This week was a nice break from the dreaded Dry Season. It only rained for about 10 seconds on Thursday but the air was a little thinner and cooler. Friday it stayed cool and then it even rained for a few minutes. I walked across town and my shirt wasn’t drenched in sweat; it was great. Dry Season will last for a couple more months so any break is great.
We sold 3 smaller cloths this week which for this time of year is very good. Our biggest ones are Men’s cloths; 19 strips wide and double long strips so roughly 6x11 feet. Instead of saving up for one (anywhere from $200-$400) like I had planned I decided to go big and try to weave my own, perhaps not my wisest choice ever due to my weaving speed. Bright can finish a men’s cloth of the pattern I’m doing in 2 months with 6 day weeks dawn to dusk. I weave 5 days a week for like 2-6 hours and have a few out of town meetings coming up. The guys are taking bets on how long ranging from 2-6 months. If I finish it before I go home (9 months) I’ll be happy.
The international marketing class back home looks like it will really help us out. They are even designing a website for us. This is huge because there is very little information on the net for traveling in Ghana and that’s where everyone goes for everything. This is the type of stuff that I can’t do at all. They said they’ll make it easy to update so I can do that while I’m here and train one of the guys to after I leave. They even planned on an online kente store which is so tempting but I just don’t think we have the product consistency or technology to handle that. Mukaila is one of the few people in town with email and he checks it like once every 3 months.As you can see, summer months are huge and that the little advertising we've done has made a difference just in the time I've been here.
As great as sales are, this is really what matters; the number of people exposed to kente. The tourist community is based on word of mouth here so making sure these visitors have a positive experience is equally important as to actually selling if not more so.
As of this week every piece of the basketball court is at the school. Monday we’re supposed to assemble the backboards and rims and have it paved (they say) by the end of the week. The plan is to have it paved by the time my friend Katie comes and visits for 2 weeks next Sunday. That way she can help me paint it (you’ll be put to work if you visit). We might try to head up to Mole National Park which is our biggest wildlife reserve where we’d surely see elephants, warthogs, and hopefully no snakes. It’s at least 2 days travel each way though so maybe we’ll stay by the coast drinking coconuts on the beach. Enjoy your snow!
That reminds me, check out Ghana’s lone competitor in the Winter Olympics Kwame Nkrumah-Acheampong, a skier nicknamed the Snow Leopard.
http://www.ghanaskiteam.com/newsite/features/profile