Kumasi Leather and Herbs

7/19/17

During morning workout this morning we had a lovely rain shower that continued until mid morning. It was a light rain that occasionally turned into a short deluge before the sun burned away the clouds. Our first activity was a brief overview and lecture of the traditional health care system in Ghana. Nearly 70 percent of Ghanaians continue to relay on traditional, herb based medicine and Ghana has spent the past 30 years working to integrate this system in to the western system to help increase reliability. The biggest challenge is that some of the practitioners do not want to share their healing recipes because some of them have been stolen by international corporations. Sadly this is true of many Ghanian (and African) intellectual property from artisans designs, ranging clothing, shoes or bags and of course physical resources. Ghana is a country rich in oil, gold and diamonds and yet the companies that export these items are not Ghanian. 

After the lecture we explored the universities herbal garden and ventured into town to explore a traditional health care store which looked like warehouse tucked into the second floor of a building. The first floor seemed to be a print shop of some short. I believe they were printing order sheets for the herbal company and shipping facility in the area.

I found this little big man in the herbal garden

After lunch we explored two leather shops. The first shop had cow tails drying in the sun and you could smell the drying leather. The artisans showcased their wares ranging from knives sheathed in leather to hand sticked wallets and sandals. It was a challenging experience for some of the students to see a fraction of where the leather came from— but I’m glad we went. The second shop was incredible. It was a cobbler’s workshop complete with sowing machines, cobblers benches, hammers, leather cutouts, and random pieces of shoes strewn about. As we chatted with the cobblers, various workers scuttled back and forth between shoeing machines— handing each other materials, scissors and nails. They were intent in their work but you could see the satisfaction in their eyes as they appraised their handy work. They made some beautiful shoes and a number of students made purchases or placed orders for handset shoes and sandals.

We had a relaxing evening after a couple of full days. A few folks gathered for a movie night with Dr. Johnson’s projector and others met to work on their group projects.