Tuesday morning i was glad to simply sit under the Mango trees in the garden ... do some blogging and reading... my cold need some time out!
i hadn't been allowed to loll around in bed though... the hotel staff had rung me at 6:45 am demanding to know what i would like for breakfast!! ... and no lollygagging either!! ... a little while later they phoned to tell me in a no nonsense voice that it was ready!! ..in other word get your bum down here!! ... i always giggle to myself that people say we in Quebec are terrible with service: Well, everything is relative! ..i for one will appreciate even decent service after here.... hee! hee!!
Earlier i had connected with Karen, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Kumasi, who i had met during my last time volunteering. She had brought donated computers to the high school in which several of our volunteers were working. Volunteers with any computer skills were encouraged to pitch in with teaching basic computer skills once the computers had been set up .... this was five years ago... and i had been pleased to pitch in!
She had been delighted to hear from me ... and we worked out an afternoon that the both of us would enjoy..
We decided to visit a small village called Kofofrum... Ghana is famous for two types of beads ... the recycled glass beads which are mainly made in the Volta Region and the brass beads, which are made more in this area.
Kofofrum is a village very close to Kumasi and there is a brass-moulding co-operative here...
We set out in luxury as Karen has a car ... (which she can't drive!!! It is a standard like all cars here....i totally sympathize... but one of her students, Saviour drove for us)
Dela was able to direct him and we were there in no time... Karen was very pleased as she had been looking for this village for ages!!
It was tiny scruffy village with a small sign and yet it housed some real craftsmen that are carrying on a tradition learned from their fathers who learnt it from their fathers ...
The lost wax method has been around for centuries... their ancestors used gold but now they use mainly brass... and recycled brass at that ... they showed us something that looked like a kitchen sink pipe!! ...
They were pleased to demonstrate the very intricate and painstaking process using wax, clay, charcoal and even dung got in there somehow..
i tried to take photos but they don't explain much...but I found a very good photo essay explaining the process here: http://eshopafrica.com/gallery/process/lostwax.html
The village depicted in the photos i found on the internet is a much more organized and successful looking place than Kofofrum... but Karen says now that she knows where it is she will spread the word.. and she will bring visiting students there...
Afterwards, i spent some time sifting through their beads and pendants picking out a few for the funkyFrog hord!!!
On the way to lunch we stopped at a pharmacy so i could see if i could buy some throat lozenges as my cold had gotten to the scratchy cough phase and i was running out.. at the second place we found strepsils!! yeah!
Over lunch we caught up on news. I found out Saviour had been one of the students at the Keta High School and he would be going back to the states to do a Masters in Education... the best part was he would be coming back to Ghana to teach...
Also it turned out the Saviour was a real fan of Dela's music.. Dela has produced two albums... Saviour was really happy to learn that Dela was making another one! Dela was quite stunned to hear that Saviour had found the second album while in the States... music seems to be Dela's real passion.
Karen mentioned something that i found disturbing... Apparently the Chinese are building the roads here in Ghana and generally taking a serious interest in Africa generally... you know why? .. their work force is starting to demand more money so they are looking to out source in the future!! It made my heart sink hearing this... The world is a very strange place....
That evening i turned in very early as tomorrow i had a 4 am date with a bus!!
