Ghana, first days

Day 1

Morning finds us up and about checking out the grounds of the villa. It is a very pleasant walled compound with shade trees and lawn and lizards and flowers. There is also a nice gazebo with table and chairs. Cedi arrives to pick us up and we make arrangements for our rooms for the duration. Melissa will be staying at Cedi’s in a spare room and the three of us guys will stay at the Starr. We drive off to Odumase proper in Cedi’s van, a trip we will be making daily for the duration of our stay. Cedi is an incredibly gracious host and goes out of his way to make sure we are comfortable and well cared for. He is a well seasoned traveler and knows we will be out of sync for some days and so arrives at a relaxed time for us. We meet Cedi’s wife, Mariama, and take tea and toast before having a tour of the compound and its buildings.

The bead showroom with Cedi’s house in the background

View back to the gate

Looking down toward the work areas of the compound

The gazebo building with the grinder in it

A worker crushing glass with the machine we sent from Nevada

One of the two hot work sheds

Then we check out the condition of the buckets of glass and tools we brought and sort out all the parts for our work projects. It’s a busy day for us for a first day and we get introductions to various people on the compound, set up for our first powder chevron workshop, and sort the glass out for my fused canes project beads which we will be working on alongside the chevron project. I’ve been fighting a sore throat coming on since a day after my three flights to Portland / Seattle four days prior to our exit for Ghana so Cedi takes me out to the pharmacy for some hydrogen peroxide. Mel also puts me on a dose of antibiotics. Cedi’s young son Adams becomes Melissa’s fast friend and is quite the happy little lad. We find him a constant source of joy and amusement for the duration of our stay.

For dinner we get to sample the local staple fufu, made from cassava root. It’s a very sticky starch paste. A wonderful rice and chicken dish is also served which we westerners all prefer. Cedi doesn’t care for fufu himself. After dinner we have some conversation and pass out some flashlights with glass Ghana flag fobs as gifts to the family. Then Cedi returns us to the Starr where we retire early. Our internal clocks are still set to somewhere else on the globe, and I nod out on the drive to the Starr.

Day two in Ghana and we rise to try out the breakfast fare at the Villa. They serve up an English breakfast with tea, eggs, toast and orange juice. It’s passable but Herb and Tom are leery of the orange juice which has ice in it. I go ahead and drink mine. Cedi arrives after a bit and we are again off to the compound where we are greeted with tea. We sit and have some conversation and set the plan for the day.

We do a walkabout and check out the beads the workers made the previous day and also check out the glass shredder we sent home with Cedi last July and the grinding machine they built for the diamond wheels we sent home with Cedi last summer. It’s pretty nice with a water drip and a good motor. It needs some tuning up to balance it some, so Tom and Herb address that while I get to work moving the glass and tools to the work area for our chevron demo in the afternoon. Along the way, I check out Cedi’s lamp shop which is very organized with all the proper tools and ovens.

We have a good demonstration of the powder chevron process in the afternoon with Herb and Cedi and Tom and I each making a bead. The day is pretty hot and I slip off for a nap before we load the molds into the oven. We’ve decided to fuse the beads as the last work of the day so as to leave them in the oven to anneal over night. We load the molds into the oven at a low temperature and Cedi brings up the heat to very hot over about an hour with lots of added wood to the fire. When the beads are properly fused he removes them one at a time and uses the pin tool to ensure that the beads all have a nice hole. He slips the beads from the molds and flips them over in the process. This is typical of the way that they handle their beads in the molds. After the beads are fired and tooled they are returned to the oven which has now had the coals removed, to begin slow cooling, and the oven is closed up with sheet metal at the openings for the night.

By next morning the whole thing is cooled, but even so the bead molds are still around 150 degrees.

Over dinner we have a good discussion about the events of the day and after dinner Cedi

drives us back to the Starr, where we again retire early. Once more I nod out on the drive over.

Herb explaining the process and molds to Cedi and Kwajo

Herb’s first mold full of powder

Pulling the pattern out

First four next morning after the firing

Oven closed up for slow cooling

Cedi with first finished Ghana powder

chevron bead

Cedi working his first chevron bead at the grinder

First Ghana chevron out of the mold

Powder chevrons fusing in the oven

First four in the mold

Cedi topping off the mold with powder

Day 3

When we get up we find that Herb is beset with the travelers disease. We take him along to Cedi’s and put him to bed for the day and put him on a good dose of Cipro. He stays in bed all day fighting his discomfort.

After tea I am out in the hot shop removing the bead chunks from the molds to find them well fired and looking like beads in the making. After they cool to room temp I set to grinding Herb’s to a finish and we are all pleased with the result. I then finish Tom’s and mine and Cedi grinds the one he made.

Herb brought along two new grinding wheels on this trip which, with the two I sent last summer give us a nice compliment to finish the beads. We have a 60, 120, 240, and 320. The 320 gives a nice satin finish which when waxed up makes for a good looking bead.

After the grinding, I discuss the parts I brought for my fused bead project with Kwadjo, Cedi’s foreman, and he fires the first small batch of the beads to fuse the parts and pierces and shapes them. They heat up pretty quickly as they are small beads and the whole process takes only a little over an hour. Later we look at the beads and they are definitely promising.

Over the course of the day Tom starts getting a little green around the edges and after afternoon tea decides to lie down and rest. Cedi and Mel and I are off to the school in the afternoon to pick up Adams and Mel makes her present to the school of books she’s brought from her girls and their school. The school visit goes well. All the kids are in uniform, which we find is the norm for Ghana schools.

After the school visit we stop at the local blacksmith shop to check out the work there. The smith is working and we talk about his products and I place an order for four objects for him to make me. We’ll pick them up later in the week. There is a gob of kids all around the smith’s work area and they are all excited about having their pictures taken.

We stop at the post office on the way home to buy stamps and there is some long discussion on the price of stamps for post cards. It costs near two bucks for international postage for post cards so we buy a hundred bucks worth of stamps as we have amongst us a large list of post card recipients.

When we return we tend to Herb and get him to drink some water, then I go spend some time with Kwadjo and check out the beads he made earlier. Cedi is preparing some special order beads for shipment to a customer in New York, so is busy for a while doing a quality check on the shipment.

We have a nice supper and then the sky opens up to a pounding rain that drenches the area in seconds. The rain barrels fill in short order, less then twenty minutes. It rains for an hour and a half and then we head off to the Starr. I nod off during the trip for the third night in a row still trying to get my internal clock on local time.

By now Tom is feeling pretty low and has a fever and is moving into his bout with the traveler’s malaise. We get settled in and Herb and Tom rack out while I shower and do my laundry. On reflection I see that here it is, day three in Ghana, and we already have the first chevrons in hand. Things are progressing well.

Day 4,

Morning finds Herb feeling some better and Tom deciding to stay at the Starr to nurse his condition. Herb and I take a walk and check out the Cedi Beads Annex and buy some beads there. Then Cedi shows up without Melissa who has remained at the compound with her own bout of the traveler’s disease. She ends up spending the day in bed retching and in total discomfort.

On the way to Cedi’s we stop at a local potter’s to visit and see her at work. She is a marvel and makes her pots with local clay she digs in the meadow below the village. She throws a bowl in three minutes flat, sitting on the ground turning her wheel slowly with her hand as she shapes the clay. It’s the most amazing display of efficient pottery skill. After we visit a bit and take pictures, we head on in to Odumase, where we stop at the money changers to get Ghana currency for dollars. We pick up some local pineapples along the way to Cedi’s that prove to be delicious.

Once at the compound, Herb takes his leave and lays low most of the day. He’s on the mend, but not near 100%. Melissa is in a total state of misery for the balance of the day.

Cedi and I talk about our plans for the days ahead and plan a trip to Accra on Thursday to see Mr. Kwasi and discuss the chevron project and the prospect of gaining some grant monies and for me to give a slide presentation to the Ghana Bead Society meeting on Thursday evening. A large contingent of school kids shows up in the afternoon and Cedi gives them the big tour taking near two hours of his day to show them the whole process from the start to finish. He is ever the gracious host to whoever shows up at the compound. No one ever leaves Cedi Beads Industry without getting treated to as complete of a tour of the process as they might like. After the school kids are gone we set up to make some more chevrons which takes us the balance of the afternoon and into the early evening with the firing. The firing goes well after which we take supper and then return to the Starr where Herb and I find Tom in much better spirits.