Getting Started

The thing about travel is while you want to get away, you also want to take it all with you…the comforts of home: the bed, the jewelry, the bicycle, the cat. But you have to make choices, knowing that whatever you bring may not be enough; whatever you left behind may be the very thing you end up wishing you had.

I brought a lot of tools. Good thing. Zambia has a very limited supply of just about everything. Import tariffs make goods too expensive for most people. So the clever folks use what they have till it’s used up. And then they find a way to use it again.

My host and co-owner of WayiWayi studios, Agness, does artwork with found objects. Her current creations are sculptural wall hangings, which she makes using a local seedpod. They capture the spirit of tribal Africa in a contemporary way.

I have been amazed at the ingenious way that things at the WayiWayi studio get done. Yesterday, we pulled a pottery wheel out of storage that was missing its power plug. No problem. Henry is the fix-it man. Within minutes it was up and running. OSHA, you wouldn’t want to know.

So this is the way things work in this part of the world. No K-mart or Home Depot, and yet things get done with a style and grace and an artistry worthy of envy.

Henry (fix-it-man) also does art

                                             

Agness and Kangwa

Oscar

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Oscar #2