Well,
I'm home... I mean here. In Ghana. But the first words I heard on
landing were Bernard's, saying, "Welcome home, Manye," and it felt very
right. I found myself loving the heat that penetrates to the marrow but
somehow doesn't make me cranky. I kept breathing the air in deep gulps,
trying to identify that something indescribable that makes it so
different from ours. I received the cacophony of traffic and hawkers
and blaring rap music that would make me crazy anywhere else as a
soothing balm to the spirit. Don't ask me why. It's just something
about this place. The squalor that so horrified me the first time I
arrived now holds a chaotic but profound charm for me. This is Africa,
and I love it. I don't know why.
Some of it must have to do with
the miracle of Bernard himself. What an amazing young man! I'm so
enjoying this chance to get to know him better, to understand what
motivates him to give up so much to do this service for his community.
He's one of the finest people I've ever known. I hope, and trust, that
we will be lifelong friends.
And the house he found... I still
can't believe he managed to negotiate such a deal on a place so nice!
No squalor here at all. It's spanking clean, freshly painted, secure
within a walled area shared by the landlord's own home, and it even has
running water... a day or two a week. Not enough pressure to take a
shower, so the bucket is back. But I'm beginning to understand that
when people here say they have a shower, it only means that they have a
shower stall, which has nothing whatsoever to do with whether you can
ever actually take a shower in it. But who cares. I'm used to the
bucket. I've come to like it. It's a sign of home.
Home has five
small but adequate and immaculately clean rooms plus a kitchen,
bathroom and shower room, colorfully printed curtains for privacy, a
wonderful long porch where we hold our training and work sessions, two full-sized mattresses, several plastic buckets, a few
pans and dishes, an electric fan, a couple of plastic tables, ten
plastic chairs, a bunch of beading tools and supplies, and not much
else -- all for the record-breaking price of $100.00 a month. A similar
organization in the next town over has two closet-sized rooms with no
bathroom, no sink, no comforts at all, and they pay $75.00. But this is
Bernard. He spares no effort to get things done, and he works miracles.
Despite his youth, and despite the myriad objections the landlord
initially had about renting to anyone so young and "unsettled," he
managed to secure this lovely place for us, in which we can now train
our producers, hold work sessions and meetings, do our office work,
store our supplies, pack our products for shipping, and even live.
So,
as you may have gathered, I'm very, very happy. The training sessions
with our young employees are going extremely well. The bead makers made the
unprecedented gesture of all being a full hour early for our first
meeting, and all being seated in a circle, waiting for me and shouting
out, "Welcome, you are welcome" when I arrived. I shook all of their
hands and said their names as I did so, a fact that apparently amazed
them even more than it did me -- I didn't forget a one! (Those of you
who know me well know what an achievement that is.) Then, once I was
seated, they all insisted on getting up and filing by to shake my hand
again. I was very touched. This, of course, was followed by two hours
of heated arguments about the parameters of the organization and the
decisions we had made since my last trip. The issue was our hiring of
the youth when most of the bead makers want to do -- and get the
money for -- producing the items themselves. Which we all know would
end up never getting done in time because they're too busy making
beads, and because they are perpetually on Africa time. Finally, on a sudden and rare inspiration, I settled the issue
instantaneously by asking why on earth we would bother to buy beads
from them now only to have to give the beads back to them later so that
they can produce the jewelry. No more debate. Money now is always
better than the possibility of money later. It was manipulative on my
part, but it worked. And our decision to hire our own staff was affirmed when the spokesman for the group insisted that their children could make the designs for us. Well, their children are under-age, so that was simply not going to happen
I'd better go. I'm writing this from an
internet cafe, so chances are good that this computer will crash soon.
Our own internet hookup is lost in Africa time. It was supposed to be
ready by the time I got here, but... well, this is Africa. Nothing
ever, ever happens on schedule here. But we have hopes for this coming
week. In the meantime, as always, my heartfelt thanks to everyone who
got me here and made this project possible. It's been an experience of
miracles for me. I'll keep you posted.
Melody
Progress At Africa's Pace June 17, 2008
Hello Everyone,
Well,
Africa has been behaving like Africa since I last wrote, hence the
delay in writing this time. Still no internet hookup at the house,
though we came very close one day -- the workers actually showed up
(albeit two weeks late). But then there was a technical glitch. So the
next day we went to the internet café, but it was inexplicably closed
during open hours. And then it was Sunday. So we tried again the next
day, but the café had lost its link through some other technical
glitch. And of course we didn't find out on either occasion until we
had spent time and money -- both of them precious and scarce --
traveling there. Nothing is ever easy here.
On the other hand,
for two glorious days we not only had running water, but it ran with
enough pressure to actually take a shower… sort of. I took five of
them. I was struck each time with the difference a fundamental shift in
perspective can make. At home, that hesitant little trickle would have
had me uttering expletives and calling for a plumber. Here it was pure,
unadulterated pleasure. The same thing goes for the occasional cool
breeze that lightens the heat, however briefly. You don't spend time
chafing about how rare it is. You simply accept it as a gift to be
enjoyed fully for however long it lasts. Africa has much to teach us
about simple pleasures.
As rainy seasons go, this one hasn't
been. We've had a few showers, but many more days of clear sunshine,
and none of the non-stop three-day deluges we'd been told to expect
(knock on wood). When it does rain, it's lovely and refreshing and
cool, except for the part where we have to hold back the flood waters
that try to submerge our porch and my side of the bedroom Helen and I
share. At some point, we'll have to attack the source of that problem
(i.e. the leaks), but that's for later. Right now the money is better
spent elsewhere. So we mop.
The project itself is gaining
momentum. The producers are really finding their niches, whether it be
stringing, wire work or designing. The rate of production, which
frankly had me a bit concerned, is picking up, as is the quality of
workmanship, which had me even more concerned until today, when we made
a sudden leap forward. We're continuing to work on it.
We have a
growing number of people here who are taking an interest in the project
now that Soul of Somanya has begun to look like a going concern. Our
landlord is among them. He began by being reluctant to rent to us for
fear of having to tolerate too many people and too much noise on his
property. Now he seems increasingly pleased to be facilitating things.
He has even brought people here to look at our jewelry. We were also
visited by a female news broadcaster, daughter of the queen mother of
the neighboring town of Odumasse. Everyone understands all too well how
desperately employment is needed here. Sympathetic, well-meaning people
from other parts of the globe can come here and drop off much-needed
goods and services from now until the end of the world and nothing
essential will ever change here. What is needed is jobs. The people who
live here are intelligent and practical. They know perfectly well what
they need most, and it isn't always, at any given moment, what we, as
Westerners, think they need. When you can't afford food, the issue of
purified water can seem surprisingly trivial. And when you have food
but are drinking river water that is making your children sick from day
to day, mosquito nets seem relatively unimportant, since the water is
much more likely to get you than the mosquitoes. And so it goes.
A
steady, predictable income works for Ghanaians just as it does for us
-- it allows them to judge for themselves from moment to moment what
would most benefit their families. I'm more and more convinced that,
while donating goods and services is appropriate and necessary in
disaster relief situations, in this situation, it simply isn't. A
sustainable form of income is the greatest gift any of us can offer.
Soul of Somanya is now doing that for eight young people, one of whom
has a very young son who accompanies her to work. We have already seen
profound changes in how he is being dressed and cleaned and fed since
his mother has been drawing steady pay. It may even be that we are
preventing him from becoming orphaned due to her inability to care for
him -- that happens a lot here. This form of prevention, it seems to
me, is so much better than someone having to step in after the fact and
take care of that motherless child forever after. I only hope we can
manage to keep the flow of income steady for her and the others over
the next few months while we get our marketing strategies settled and
underway.
Helen has been a big help to us here. She has pretty
much handled the training sessions for the stringers, and she has been
very generous with her resources in helping out with the daily expenses
of food, bagged water and transportation. The bead makers are
especially enthusiastic about her, since her bead-loving self has
joined in on most of my project-related buying frenzies, and has
therefore boosted their sales. I hope we can fit all the beads and
jewelry meant for home into our suitcases without going over the weight
limit. It's looking a bit iffy as things stand. We may have to wear a
lot of it on our necks.
Bernard is consistently being his
wonderful, patient, wise, hard-working self. It's been such a pleasure
for me to have the chance finally to get to know him better. If I had a
son, I'd want him to be just like this remarkable young man. He's the
heart of this project, and he has a permanent place in my heart as well.
Well,
I'll sign off now. Bernard and Helen both send their regards -- and
their thanks -- along with mine. We're all very aware that, without all
of you, none of this would have been even remotely possible.
Sincerely,
Melody
Dead Golden Goose Syndrome June 23, 2008
Hello Everyone,
It's
hard to believe I have to leave here in two days. There's still so much
to do, and besides, I'm just not ready, emotionally or in any other
sense. Bernard keeps shaking his head regretfully and saying, "Not a
long enough time this time." He's right. I wish I'd planned a longer
stay. What was I thinking?
Hindsight.
The workers have
produced some really great jewelry, and we have begun choosing our
final prototypes for the catalog. We want to include only pieces that
are repeatable, but this is very hard to do when we never know which
beads are going to be available at any given moment so that we'll be
able to fill orders in a timely fashion. It seems that buying beads
here is pot luck, no matter what you do. If you go to market, it's pot
luck. If you order the beads, it's still pot luck since you either
never get them or you get whatever the bead makers feel like making
with what they have on hand at the time. If you advance the money so
that they can get the actual materials they need to fill your order,
I'm not sure what happens exactly, but the prospects aren't much better
for getting exactly -- or even nearly -- what you ordered. Never mind
getting the beads on time. Most often, they are never delivered at all.
This is Africa. The biggest
challenges have to do with the mindset. I already knew this, but I tend
to forget it about ten times a day until, inevitably, something reminds
me with a vengeance. For example, there's what I call the dead golden
goose syndrome. Symptoms include a systematic undermining of one's own
interests with such behaviors as tripling your prices for a single good
sale today, thereby guaranteeing that the would-be buyer (who will
almost certainly go to the region's largest bead market tomorrow and
see those same beads for one-third the price) will never want to do
business with you again. A potential lifetime of good sales right down
the drain. No more golden eggs.
I told the golden egg story to
our bead makers, and they really liked it, but I don't think they quite
got it, since the head bead maker's wife showed up a few days later
with beads that didn't even remotely resemble what I'd ordered and then
tried to charge us not three but four times the market price for them.
When I refused to buy them, she blithely informed me that I had paid
that much for similar beads before, so why not now?
She had a
point -- I was laying golden eggs all over the place here when I first
arrived, since I thought that the hike in fuel prices had caused bead
prices to jump more than they really had. But I'm fresh out of gold
now. Still, the old goose does have a little life left in her. I paid
her 50% over market value for the beads since the town bead makers have
a certifiable firewood problem, namely that they have to truck it in
from the hinterlands at great expense. This makes it difficult for them
to compete with the villagers' prices. So we give them a break when we
can.
It's so tempting at times to restrict our buying to the
markets and to the one or two bead makers who have been able to get
with the program; who actually make what we order and deliver it more
or less on time. I have to remind myself that to do so would be to
forget our real purpose here. The people who have the most trouble
conforming to Western ways of doing business are precisely the people
who need our help the most. The others are more likely to find their
own way. But it can be very frustrating at times. I know all too well
that customers in the U.S. are highly unlikely to keep buying from us
if the orders they receive are different from what they saw in the
catalog, or if those orders take six months to arrive. Some cooperation
on the part of the bead makers is crucial. But many simply can't
comprehend the need for it. So we get what we can from them and try to
fill in the gaps at market.
The producers, on the other hand,
are responding very well. We've been pleased to notice that they don't
seem to be blowing their money on frivolous things as soon as they get
it. Sometimes they even give us change for larger bills so that we can
dole out their daily pay in the correct denominations. We're very
pleased about this. We started them at well over the minimum daily
wage, and we have decided to give raises before I go--larger ones to
those who have demonstrated the most willingness to follow orders well
and to work hard. They deserve it, and I hope it will serve as an extra
incentive for the others. Helen had her naming ceremony on
Saturday at dawn. She is now Manye Seyelor (Assistant to the Queen...
namely me) Nana Terku Banahene IV. Manye Mamiya honored us the next day
by visiting us to see where we are working and what we have been
producing. Of course, we were expected to cover her travel expenses...
plus a little. Oh well. It's part of doing business here. I actually
budgeted for a little of that, though not enough.
Last night my
pre-departure melancholy began setting in. I sat outside and let go of
the daily stuff that swirls around in my brain all the time now,
letting myself just be, soaking up Africa. The warm, balmy air that
moistens the skin, sensitizing it to any slight stirring of a breeze.
The distant wailing of dogs and the gruff, throaty croaking of
bullfrogs. The light, tantalizingly brief aroma of something floral
that finds its way through the heavier scents of heated palm oil and
wood smoke. The thick, pure darkness, unrelieved by streetlights and
neon. The rustling of palm fronds against the side of our house.
Our
house. Bernard and I signed the lease yesterday, and everything felt
suddenly very real. For one thing, I now know how he managed to
negotiate such a favorable lease -- he signed on for two years of hard
labor as maintenance man and groundskeeper. It's so like him not to
have mentioned that to me.
I'll be leaving most of my clothes
here this time, along with some other things I'll need when I return.
My sweat-kerchiefs. My fan. The flip-flops I wear around the property.
Our not-so-fierce guard dog, Domelivo. My friend Bernard. And a
good-sized chunk of my heart.
Happy To Be Back In Africa
trying to identify that something indescribable that makes it so
different from ours. I received the cacophony of 
Some of it must have to do with
the miracle of Bernard himself. What an amazing young man! I'm so
enjoying this chance to get to know him better, to understand what
motivates him to give up so much to do this service for his community.
He's one of the finest people I've ever known. I hope, and trust, that
we will be lifelong friends.
So,
as you may have gathered, I'm very, very happy. The training sessions
with our young employees are going extremely well. The bead makers made the
unprecedented gesture of all being a full hour early for our first
meeting, and all being seated in a circle, waiting for me and shouting
out, "Welcome, you are welcome" when I arrived. I shook all of their
hands and said their names as I did so, a fact that apparently amazed
them even more than it 
did me -- I didn't forget a one! (Those of you
who know me well know what an achievement that is.) Then, once I was
seated, they all insisted on getting up and filing by to shake my hand
again. I was very touched. This, of course, was followed by two hours
of heated arguments about the parameters of the organization and the
decisions we had made since my last trip. The issue was our hiring of
the youth when most of the bead makers want to do -- and get the
money for -- producing the items themselves. Which we all know would
end up never getting done in time because they're too busy making
there was a technical glitch. So the
next day we went to the internet café, but it was inexplicably closed
during open hours. And then it was Sunday. So we tried again the next
day, but the café had lost its link through some other technical
glitch. And of course we didn't find out on either occasion until we
had spent time and money -- both of them precious and scarce --
traveling there. Nothing is ever easy here.
We have a
growing number of people here who are taking an interest in the project
now that Soul of Somanya has begun to look like a going concern. Our
landlord is among them. He began by being reluctant to rent to us for
fear of having to tolerate too many people and too much noise on his
property. Now he seems increasingly pleased to be facilitating things.
He has even brought people here to look at our jewelry. We were also
visited by a female news broadcaster, daughter of the queen mother of
the neighboring town of Odumasse. Everyone understands all too well how
desperately employment is needed here. Sympathetic, well-meaning people
from other parts of the globe can come here and drop off much-needed
goods and services from now until the end of the world and nothing
essential will ever change here. What is needed is jobs. The people who
live here are intelligent and practical. They know perfectly well what
they need most, and it isn't always, at any given moment, what we, as
Westerners, think they need. When you can't afford food, the issue of
purified water can seem surprisingly trivial. And when you have food
but are drinking river water that is making your children sick from day
to day, mosquito nets seem relatively unimportant, since the water is
much more likely to get you than the mosquitoes. And so it goes.
dressed and cleaned and fed since
his mother has been drawing steady pay. It may even be that we are
preventing him from becoming orphaned due to her inability to care for
him -- that happens a lot here. This form of prevention, it seems to
me, is so much better than someone having to step in after the fact and
take care of that motherless child forever after. I only hope we can
manage to keep the flow of income steady for her and the others over
the next few months while we get our marketing strategies settled and
underway.
Helen has been a big help to us here. She has pretty
much handled the training sessions for the stringers, and she has been
very generous with her resources in helping out with the daily expenses
of food, bagged water and transportation. The bead makers are
especially enthusiastic about her, since her bead-loving self has
joined in on most of my project-related buying frenzies, and has
therefore boosted their sales. I hope we can fit all the 
advance the money so
that they can get the actual materials they need to fill your order,
I'm not sure what happens exactly, but the prospects aren't much better
for getting exactly -- or even nearly -- what you ordered. Never mind
getting the 
She had a
point -- I was laying golden eggs all over the place here when I first
arrived, since I thought that the hike in fuel prices had caused bead
prices to jump more than they really had. But I'm fresh out of gold
now. Still, the old goose does have a little life left in her. I paid
her 50% over market value for the 
course, we were expected to cover her travel expenses...
plus a little. Oh well. It's part of doing business here. I actually
budgeted for a little of that, though not enough.
