Adinke printing

The MV Explorer seemed to seek out the cheapest ports with the lowest dock fees.  The arrival of the MV Explorer in Ghana was in Tema, more than an hour outside of Accra.  The ship was supposed to spend a couple days there, then move on to Takarade for a couple of days.  Actually, another ship displaced our reservation, and the MV Explorer moved after only 1 day.  The fact that the guidebook had almost nothing to recommend in these two ports was part of what inclined us to hire a car and driver for going inland to the original Ashante capital.

Anyway, on the bus into Accra, I sat next to a life-long learner from Minnesota who was very knowledgeable about fabric, and was specifically looking for Adinke printed fabric.  She explained enough so that I wanted to learn more.  In town, at the cultural museum, I bought a couple of copies of a “decoder manual” giving the meaning of the various symbols. 

When we drove through a fabric town, I asked the driver to stop.  We bought a piece of fabric with large designs that followed the original smaller ones.  The fellows who sold the fabric offered us the opportunity to learn more.  It was a bit scary to be lead down an alley, but proved to be worthwhile.  He showed us an array of the shapes, carved out of large calabash (gourd) shells, and explained the stories behind the shapes.  Then he showed how the traditional printing process worked, and how the “modern” process uses silk screening.