Ghana/ Europe Leg of Grand Tour

This is a bit of a long post, with a few formating issues, but I hope you enjoy!

 In spite of some travel angst in the week at home between the legs of my trip, I did psyche myself up for my trip to Ghana and Europe. In Ghana I would be staying with good friends, and my visits guided by their experience, and I figured I could handle Europe - having lived there in the past, and the culture being more familiar. Once I had planned my Europe itinerary I was way more at ease! 

GHANA

Giraffe batik

Upon arrival in Accra, the first planned activity was a batik workshop... right up my alley! The location was, let's say, a bit off the beaten path! I was not sure where my friend was taking us (still in the city, but rutted dirt roads... hard to drive in...) but we arrived. Esther runs batik workshops, mainly for visitors and expats, I would say, and on this day it was a group of my friend's teaching colleagues who were there. Esther has a nice set-up. 

first apply the wax

Stamps for batik

Stamps are on the wall for us to choose, two batik instructors were on hand, so two work stations. There was a lot of hanging around, especially when the skies opened up and we were in a downpour. We spent an hour or so in Esther's sitting room, just chatting and waiting for the rain to move on. A couple of people at a time were able to go apply their wax.

the dyeing area

The instructors were quite happy to do this FOR the students, but I requested to be shown, and then to do it myself. This resulted in a more amateur product than the others, but I am happy with it!

The technique is to dip the sponge stamps into the liquid wax, then apply it as desired to the cotton. When planning one's design, one must remember that one's wax application is a negative image of the final product!

I chose a giraffe theme. For the record there are no giraffes in Ghana; there are elephants, but I did not see an elephant stamp! I chose a large giraffe, a small giraffe, and a border print which mimicked giraffe markings. In the end I forgot to use the small giraffe! My first application of the sponge I pushed down too hard, and a lot of wax squeezed out, making that section more white in the final product. (Because of course, the dye applies only to the UNwaxed sections). 

dyeing

When it came to dyeing, Esther is the pro. I have no idea what kinds of dyes she uses, by the way! We dyed it orange, and then dipped it blue to get brown, which seemed like an appropriate colour for giraffes. Yes, I am fairly literal, aren't I?😂

Upon my return I flat-felled the ends together, to make a sarong-tube that I use after swimming. But FIRST, a good wash with a dye fixative and a dye-catcher sheet.... lots of dye ran!

I spent a day at the school working with students on a sewing project. This was the next-to-last week of school, and my friend, a Design and Tech teacher had students who had finished their project, so we decided to teach them a bit of sewing. There were four machines available, notions, and scraps of mostly Ghanaian cloth. I did the same project I did at sewing club at school. These students were a bit older, and obviously since they had finished their first project, ambitious! So these Grade 10 young men got to work choosing  and cutting their fabric to make a 4square patch, then I had them put sashing on the left and on the top, so that when all joined together it would make a cohesive windowpane effect. Most got a full square done, and the tech-assistant continued working with other classes the following day. I am looking forward to seeing a finished quilt top in the new school year!

My friend's 18 year old niece and a friend of hers were visiting at the same time, so we did various things together.

Mokola market

We hired a guide to take us to the Mokola market. This place sells everything and there are many many people! I made the mistake of telling the guide I was especially interested in fabric, and so that was all we did; we went more or less straight to a seller he knows who is tolerant of tourists (who want to look and look and who may not buy.) I had been hoping to see more of the market, but that's on me! We also visited an art gallery in a big hotel. 

my wax cotton purchases

Woodin wax print cotton

We did an overnight trip to the North to visit Mole National park, known for its elephants. The park was a two-hour drive from the airport in Tamale. (We had a great guide here, too).

Canoe safari

We did three safaris on our main day there - a walking safari in the morning, a canoe safari at noon, and a driving safari in a jeep in the afternoon! We saw elephants, baboons (who will leave you alone if you don't 'wrong' them; loved that wording! what does wronging a baboon look like?!), warthogs, antelope (various species) and birds. 

Up close and personal...

Warthogs have short legs

Antelope

elephants in Mole

Near Mole National park is a town called Larabanga, where one can see the oldest Mosque in Africa. It was NOT what I was expecting!

Africa's oldest mosque

We also got to visit a rural village and see up close the process for making Shea butter, which is a staple income in the North. Our guide, Walisu, founded an organization (foundation of sorts), which brings people to see local craftspeople at work - they get paid for showing us what they do, the foundation gets money to fund local initiatives, such as schools, or further training for some people. When we were there he was very proud of a young woman who had just become a mid-wife for the community.

Traditional village

kneading shea butter

In the village I also got to interact with a small group of young women (teens) who were learning to sew. They had very basic, traditional machines which were cranked by hand. Some of them had their thread very strangely threaded to the machine; it looked like some of the machines had lost the pins on which the thread needs to be placed. I asked about this, and one girl said, "yes, she has it, it is in her bag'. HUH? I asked if this is what your teacher tells you to do? I mentioned that a machine doesn't work as well when you don't thread it as intended. They laughed. Then a man on motorbike showed up, (this was the teacher), marched to them and proceeded to correct their threading. I later apologized to Walisu for perhaps undermining the teacher. He told me 'no, he was happy to have someone from outside tell them the same thing he tells them'! I hope it is true. I realize I am not much of a photographer, because I did not take a photo of this!

weaving

We also stopped to see some weaving. A master weaver has a worskshop where she teaches some of the students that Walisu funds. Some of these looms were literally held together by sticks! They invited me to try, so I did, on the narrower piece (for traditional men's outfits like a smock, or batakari). Then one of the others said try this one - a wider cloth, for women's wear. It did not work so well (the shuttle would not go all the way through to the other side). Turns out that the legs of the loom on the left had shifted, and so the warp had lost the space between it (I can't describe that any better. See below**). So the young weaver goes out to the back (where there is a lot of garbage and rocks, etc piled about), finds a stick thin eough to use as a bolt to hold the legs together!

loom

**When weaving you need to put the weft thread under and over each warp thread - sometimes under and over each one at a time, or if you vary it you get patterns. what a loom does is that it allows you to separate the warp threads.... every other one goes up, while the other goes down, leaving a space in which you can shoot your shuttle with the weft. So these up and down sections were not separating.

Cape Coast

We returned to Accra, and a few days later with another driver we did a day trip to Cape Coast. This is a former slave-trading castle, and there we find 'the door of no return,'  a door through which enslaved men, women and children would walk to board the boats to take them away. This was a very moving tour. We saw the holding 'rooms' where hundreds of people would be crammed, recieving virtually no food, and having no hygiene facilities. And saw the location of the church where the good men and women of the compoud could not see the irony of going to church above the suffering people...

Cape coast castle

Cape coast holding cell

The Ghanains have done something interesting with the door of no return. A number of years ago they exhumed the remains of two enslaved people in America, brought them back, and brought them back through the door of no return in the opposite direction. The sign on that side of the door now reads 'the door of return', and with this they have erased the 'curse'...

The door of no return

the door of return

On the return trip to Accra we stopped at Kakum national park and did a Canopy Walk. The signage and the guide took great pains to assure us of the safety of the rope walk, talking about the maintenance schedule... This national park is in a watershed region and someone presciently protected the area for that reason! They have camping there... I wonder how many people in Ghana take advantage of that?

highway view

canopy walk at Kakum

Before leaving Ghana, let me mention Global Mamas. This is a fairtrade 'charity' which works with women in rural communities on a number of initiatives, including Batik, repurposing, and paper making from an invasive weed - water hyacinth. Check out their website. 

Purchases from Global Mamas

EUROPE

On Tuesday evening I took an overnight flight to Amsterdam for the brief European leg of my trip. I had booked a room for that night, so that it would be available for me in the morning, planning to refresh a bit, get settled, then take advantage of a full day.

There was some confusion upon arrival, my room was not available, and the hotelier told me to come back at 2:00 p.m. This was not going to work for me, since I was using a travel day on my train pass, and did not intend to hang around in the city. After some posturing on both sides, we came to an agreement. I got a room at 9:00 a.m., and was able to go about my day.

As I walked in Amsterdam I reflected that for bike riding, yes... very flat, but also windy.

Head slap... Holland... windmills... wind!

Zaanse Schans

I took the train to Zaanse Schans which is a touristy place featuring traditional windmills and houses. I loved it! You can walk through the village freely, but need to buy tickets to enter most of the buildings. I had bought a pass, and so visited the barrel-maker's workshop, the weaver's house, the wooden shoe workshop, the cheese maker's, a number of functioning windmills and the windmill museum. 

Weavers slept in a cupboard

This should have come as no surprise, but I was surprised by the various uses for windmills. For example, sawing lumber, crushing colour pigment (for dyes and paints), crushing hemp plants to prepare for spinning, crushing seeds to make cooking oil, cutting up cloth in the paper-making process, and so on. It was amazing to see the inside of these buildings, too, especially watching the machinery turn! (See video)

I enjoyed the weaver's house, and learned that two families would live there, and that they were basically employees, not independent contractors. I also learned that here they made sail cloth... canvas. From hemp. Hemp was known as canafis... which may have given us the word canvas! The hemp stalks would be crushed in a windmill, softening it and making it ready for spinning, and the resulting hemp yarn would be woven on hand looms to make the sail cloth... remember the Dutch were a powerful sea-faring nation!

 (Interesting for me to compare the processing of hemp here and in the H'mong village in Vietnam).

The house was not big. Note the closet which housed the beds. (I would get to stay in something similar on my last night in Amsterdam!)

Sailcloth loom

Loom

Windmills

After Zaanse Schans I took the train to Utrecht. Why? Because I knew the name of this town from teaching grade seven History... the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Utrecht is a lovely canal town, a lot like Amsterdam, but more 'local'. It reminded me of my time in Bonn. By chance I found a marker stone commemmorating the Treaty of Utrecht!

Utrecht

Treaty of Utrecht monument

The weaver's guild, Rembrandt

Day two in Amsterdam I spent in the city. I bought a ticket for the Rijksmuseum thinking I would focus on 'textiles'. Well they don't really have a textile section, but I did find the pottery (which I find fascinating and lovely as well!), and, of course, I visited the Old Masters. I also visited the 1700s section where there were a number of amazing inlaid, delicate and intricate cabinet-making samples!

It was a sunny day in Amsterdam, so I had a coffee at a coffee shop sitting by one of the canals, and had a great sandwich in a sandwhich shop, served by a Ghanaian. I mentioned my recent trip and he was happy to talk about Ghanaian food!

Rijksmuseum entrance

Pottery

Amazing inlaid woodwork

Santa Maria square

Next day was a long travel day: eight hours to Munich. Ended up being ten hours, though! Apparently I was travelling to Munich on the opening day of the Euro cup, and heading there with thousands of Scottish fans heading to watch their team lose to Germany!

For unknown reasons, the ICE train (that is supposed to be fast!) from Hanover to Munich lost two hours en route. We sat at Kasel for over an hour with NO information about what was going on. Then we had to stop to let other trains pass, and then, at the next-to-last stop we had to wait while the police boarded and conducted an investigation into a theft. ..

It was fun to be back in Germany. Having lived there for seven years I do speak enough to get by, and it was fun having my language skills return. I had never been to Munich though, and as I walked into the central square to meet my guided walking tour I noticed a lot going on... horses and carriages, music, people in traditional dress... I wondered if this was a typical Saturday morning in Munich. But no.... apparently I was there on the biennial celebration of the Brewer's graduation! Which may explain why the ground in the central square was so sticky!

Ready for brewer's graduation

The walking tour of Munich was great, very informative. Afterwards I   made a point of walking back through the English Garden to the Eisbachwelle a man-made wave where people surf... it is only a few metres wide, but quite a wave.... Looked like fun.

Nostalgia lunch!

Munich

Interesting story about the structures to the right and below.

During the walking tour I learned that this structure was copied from one in Florence, so coincidentally I got to see both within days of each other!

The Munich one has a a sordid Nazi story to tell. They had installed a Nazi statue on one end, and expected citizens to salute. In a small act of resistance, some citizens avoided that route. They were discovered, and punished, of course, and their resistance route is marked by a gold line in the street. (No photo!)

Florence

Next stop: Florence. An eight hour trip from Munich via two trains. Munich to Bologne through Austria (beautiful, if slow!), and a super fast ride on the Fresciarossa from Bologne to Florence. I did not know this until about an hour and half before Bologna, but it was a rail strike day in Italy. So wildcat strikes threatened riders all day. Big sigh of relief that my train from Bologna was not affected!

from Piazzelo Michelangelo

I actually had a full day and a full morning in Florence! Florence is, as everyone knows, full of amazingly beautiful architecture. I did a guided walking tour the first morning. I had not planned far enough in advance to obtain tickets to some of the main attractions but was quite satisfied with seeing mostly the exteriors of buildings. The guide also pointed  out that a Church outside the city centre was (more or less) identical to one inside the city centre. The former was free entry, the latter paid entry! So I did seek out Santo Spirito and visited inside! Then walked up to Piazzello Michelangelo, from where you get a beautiful view of the city. The following morning I did visit one attraction - the Signoria, where the city council of Florence sat, and then the 'royal family'. I walked up the tower to look out over the town again.

If it is ugly on the outside, it is beautiful inside!

Signoria

back street!

apparently the beginning of Duty Free!

 

Take time to look at the detai!

Not a lot of green in Florence

Cortona

Cortona

Italian linens

On my wanderings I saw MANY leather stores... carrying quite an array of beautiful items. I did not purchase any, though! I did go into an artisinal paper-crafts shop which also carried linen, and linen-cotton table linens. I bought two tea-towels as a wedding gift for someone, and then found another shop with a plethora of linens. It was down a side street, and I suspect the same tea towels cost less there. But I did buy a beautiful set of  Italian linen table napkins, printed with four different floral motifs. For me!

a quiet day by the pool

From Florence a quick train ride to stay with a friend in Arezzo. This was a real down-time day. We went out for dinner in Arezzo that evening, and the next day hung about by her pool and got caught up on more than a decade of family news, and then visited the medieval hill-town of Cortona for dinner.

Next stop: Copenhagen en route back to Amsterdam.

I flew back to Amsterdam (It seems that Europe is not quite as small as I had imagined; I did not have time to train back!). My flight brought me through Copenhagen, with a five hour layover. Enough time to go into the city and see a few things. I must admit my energy for this kind of thing was flagging, but I did go through the motions. I first asked an information person at the train ticket booth about my pass, and inadvertently said 'eh'. She stopped, looked at me and said 'Are you Canadian?' She was a young student and had done an exchange in Canada! 

The most expensive sandwich ever

I went out to see the Little mermaid statue. then walked to Nyhavn - a cute neighbourhood along a canal, with lots of ships, and colourful buildings. Sat and ate the most expensive sandwich I have ever eaten! Copenhagen is known for its open-faced sandwiches...

Little mermaid

Nyhavn

Our flight arrived in Amsterdam late, and I had to make my way to my hotel before check-in closed at midnight, and made it with 15 minutes to spare! It WAS the longest day of the year, so even as we landed after 10 p.m it was still kind of light. I stayed in the cutest 'capsule' hotel... The beds (rooms) were reminiscent of the bed in the cupboard at the weaver's house in Zanse Shaans! I would stay there again, though. (The Bedstee Boutique capsule hotel if anyone is interested)

sleeping in a cupboard!

Next morning I had a few hours, so went through a market where there were several fabric shops. (I was not buying - my suitcase was full, and I had enough sewing projects to last years!).

Arrived back home in Ottawa late Friday evening, happy to be home, and also very satisfied with my GrandTour.

Next few posts will highlight some of the post-tour makes!

But let me leave you with a couple of activist messages which ring true for me, seen on the streets of Amsterdam:

Fashion should not cosgt the earth