Beads, Beads, and More Beads

In Ghana, there is a rich history within the manufacture and trade of traditional and contemporary jewelry. While the Ashanti Region is best known for jewelry made of gold (much of it is brass today), the Eastern Region lays claim to beads, particularly those made from glass. We have passed this little annex of the Cedi Bead factory several times, and decided it was time we stopped. We could certainly find beads in Accra, but this shop is very close to the source of production, and dollars spent close to the communities producing goods tend to go even further than NGO money seems to.

We have at least one friend who makes jewelry, so we had fun doing a bit of a shop for her, and the kids wanted to buy bracelets to give as gifts to friends. Of course we already love shopping in West Africa and since we have have more baggage space on the way back than we had on the way here, we're not shy about making purchases. A large string of beads was between 1 and 4 cedis, depending on the time invested and the size of the beads. All of the beads are made manually, many are hand painted, evidenced by the fact that no two beads are alike! They have a binder explaining the process and the person in the shop was reasonably knowledgeable but the bead factory is quite close by, so I'm sure we'll venture there as well at some point. There are also a couple of once-a-week bead trading markets that are supposed to be rather remarkable, so we'll try to hit one of those as well, though they tend to happen during the week.