Family Day Out #2 - Pt. 1

The kids recently made earrings at a friend's house from African glass beads.  These beads are handmade here in Ghana out of recycled glass and are quite beautiful.  We had been wanting to visit a bead market so we enlisted Father Abraham and his tro tro and headed out for the day.

We love driving the road heading north of us because we always get to see these guys...  (this is about 30 minutes from our house)

Our first stop was at a bead factory to watch how the beads are made.  We were told in our directions to turn right on the "bad" road.  (all non-paved roads, which are most of the roads, are termed "rough", so when a road is described in Ghana as "bad"...well, let's just say its like nothing you'd see in the US)  When the road became almost impassable, we knew we must be heading the right direction.  Sure enough, tucked back in a quiet little oasis was Cedi Beads.  The grounds were beautiful, the people were friendly, and the tour was amazing.  We learned a lot about the process and the different kinds of ways to make the beads.  It was really fascinating and the perfect intro before we headed to the market for our bead shopping.

Here is Mack showing the kids the different molds and explaining the different processes to make each type of bead.

Our Tour Guide Mack

This powder is actually glass powder pounded from recycled bottles.  They dye the powder with different dyes and then use tools to hand pour them into molds in certain designs.  Normally, the artists can't see the sides of the molds because they are made out of clay so they pour these designs with their only visibility being from the top.  But for the demonstration, they poured the glass powder into small glasses so we could see the design unfold.  

After pouring the glass into the molds, they fire them in these little brick ovens.  After they are fired once, some of them are even painted with paint made from the glass powder and water.  Then they are re-fired again.

Filing and shaping the holes while the beads are still hot...

After cooling for several days, the last step was to polish them using good old fashioned sand and water on a rock.  The process worked quite well and then the beads were ready for stringing into necklaces, bracelets, etc.

Next, we hit the road for the bead market.

Here's a couple pictures of the market as we were heading in.  It was Saturday so it was quite busy.  I didn't actually get any pictures of us shopping for beads.  Apparently we were too busy making our selections!