ACTUAL post

Ok ok ok.
Let's actually read about the travels now, shall we?
We've now been all over Ghana. We've gone up to Tamale in the north, seen the boarder, gone all the way down to Cape Coast, back up and east to the Volta region, back down, and looped into Accra. Yemi told us today that we "know Ghana as much as I do", and he's been living here for some ten years.
Our most recent excursions, to the Volta region, were very beautiful. They seemed to pass by much more quickly because we only stayed in one location for two nights, but it was fun nonetheless. Instead of a focus on academic lectures, the majority of our days was spent either watching a dancing / drumming demonstration or participating in a pottery workshop.
The pottery workshop, located right on the lake Volta, one of Ghana's most predominant natural features, was quite relaxing. We got to knead the natural clay collected from local farmers with a special kind of dirt, and then shape it on the floor into pots and blenders.
The oddest thing about this is that when they build the pot, they build from the top to the bottom. You create a doughnut of clay on the floor, and then wetting your hands you work the clay upwards. First you create the top, rimmed, layer and let it dry. The next day you come back with new clay and complete the pot, closing the top up and leaving the opening on the floor. I'd only ever thrown a pot on a wheel before, so watching one being made in this way and seeing the degree of perfection they were still able to achieve was ridiculous.
We all started out with our own pots, but after several attempts the two women who were instructing us would walk around the floor (we all sat on a concrete floor in a scattered, unorganized clump) and reclaim our pots. Then they'd make the pots we'd just tried to make, creating in one minute what we'd just plodded for half an hour on.
We also got to create "blenders". These are a fixture in every Ghanian kitchen. It's a low, shallowish bowl with ruts carved out of the bottom. Using a wooden hand piece shaped like an hourglass, you use the blender to mush and crush spices before adding them to the food. They're also good for mashing tomatoes for sauces and avocados for guacamole. They were made it the same fashion as the pots, from the top down, but instead of building up as we did for the deeper pots, we built supportive bases onto the bottoms. I tried to etch a narwhal into the side of my bowl, but the clay was too leathery by the time I was struck with my inspiration. Alas, I am left only with the tiny narwhal of a signature on the bottom of my creations.
In addition to creating (or watching them create) the pots, we also got to see how they naturally fired them. In the bush where we were learning they don't have kilns, so everything is fired in an open-air fire. They also use this process to blacken some of the pots, turning the natural terracotta color of the clay into a sooty black. First they laid out corn husks into the base of the fire. On top of those they stacked the dried out pots. It apparently didn't matter if they were touching one another, because they stacked them all together into a large pile. Around the pot-pile was thrown more corn husks along with dead palm branches. They used the branches to enclose the pots entirely into a small heap of dead leaves. Finally a layer of straw was thrown on top and lit. Because the middle and bottom layers burnt more quickly than the upper and final layers (aside from the straw used to kindle the fire into existence) the smoke got trapped within the layers of dead foliage and created a super-hot fire. And a lot of smoke. It didn't take nearly as long as I thought it would to fully fire the pots. Once they were fired, some were taken away to be spray painted while others were just set out to sell.
They don't have any glazes here, so everything is either blackened, left the natural color, or spray painted. I don't know if glazes have been introduced but haven't taken, if they're to expensive, if they're unpopular, or if they simply haven't made their way to Ghana yet. Regardless, the whole process was fascinating to watch and learn about.
Another thing we got to do was create glass beads. They were completely recycled from glass bottles, and used to create many different styles, shapes, and sizes of beads.
You started with a bottle whose color you like, and then you smashed the crap out of it. After taking the small splinters of glass and putting them into a mold (made by hand from the same natural clay of the pots-- but the molds are made by the beadmakers themselves. They vary as per shape and size, but usually they are round holes in a clay disk. There are usually 4 to 10 holes in a disk, depending on the beadmaker's skill), you put the mold into a burning hot fire and let it melt. The fire is constructed in a clay oven that allows it to reach ridiculous temperatures (note my colorful use of adjectives to cover up my lack of note taking) to melt the glass together. After they have melted enough, you take them out and use a small straw to round them out within their holes in the mold and poke a hole through the bead.
We worked with a blue rum bottle, a brown Guiness bottle, and a green gin bottle, in addition to the standard clear window glass. You could make a pure-color bead, but some of the most beautiful beads were made by mixing the different glasses together in a combination. Due to the process, instead of the colors flowing together into a mix (like yellow + blue = green), a marble process took place making a multi-colored bead. Everyone got to play around with the types and colors of beads to make, and we all came up with some pretty amazing results.
After the art days, we also got to sit down and see two new styles of dance. We've already been to quite a few dancing demonstrations, so it's amazing to me that there are still dances we haven't seen yet, costumes we haven't imagined yet, and drum beats we haven't heard yet. Ghana is such a diverse place, and that's a fact I sometimes forget. One of the dances involved a mock-fistfight where men in colorful tu-tus pranced and jumped in the sand in front of us. Another one involved women with mirrors dancing around and dragging some of the Obruni bystanders into the fray. One of my favorite dances, though, showed a man getting shot by a gun and how, back in the day, the traditional healers dealt with such a serious wound.
In dance form.
It was so cool.
But we've completed that chapter in our travels, and now we are about to set off on our ISP time. This unstructured month is where we complete our research topics (mine is Kente cloth) and tie off any loose ends we might have left around the country. It's a little daunting, facing the infinite possibilities of the future month, but I'm very excited to learn weaving and start to seriously research into this topic that has fascinated me since I first landed in Ghana.
I'm going to be in Accra for the bulk of my ISP, but I'll keep you posted of any sudden changes. I hope everyone at home is enjoying the colder weather and early snows!
Love,
Lo
PS: I'd like to include a shout-out to my cousin Allison who is studying abroad in Italy. I have Google Analytics going for this blog to record page-counts and the like, and one of the features included is a map showing where in the world I get the most traffic. The country that visits the blog most is, understandably, the US, but holding on for a strong second is Allison in Italy. I say Allison in Italy because she's the only person I know of in Italy, and therefore the coveted second position belongs to no one but her. So a hearty congrats, Al. Many thanks for staying with me this long.