anansinews

Dear Kathryn,

I have been home for a week + a day and I am beginning to settle down and settle in.  Jet lag has passed and the cold weather and I are trying to get along.

First I want to thank you with all my heart for the opportunity to visit you in Ghana.  I actually feel it is a life changing visit.  I cannot get Ghana off my mind in so many ways.

There are things I found very troubling, both about myself and the world, but also I found the whole thing very exciting.  I am so glad to have gotten to know you better:  the time you have given to me and our various excursions together and the shared wonders of later life and all it entails.  But through you I have found a path to keep on living. Not sure what that means but I certainly have a different view of what can be.  Mind expanding and dangerous in some ways but none the less, a vision I have not dared look at. Perhaps dared is not the right word, a vision I had not yet seen or considered would be more likely since I do dare a lot of things but some things one doesn’t think to do and sometimes it takes another model to open ones mind further.

I don’t know that I could do what you do, but surely I can now see what a vision you have had, wait……, that is a bit overblown;  I can now see snippets of the vision you came to.  And I admire your insight and your courage.  Especially about providing education for so many young people and opportunity for so many.

The need in Ghana is so great.  I can’t spend a penny now without thinking what that could do in someone else’s hand in Ghana.  My dreams hardly let me sleep, and not all of them are pleasant.  I feel like the old preacher in Amazing Grace….the ghosts of thousands haunt me.

But my stay at your home was so different from my usual life:  like waking up to drums…thundering calling drums!!…..calling the children to school in the mornings; to listening to harmonized voices singing into the night, it is an amazingly different and full world.  So much to see and hear.  One morning I saw  a lizard about twelve inches long with the prettiest yellow orange head, green body and striped tail, wow!

The darkest nights I’ve ever experienced (especially when the electricity is out…..and I’ll never forget the soapy morning w/o water….) but the daily action is intense and meaningful.  The excitement and colors of the busy streets which are all decked out with vendors and hawkers carrying bundles of all sizes on their heads, scurrying goats and newborn kids, crowds of people dodging cars and buses and trucks and taxis.  The frightening open ditch along either side of the road, deep and nasty looking, waiting for the unwary to misstep.

On a more serious note:  I should reflect on the afternoon at Cape Coast Castle, where thousands of slaves departed from Africa, most bound for America and the Caribbean.  A place preserved, I believe, so we never forget to remember from what brutal cruelty we are evolving. The screams and cries live on in the fibers and particles and atoms of the bricks and mortar of the hell from which the captives were held and sold and herded into ships from which two thirds perished before their ordeal was completed and their new torment as slaves begun.  Human cruelty and injustice:  a blight on all souls. Anyone who travels to Cape Coast can pay their respects to all those who perished or endured by taking the time to honor their souls in that loathsome place:  Amazing Grace remembered.

Ho Festival

Attending the festival in Ho was very interesting.  Lots of drums and dancing and speeches preceded by a parade.  The day was hot and we were lucky to have a nice place to sit under a shade.  I saw a good deal of the countryside on the way to Ho, including the dam and the huge lake and found that area to be very pretty.  The whole trip was an amazing experience, again for which I thank you. And I loved the resort at Akosambo.

Working with Mohammad and traveling to the villages with him was probably the most deeply moving and enlightening experience for me.  First off, Mohammad is a wonderful guide and communicator.   He knows so many things and is so very aware and helpful that he made my work and the experience wonderful.  He so nicely gave me clues about my behavior and helped me to be comfortable in some ambiguous situations, which I much appreciated.  He is a great asset to Anansi, which I know you already know but I want to validate.

Kathryn Interviewing Berase Students

A trip to the village was preceded by a visit from six prospective students from that village who were hoping to get scholarships.  Remember how their arrival took us by surprise because we had just arrived from a taxi trip to the city where we had exhausted ourselves and had just managed to walk up to your gate which was locked by a huge lock that neither of us could open.  The boys who were part of the group tried to help but couldn’t either.  It was clear we had to wait in the hot sun for Mohammed to arrive.  Instead we made our way to a tree near the school across the street and the boys stacked some concrete blocks for us to sit on.  You did the interviews African style in the shade of tree in a circle.  As you interviewed each prospective student I showed the others waiting a video on my phone of my two African-American granddaughters which surprised and pleased all of them very much because they could see the similarity between these girls, so like them, singing and dancing on the video.

When Mohammed and I traveled to their village we found how poor they all are.  Our job was to decide who of the six would get a scholarship as only two were available; such a heartbreaking task, one which I am sure you have been through many times.  You have good criteria to determine the poorest and the best students so we were able to select the lucky two but surely all deserved an education.

As we walked around the village looking for homes of each student, we passed an elementary school and all the little children poured out of the school to wave to the Obruni (white lady) as few white people are seen in their village.  That was a heartwarming experience for me looking at the sea of black faces with sparkling white teeth smiling at me so excitedly.

Our trip to Ashesi University allowed me to meet three of your graduates as excited and grateful freshmen and to see what a marvelous place that new school is as a resource for Ghana.  I am so impressed with what you have done for those young men by helping them to get full ride scholarships and set them on their way to be leaders in their communities.  WONDERFUL as Mohammad would say.

As I began this letter I will end it with more praise and gratitude to you.  I look forward to continuing to work with Anansi and you and I hope you know what an inspiration you are.

Thank you.   With Love, Ann

Student Selection

As of August 25, 2012, we already have forty three scholarship applications for consideration with more coming in each day.  A few of them have already been eliminated on the basis of need revealed by the Poverty Score Card verbal questions and our home visits.  Another few do not have the test scores that will allow placement in a Government school.  Both of the above criteria form the parameters for our Anansi student selection.

We’ve had a couple of pleasant surprises:  One of our female applicants has attained the highest score possible on her exam at the end of junior high school.  Another has the next highest score.  Anansi has never had candidates with such measured  academic potential.  The fact that they are both girls is heartening.

We should tell you that Mohammed and I were both quite concerned this year because some of our returning students are not doing very well academically.  We have been trying to analyze data to see if there is any correlation between the student’s performance in high school and their qualifying exams taken their last year in junior high school.  If there was, we would rethink our criteria for acceptance as an Anansi student to avoid funding students who do not benefit as much from your dollars.  We found that no strong correlation exists.  This means that our original premise still holds:  Many students from disadvantaged homes may not do well in junior high school because of their family situation which contributes to lack of study time due to family obligations and/or no electricity (it gets dark here at the equator at 6 p.m year around) and worries about lack of money for food and other necessities.  We have decided that providing a high school education for students who do not do well is worth finding and funding the ones who do not show obvious potential and blossom when they get to a government boarding high school.  That said, our job of student selection continues to be difficult.  Please wish us well with the wisdom to make good decisions.

Francis is the fourth of eight children in his family.  His father died two years ago from a sudden illness.  His mother is now the only support for his family.  They have no electricity in their house, no running water and cook their food on a coal pot.  Francis did not score extremely well on his exams although he did do well enough to be granted entrance into a government school.  I believe he could be one of the students who could blossom in a boarding high school.  We shall see.

Mohammed’s Auntie looking at his new computer

Photos of Mohammed, our only paid employee, and his extended family were taken when he went to a family gathering at Assin Fosu.  He is showing some of his family members his new Macintosh laptop computer (the computer took the pictures) brought to him this year compliments of cousin Tom Glesne.

Mohammed with his computer and family members

The 8th Anansi Auction was wonderful!  We think that it was our best yet!  The energy was high and the bidding vigorous and the entire evening left us feeling excited and touched by the generosity of everyone.

“Mr. Hippoad”, Tom Glesne, Alisa Roe, Stephanie Roe

Both the silent and live auction items attracted healthy bids and enough people stepped forward to give us twelve new sponsorships for the coming year.  Thea Roe did a great job of organizing the auction and the Roe family did the traditional set up of both silent and live auctions so everything looked spectacular.  Alisa Roe and Tim Croll emceed the auction and cousin guest Tom Glesne ended the evening by bidding against himself up to $1000 for the coveted “Mr. Hippoad” sculpture.

Christine Myers, an Anansi sponsor who is a global citizen presently living in Bellingham gave us an inspirational talk represented here:

“Good Evening

Before I arrived in West Africa thirty years ago, I had no idea how poor I was. When my new friends learned I had no husband and no children, they looked at me with pity. They offered condolences, words of comfort, hope and prayers for my future motherhood.

Now I am wealthy.

My daughter Avery is here with me tonight. My daughter Drew who has sewn so many of these outfits, will make one of you a dress from African cloth. My son James is in Ghana.

James sends his greetings. Greetings can get complicated in Africa, but here goes: How are you feeling tonight? How is your health? How are things at home? Are you hungry? Is your father living? Is your mother living? Is she well? Is your wife well? How are your husband’s parents? And your brothers and sisters? Are all your cousins well? And your children, how are each of your children? What about your children’s school fees?

What about those school fees? A secondary education runs $700 a year, which is about the annual income of a rural family.

But money isn’t the primary currency in Ghana. Social capital is more important. Just as I was considered poor without children, a Ghanaian is also poor without friends or family. Community provides access to jobs, introductions, meaning. If a Ghanaian has the means to employ someone, it is his social obligation to do so.

God graced him with good fortune. He can share that gift by employing people.

But with unbelievably high rates of unemployment and under-employment, with HIV rates rising, the family and local Ghanaian community don’t have adequate resources to offer universal secondary education. Many of the most vulnerable students must look to a greater community for help. We are that community.

What do I mean by vulnerable?

This comes from US Agency for International Development: “Poverty, high rates of illiteracy, low social status and cultural norms that marginalize decision-making power of girls and women all contribute to the alarming rise of HIV infection, particularly among out-of-school adolescent girls living in rural areas who, due to reasons of abject poverty, are extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation as a matter of survival. Yet, they are also Africa’s future.”

Not only Africa’s future, but the world’s.

Now, this is what high school graduates can do in Ghana: get a job; provide better nourishment for her children, keeping them healthier and more likely to grow up to contribute to the economy; help his younger brothers and sisters get an education; command a little more respect from her community; even dream of attending university. Most important, though, is that they will see that their children are educated.

Maybe her daughter will become the entrepreneur who launches a fair-trade cocoa-processing plant that produces extraordinary chocolate, or his younger brother the agriculturalist who finds a sustainable way to enrich the thin, red soil. Maybe she will cure your cancer.

The stranger that we help today may one day help us.

I was able to attend college in part because two people who never met me left a bequest. I couldn’t write them letters about my progress so the could see what they had done – transform my life. Out of gratitude, I sponsor a student. It’s a lot easier for our family to raise $700 than than it is for most Ghanaians.

My son says, the way it is in Ghana, “If you have money on hand, you are expected to help people out.” A high school graduate with a job incurs an obligation to shoulder the cost of his younger brothers’ and sisters’ education. So for me, sponsoring a single student is like jump-starting the survival of the student’s entire extended family. All it costs is $700, or about $420 after I deduct it from my taxes.

Expressed the way a Ghanaian might, God graced us with good fortune. We can share that gift by helping our children’s peers.

I see it as crucial to the world that they will all live in that as many people as possible have the opportunity to reach their full potential.

Does this student deserve my money? Has she worked hard enough in school? Is she a good enough citizen? Fortunately, I don’t have to read through all the applications to decide which of ten or twenty equally-qualified, equally-needy children will be offered a single opportunity. That’s Kathryn’s job. She chooses the students, knows them. She visits their schools and personally pays their fees and checks their progress. They stay at her house. They call her Mama.

It must have been heartbreaking last year to turn down deserving applicants because of lack of funds. I hope that she won’t have to send out a round of emails again this year, looking for another couple of last-minute sponsors.

I have worked all over the world, for UNICEF and USAID, and in Africa from Morocco to Malawi, Rwanda to Nigeria. I can tell you from experience, the total cost of sending all 100 Anansi students to school for three years does not approach one year’s salary for a single expatriate program administrator.

Sponsoring an Anansi student may be the most impactful, cost-effective donation we ever made. Education leads to dignity and to hope. Not only are we changing the entire trajectory of a young person’s life, we’re changing the odds for the world. And, if it matters, a grateful family on the other side of the world is praying for us.

What about you?

God graced you with good fortune, you can share that gift by educating people.

Thank you for allowing me to speak tonight. Please, greet your families for me.”

Mohammed Inuwa, one of our graduates who has been working for Anansi for the past year and is now patiently waiting to hear if he has been accepted into Ashesi University was asked by Thea to write something that could be read prior to people volunteering to sponsor students.  Thea read the following Mohammed words:

“Mohammed Inuwa is my name.  I am an ANANSI staff member and an Anansi Alumni who was sponsored by Pam Crow and Gaby Donnell.

Anansi N. G. O. is a touching life organization that provides needy children with hope and life by giving them quality EDUCATION, children who are anxious to be educated but because of financial handicap or the death of parent /s their life has been damage by ignorance. Truly, our world, our life, our ways of interacting both personally and professionally would become boring, static, and dull with ignorance as part of our life.

The cause of too many teenage pregnancies in West Africa, precisely Ghana, is ignorance.  The teenage girls don’t know how to say NO to any man who wants to take advantage of them.  Imaging how lack of education can destroy life of children here. “Nothing in education is so astonishing as the amount of ignorance it accumulates in the form of inert facts.“ writes Henry Adams.

I remembered having a conversation with madam Kathryn in her own house about homosexuality.  I was totally brain washed by ignorance about homosexuality.  And not me alone, as people all over Africa are having bad perceptions about homosexuality . A BIG thanks to madam Kathryn who helped me understand that homosexuals are created like that and they are often happy like that.  It is not necessarily a choice they make but how they are naturally made.  We should accept them as they are. They have no fault to be blamed on.

Who is an ANANSI SPONSOR?  An Anansi sponsor is like a Christ who has a lot of sympathy and empathy to save the world. Children living on the other side of the world are in danger because of ignorance and you should also save the other side of the world from the preventable disasters of ignorance. Pam and Gaby have saved me from that disaster and yet are still saving another person again. I urge you all to join hands with ANANSI and save more children from this preventable disaster.

This is an extract from David Diop poem which I always relate to anansi sponsors:

In your presence I have rediscovered my name

My name that was hidden long under the pain of separation

I have rediscovered the eyes no longer veiled with fever

And your laughter like a flame piercing the shadows

Has revealed Africa to me beyond the snows of yesterday

In your presence I have rediscovered the memory of my

Blood and the necklaces of laughter hung round our days

Days sparkling with ever new joys.”

While trying to get ready for the talk I’m giving at Whatcom Community College on “African Masks,” I looked for and found the article written by Mark Harfenist in November 2000 about working with Mohammed Diallo when our Whatcom students studied abroad in 2000.  It is hard to find on our website, so I’m going to reprint it here for anyone interested in the details of working with a master African carver.  Diallo was honored as “Sculptor of the Year” in both 1997 and 1999 in Cote d’Ivoire.  While living in our student house in Grand Bassam, Diallo changed my view of Muslim people.  He was, and I hope still is, a saintly man, a thoroughly good person.  I have not heard from or about him for ten years.  He was from Man, the city in the west where most of the fighting took place during the unrest in Cote d’Ivoire.  Enjoy Mark’s beautifully written, insightful account of his experience learning from Diallo:

“Diallo Mohamed Lamine is a woodcarver like his father before him, a member of the Dan ethnic group with its strong tradition of carving for practical and ceremonial purposes. His home is in Man, a region of mountainous jungle a full day’s journey from here near the Liberian border, and he has come by bus and taxi to stay in this house teaching us. Each day I spend anywhere from thirty minutes to five hours carving with Diallo and a group of six or seven other students. For our first project each of us will carve a pair of Dan-style masks.

Yonk Carving

I start with a split bolt of heavy, stringy ironwood, glowing a startling shade of red wherever fresh heartwood is exposed; I cut it to rough length with a western-style handsaw and Diallo marks the first shapes crudely with white chalk (“Donnez-moi la craie,” at first too fast to understand, then more slowly). The initial shaping is done with a tool he calls a catalet, which is a close cousin to what we call an adze. Elsewhere in the world I’ve seen tools much like this used for all manner of tasks, from the manufacture of dugout canoes to the splitting of firewood; I’ve even used an adze myself a time or two to give an authentic, hand-hewn look to manufactured beams. I have never tried to create anything as small or delicate as these carvings with so crude a tool, but in Diallo’s hands the catalet dances and the chips fly.

Julia and Diallo

It does not take long to notice that, crude though Diallo’s chalkmarks may be, to deviate from them by accident or misguided design tends to leave my sculpture looking malformed; misshapen in ways I can sometimes barely see…until Diallo himself straightens my mistake. “C’est bon!” he says, routinely, before making just a few minor adjustments (confidently chopping a fraction of an inch from his fingers, the chips raining down all around), these adjustments making somehow all the difference. I have a reasonable eye, of course, the product of long years in the construction trades, and there are times when Diallo’s rough chalk marks seem misplaced to me, skipping along the rough, hand-split grain. At home I’d draw a thin line with a sharp pencil exactly where I wanted it, then split that line with one of a wide variety of expensive tools; at home much of the skill involved in the creation of finely detailed objects consists of knowing how to use exorbitantly expensive power tools. Here, however, I perch my butt on a chunk of ironwood log and hack at my workpiece with the catalet. There have been a number of minor (but bloody) accidents already among the students, but I am reasonably proficient at keeping fingers and sharpened steel separated.

My masks are already recognizable representations of human faces when I set the catalet aside and begin the series of handsaw and chisel cuts which fully define its features. I carve high, smooth-domed foreheads, deep-set slit eyes, strong lips and arching eyebrows; Diallo demonstrates techniques and encourages each of us in turn, fixing mistakes and counseling patience. “Un peu, un peu…Doucement, s’il vous plait,” he says. Within a few days “un peu, un peu” enters the household lexicon, and is heard in all sorts of applications, from all sorts of people.

It seems a shame when my chiseling is done and I have to start shaping with the wood rasp. I like the rough-hewn, tooled look left by catalet and chisel, this look being one sign of handcraftsmanship, much prized among woodworkers at home. But I am being instructed by a master Dan carver, and when he says to smooth those chisel marks with a rough rasp I do what he says. The next stage is to smooth out all the marks left in turn by the rasp, using a metal file with its finer teeth, following which Diallo pulls out a set of odd-looking little scrapers—one bent and one straight—and I laboriously scrape and shave away the markings left by the metal file. This takes, essentially, an eternity.

Like most American carpenters I am not much of a woodworker; I am, however, reasonably proficient at hand-sharpening cutting edges. For many years I used oilstones on my chisels, knives and plane-irons, and recently I came to prefer Japanese-style waterstones for their faster cutting action, but in any case the basic theory is the same; you sharpen your tools on progressively finer grit stones until they are razor sharp, and resharpen them often to maintain that edge (the phrase “razor sharp” is not used casually in this connection: a properly sharpened chisel will shave hair cleanly). Scrapers—which produce on wood a tooled surface similar to that left by a sharp chisel but have the advantage of working at odd angles to the grain in a way that chisels are reluctant to do—are sharpened by first filing or grinding a perfectly straight edge, then using a special tool to roll over an invisibly small hook in one direction on the working edge. Woodworkers love to discuss and compare sharpening techniques, and their journals are full of articles on the subject (and full as well of advertisements for expensive gadgets designed to make this arduous job easier). I once watched a crew of Japanese temple-builders at work—by far the most highly skilled carpenters I have ever seen anywhere—and twice a day they all stopped work to sharpen their tools; at great length and very elaborately.

Diallo

Diallo does not do this; his methods for sharpening tools are—not to mince words—barbaric. A little hand-cranked rough stone perches on the edge of our workbench; it makes a horrible, deafening scraping noise in use, and Diallo uses this grinder periodically when a tool is really dull. But the sharpening tool of choice is the ordinary metal file—in this case, a fine-cut triangular taper file. Diallo takes dull chisels and files them on what all my training tells me is the wrong side of the edge (not on the bevel, but on what is at least initially the flat side of the chisel), sawing rudely back and forth for a moment or two before handing the chisel back to its user. Miraculously, this method of sharpening is entirely sufficient, though this fact calls into question all that I know about the art and the science of sharpening hand tools. Put this newly sharpened chisel to a chunk of heavy, stringy ironwood and tap with the mallet; it cuts cleanly with or across the grain, peeling off shavings and dangling them neatly to one side or another. Worse yet, within a few weeks the crank on the little stone breaks and the taper file gets dull (files, as no one but myself seems to understand, are designed to cut on the push stroke but dull rapidly if not lifted off the cut when they are pulled back in the other direction). I take the (dull) file and saw ineffectually back and forth on the wrong edge of a chisel as Diallo instructs. Nothing changes. Diallo does exactly what I have just done, and by some unfathomable magic manages to produce—without apparent effort—a sharp edge on the chisel. I thank him as humbly as possible and return to my carving. The man is a magician of some sort; a sorcerer. I check surreptitiously to see if I can spot a cloven hoof, a tail, or horns.

Julia with Diallo

As my hand-scraping progresses, my masks again take on that pleasing hand-tooled look I like so such, and I spend a bit of extra time struggling to get rid of every possible rasped or filed cross-grained scratch. Periodically Diallo sees me struggling with a particularly troublesome facial feature—noses are noteworthy in this respect—and he demonstrates what it is that he wants me to do. He and I do not share a common spoken language (my French is atrocious, the functional equivalent of his English), so I am expected to watch closely and imitate what he does. Of course I fail to do this time and time again; I am a user of words, and my observational skills have (it is abundantly clear) atrophied from lack of use. In any case, Diallo’s skill with these little scrapers is almost beyond my comprehension; in his hands they scrape smoothly, carve like chisels and slice like knives…all with grace and apparent ease. I push my nose in as close as possible, watching what he is doing, and then do my clumsy best to imitate.

By the time my masks are fully scraped smooth, again glowing softly red in the shade of our little workshop, the next step is obvious; I am to wrap my fingers with rough sandpaper and make these smooth glowing surfaces dull and scratched once again. At first I am careful to sand everything in the direction of the wood’s grain—it is not for nothing, I tell myself, that I once instructed small children in the making of birdhouses and toy boats at summer camp—but it becomes clear that this is not possible, and in any case not part of the program here in Diallo’s class. When all surfaces are dull and full of scratches in random directions I move on to a finer sandpaper, this grit designated #220 for the size of the abrasive particles embedded in its surface (the number corresponds, loosely, to the number of sharp bits of silicon carbide which when placed in a line would measure a single inch; #220 sandpaper is rather fine in texture, and progress is painfully slow). I grumble and curse each individual cross-grain scratch I made with the rougher paper; I try to pretend I am engaged in some sort of arcane meditative practice; I sing spritely, upbeat songs; I lapse into lethargy.

It will come as no surprise to hear that Diallo is highly accomplished at this phase of woodcarving too. Sometimes when I am weary of scratching away at the same spot with my little worn-out scrap of #220 sandpaper without apparent results he takes over for me for just thirty seconds or a minute; in Diallo’s hands the same dull, used-up sandpaper instantly raises dense clouds of dust, and the most resistant imperfections in my mask’s surfaces seem to melt away and vanish. He has a way of holding the paper, a way of holding the mask, a way of focussing his energy…we all notice this, but none of us seems to quite understand what he is doing, much less how we might do the same ourselves. Eventually I move on to the last grit of sandpaper: #600. This is the sort of paper used to apply finish to fine furniture, and it offers hardly any resistance when slid across the wood. I am creating no dust and eliminating no visible scratches, but where I rub this sandpaper across the surface of my mask it is left velvety smooth. This step, fortunately, does not last nearly as long as the last, and I am soon done.

Brooke

All across sub-Saharan Africa you can wander the dusty streets behind the curio stalls and tourist hangouts and stumble across the people who make the sculptures that are sold to the unending streams of tourists; I’ve got a couple myself, propped casually atop piles of books and hanging on little rectangles of plasterboard between bedroom and bath. Everywhere there are armies of boys squatting in the heat working little scraps of sandpaper…and more armies rubbing in the dark Kiwi shoe polish that serves as the universal stain and polish here as it does elsewhere. I am not now one of these boys, of course; but yesterday I set aside my tiny sandpaper scraps (the tips of my fingers feeling a bit sensitive, I admit, and the tendons in my hands aching) and dipped a little bristle shaving brush into the can of shoe polish and started wiping it on my first carvings. The stuff has an undeniable appeal; it fills minor surface scratches, stores and travels well, buffs out easily and a little bit goes a long way. I think that I am beginning to understand how this all works.

I am beginning to understand also that there is immense skill, acquired at some cost in time and suffering, in even low-grade carving—by which I mean the dark, clunky stuff for sale throughout the world wherever there are tourists and unemployed locals. Diallo has a few apprentices in his shop back in his hometown, and one of our group went there for a visit; she says they had already been hard at work when she arrived each day at 7 AM, and that they worked into the evening each day. I imagine myself a boy in my early teens, waking up before first light to dust the shelves of Diallo’s shop, scraping and rasping and sanding countless carvings year after year, happy to be working for Diallo, happy not to be one of those boys rubbing on kiwi polish anonymously, squatting in the gutters on the streets of the capital.

Mask from Diallo's collection

One day I bring some photos home from the developer, and I show Diallo some shots of old masks taken in a museum in Paris. He flips through the stack calling out names of ethnic groups—Baoulé, Senoufo, Lobi, Ashanti—sometimes pausing to praise one or another for its workmanship (though truthfully, most of my photos are difficult to make out clearly, having been shot in dim museum light without a flash, handholding my camera at absurdly slow shutter speeds). There are photos of carvings from French Polynesia and New Zealand mixed in, and Diallo dismisses these with hardly a glance (“Ce n’est pas d’Afrique!”), although some huge slit drums hold his interest briefly. He picks out a Dan mask immediately, and is clearly excited to see it. Here in Africa, in this ceaseless heat and humidity, a thirty-year-old mask is considered quite ancient; this photo shows an outstanding Dan mask of precisely the type we have been carving…but perhaps a hundred years old, carved long before the advent of sandpaper or Kiwi shoe polish, by someone certainly distantly related to Diallo himself. “C’est belle,” he says, “C’est trés, trés belle,” and there is real emotion in his voice. He points to the hand-tooling marks around the edges of the piece, which I, ex-carpenter that I am, had not noticed. I have another print made from the negative and give it to Diallo.

Our original plan was that Diallo would join us for the first week or two of our time here, returning again for our final week, but somehow it develops that he will remain in residence more or less non-stop for the duration of our stay. My masks finished, I start on a pair of Ashanti-style akuaba dolls, traditionally carried by women of this Ghanaian kingdom to ensure successful pregnancies and attractive children . As woodcarving projects the akuaba figures are notable for their fragility; arms, noses and eyebrows have a distinct tendency to split out and fall off at the slightest provocation…or, at least, I see this happening all around me. Quite a bit of glue goes into some of our Ashanti dolls; mine remain whole, though one has a distinctly lopsided cast to it. In due course I am again torturing myself with tiny scraps of #220 sandpaper, and rumor has it that a few students even neglect to bother with the final #600 sanding, proceeding instead directly to the little tin of Kiwi polish.

The next project is a set of five elephants. It is not clear to me why these need to be carved in sets of five, and indeed given what I now know about the amount of work involved in a production run of just two items, five elephants does seem quite ambitious. It is obvious, however, that this is non-negotiable, and I take another long split bolt of ironwood and begin crosscutting at Diallo’s chalkmarks.

Reshelle Carving

Now, the alert reader will have previously noted that every elephant arrives in the world fully equipped with a long, thin trunk, a pair of rather delicate ears and four knobby legs. Carvings of elephants possess all the same attributes, and they are not over-endowed with square, parallel surfaces by which one might clamp them to a workbench while chiseling, sawing, rasping, filing, scraping or sanding. In fact, these carvings are quite prone to falling out of the vise when clamped in a necessarily gingerly fashion just behind the ears or across the butt, and this tendency to slip out of the vise combined with their abundance of fragile features leads to an unusually high rate of mortality among elephant carvings. All around me as I work elephant families are decimated; trunks are snapped off, ears lost in an instant to slips of the chisel, legs broken by falls on the hard concrete floor. Somehow my set of five continues to take shape, without any serious mishaps so far…but I have not yet started sanding their intricate little (fragile) body parts.

Still to come: dancers, impalas, pirogues full of fishermen, giraffes.”

November, 2000 – Mark Harfenist

Most of you Anansi Blog readers know about Maxwell Nketsiah, our Anansi graduate who is finishing up his second year at Ashesi University in Ghana.  This year we have four Anansi graduates who have applied for admission to Ashesi and we are all waiting with hope and anticipation to find out if they have been admitted and if so, what sort of scholarship they will be awarded.  It is a tense time and we would like your best wishes and your prayers for these four hardworking hopeful young people:

Mohammed Inuwa is the first paid employee hired by Anansi Educational NGO and has been working for us since last September doing an amazing job.  He was born on January 2, 1984, finished primary school in 1996, but didn’t go to junior secondary school until 2004, graduating in 2006. He went to junior secondary school in Nyanasin, a small village near Jukwa, because he did not want to go to junior high school as a much older student where students he had known would make fun of his advanced age.

Between grade school and junior high school Mohammed spent seven years at home. During this time he often went to sit at a tailor’s house nearby to watch him sew. In this way he learned how to sew by observation coupled with staying in the shop after the tailor left to work with the apprentice who allowed him to use the machines. This past year Mohammed made the beautiful garment that Brad Lakey, one of our sponsors, wore to our auction in Seattle. He is a young man of many talents.

At school in Edinaman, sponsored by Pam Crow and Gabby Donnell, Mohammed was a leader among the students and finished his schooling with test scores that allow him to apply for admittance to Ashesi University. When Susan Hirst was here recently at the house in Mpeasem with her daughter, Cheryl, and grandson, John, she asked Mohammed to explain his Muslim prayers to her Christian family. He explained to them in detail everything he knew about how Muslims worship. Susan was most impressed with his thoroughness and with him as a person.

Mohammed’s dream is to work for the World Bank.  We hope his application to Ashesi is a step in that or a similar direction.

Daniel Osei has the potential to do great things with his life.  He is smart and ambitious, attested by his seven A1s and one B3 exam scores.  No one at his high school, Assin Mansu, has ever tested that well on their final examinations, which means it took personal directed ambition to attain those test scores.  He is a good and charming young man with an unforgettable deep resonating voice.

At the moment Daniel is teaching at a private elementary school in Abura.

Daniel’s father died  while working in a mine in western Ghana when Daniel was very young.  His mother was unable to manage his fees for high school and is in no better position to help with College funding.  Anansi’s U.S. sponsors, Kitty and Mike Mahon, paid for his high school education and now, hopefully, Ashesi will help him further his education.

Hannah Aryee is a most unusual young lady.  Unlike many of her peers, girls who have grown up in small villages north of Cape Coast, she is confident and  outspoken and wants to make some order in this world.

When I first met Hannah four and one half years ago, I remember thinking, “This girl could organize and run the whole place.”  She has a “take charge” attitude and the ability to accomplish much in her life.  How this happened, I don’t know, because Hannah comes from a family with no means:  her mother sells gari at the local market in Jukwa and her father is a peasant farmer.  Hannah is, I believe, the fourth out of five children.  She has no material wealth, but a drive that could take her far after the help of her Anansi sponsor, Becky Burns.

At the moment Hannah is teaching elementary school in Kasoa at a private school near her aunt’s home.  Her salary is 70 or 80 cedis per month.  She likes her job, but so wants to continue with her schooling in business.

When Shedrach Gyesi applied for an Anansi scholarship he was fifteen years old, had just finished junior secondary school with an aggregate of 08.  I was impressed with his bright, cheerful countenance and, of course, with his outstanding performance on his examinations.  We at Anansi had never had a student who had tested as well.

Shedrach was born and raised near Half Assini in the small village of Adu.  He is the youngest of a family of six.  His father, in his seventies when Shedrach was born, acted as a responsible elder in his village and fished to provide food for his family.  His mother sold and still sells cooked rice with coconut oil to local people.  When Shedrach was ten years old, his father died suddenly.  One year later he moved with an older sister to Jukwa  where she had a teaching job and was mothering two small children.  When I first laid eyes on Shedrach he was caring for those two small girls and I was most impressed with his patient and attentive manner.

With the help of Anansi sponsors, Christopher and Sheenah Grannis, Shedrach finished high school this past year at University Practice High School in General Arts.

Shedrach is a smart, ethical and very nice young man with much potential. At the moment he is teaching elementary children in Danicom International School.  He is paid 80 cedis per month.

His ambition in life is to become a politician.  He is avidly interested in the daily Ghanaian news and is well informed politically. I think he would fit in well at Ashesi.

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Daniel and Shedrack had their admission interviews last Wednesday at the new Ashesi campus north of Accra and Mohammed reported he is expected there for his interview on Monday, April 23rd.  I’ve yet to hear from Hannah concerning an invitation for an interview.

With your help these and other young people in Ghana will have the opportunity to make a difference in their lives, the lives of their families and the development of their country.  A large segment of a developing country’s population, the poor, rarely have a say in decision making.  You all are changing this a bit as Ghana moves into a more viable position in Africa.  There is no way to say a big enough “thank you” for the doors you have opened to these young students in West Africa.

Kathryn Roe