopkeeper finally arrived, he wasn’t empowered to really discuss price with Max, so no transaction was made – despite the fact htat Max was more than ready to buy. In the meantime, Whit surreally went back to the car to read the New York Times on his cell phone (!?) while he waited, and I, at his suggestion, walked down by the nearby river which offered a lovely view of a bridge that could have been anywhere in the world.
XO

Weave me a rainbow

We went to the Kente Festival in Volta Region this weekend (wanting to do something for what is Labor Day weekend in the U.S., the last holiday weekend of summer). Kente is the woven cloth which came to Ghana, I believe from the Venetians (or maybe I mis-heard and it was the Phoenicians, which would make my friend, May, very happy, since she never stops telling me that her ancestors, the Phoenicians invented “trade”) perhaps as early as the 16th century. In Ghana, it originated in Volta Region, at the far eastern side of the country, bordering both Togo and Lake Volta, where Ghana gets all its electricity. Many weavers emigrated to Ashanti Region, which has become better known, although many might argue the Volta kente has older, more traditional designs. However, not all designs are old. Kente artisans take pride in their new original designs, as well, presenting them at international weaving conventions and to visitors to their shops.

One weaver even made a full-size portrait of the Ghanaian president, who has very broad support in Volta Region, as well as the American president, who also has very broad support throughout Africa. That one was based on a photo in the daily newspaper from the president's visit to Ghana last month.

Anyway, cloth is woven in about 5” strips – some can be very long, with the ends of the long strings (what do I know about weaving?) held taut by a "sled" of large rocks or concrete blocks way out in front of the weaver. As it is woven, the cloth is rolled onto a collection spindle and the sled slides gradually toward the weaver. Weaving seems to me an undertaking begging for a zen mentality, as I couldn’t imagine looking way out at the sled and knowing I had that much more weaving to go – only to finish and start another strip from scratch. One must just focus instead on the steady click and slide of the next line and the rhythm of hands and feet in motion.




The finished strips are used individually, or sewn together into various sized cloths. These can be worn for ceremonial occasions or for many other uses, including home décor. Popular designs are also printed onto cotton cloth for everyday use – and these patterns are often “knocked off” by Chinese textile manufacturers, imported, and sold at undercutting prices as I’ve mentioned before.

It was a very nice weekend with way too much shopping, relaxing time at the hotel pool, and three meals of french fries. Everything else on the hotel menu seemed to be "finished".
XO

Rewards and Recognition

Sometimes recognition and rewards are more motivating than money. We started a program where an agent gets a Burro t-shirt when they have registered 50 batteries, which is not at all difficult if you spend a few days on it. In one village we signed on 42 on our first day. Anyway, our agents are constantly asking us when they get their t-shirts and how many more batteries they have to go. It's working great.

Our agent with the over-the-counter medication shop earned her t-shirt today. She is very slow and plodding and doesn’t get too excited about anything and hasn't really put that much energy into Burro. In fact, I think the only reason she reached 50 is that the guy we just made an agent (in the previous post) had registered batteries for nearly every member of his family because he wanted to make sure the product was good before he asked to be an agent.

So, imaging our surprise when Rebecca clasped her t-shirt to her chest and got up and began dancing around the shop with the shirt and holding it in the air. It was the most animated I had ever seen her.



Then she started singing, “Jesus is my savior, day by day…” although I’m not sure I got the connection except that maybe she only normally gets that worked up during church. In any case, it was hilarious and a great example of the importance of little things.
XO