Kpando

It was a long, beautiful ride through the rainforest as we made our way to Kpando today. Ghana is a small country with a varied landscape. We started our journey along the coast, then traveled through savanna and scrub (I wasn’t lucky enough to see a baboon in the nature reserve as we passed through), along the banks of Lake Volta, then through the rolling rocky hills and the forest. Our destination was a tiny women’s pottery cooperative in the Volta Region, where women potters construct abstract and sculptural forms along with traditional wares.

On the way though the savanna, Francis stood next to a termite mound to show the scale.

Adomi Bridge

For lunch, we stopped along the bay at a restaurant built on docks in Aylos Bay.

This made me laugh. No need for a “men’s” sign on this bathroom with the sculpture illustrating what to do.

 Green hills surrounded us along the drive.

 Banana and plantain farms dotted the landscape.

 Kpando Womens Cooperative housed a gallery of their various sculptural and functional pots.

 Gladys, carving an animal vessel

 “Greenware” – unfired and burnished nesting bowls and turtles await firing. Stones are used to polish the leather hard clay until it is super shiny.

Simple, elegant patterns adorn more traditional large containers.

These tall abstract forms utilize traditional pottery methods but stand out for their creative design and unique shapes.

The kilns are four-sided brick boxes. In front of the kilns, the works are taken out with sticks and tongs, placed on the ground, then covered in sawdust for several minutes (causing a reduction environment around the pottery) and accounting for the blackened color of the pots.

These stacks of thatch in Kpando looked like someone’s installation sculpture.

Clouds form along the mountains as we head back.