Apprentice Coffin Maker

Being Accepted into the Family Kane

2009-07-31T11:21:00.000-07:00

I am now called Michael Adjei Kane Kwei. Early during my stay here Eric asked me if I would like to visit the Kane family village, Asuokor-Odumase. It is located about two hours north of Accra in the mountains. I was of course very interested. Adjetey, Eric’s uncle, and Eric’s father, Cedi, both spoke about wanting to go. In fact Uncle Adjetey said that the clan may be interested in accepting me into the family. I was first taken aback by the gravity of the suggestion, but then became intrigued with the prospect of joining the Kane family.

When I first thought about traveling to Africa I had little idea who I would meet or what I might learn. I knew I wanted to find out as much as I could about Ga coffin making and I knew in order to do that I must meet someone who was a master coffin maker. And with great luck I was introduced to the grandson of the man who started the whole thing. Eric turned out to be very helpful, knowledgeable, and exceptionally generous, as was his family. I was invited to live in Eric father’s (Cedi) house, indeed I was given Eric’s room. I was made very welcome and comfortable from the beginning.

Time passed during my stay and I was wondering if visiting the family village was going to happen. Eric offered to take me on Sunday of the same weekend as the funeral but I was exhausted. So, we planned for the following Sunday. We (Eric, Cedi, Uncle Adjetey, and me) left early and the usual place Eric and I ate breakfast was closed. Eric asked if I “would take porridge”, and thinking of a hot bowl of oatmeal, I answered “Sure. Let’s make certain there’s some coffee, too”. I was getting my stomach all set for breakfast. About an hour later, I tapped Eric (who was driving) on his shoulder and asked if there was still porridge in the near future. They all laughed and said, “Soon, soon.” About 15 minutes later we stopped in a gas station in a small town and Eric said “We will take porridge”. I looked around and at this point not having had my morning coffee grumbled something disparaging about porridge in a gas station, but Eric said “No, no not here, across the street.” On the other side a woman sat on a stool in the street, behind a huge kettle. The stool was so low, all I saw at first was the top of her head. I assumed the oatmeal was bubbling away inside the pot and she would ladle out some for my breakfast. I asked for one serving and she proceeded to pull out a small, soft plastic bag, open it up with one hand, and spoon out a gray, soupy liquid from under the lid of the kettle with her other hand. This was done with the slight of hand and dexterity of someone who had done it many times before. After the interest in her prestidigitation wore off I realized that I had a tepidly warm softly, squishy plastic bag in one hand and three bean flour fritters in the other. My experience with this form of container was very limited. In fact the last time I ate from one of these soft plastic bags I bit into a corner, which you are supposed to do and began to squeeze the bag from the bottom, which you are not supposed to do. This created a rather flat geyser of liquid that spread out all over my clothes. I did not want that to happen again. I held onto it gingerly as we searched for my coffee. Coffee in Ghana is Nescafe, which is dried coffee crystals mixed into warm to hot water. But that is just the beginning. Then half a can of evaporated milk is poured into the cup followed with 3 to 5 spoons of sugar. I have figured out how to ask for no sugar but when it comes to the evaporated milk it seems to be all or none, so I usually give up and take the usual amount of milk. But in this case no Nescafe could be found.

So, grumpy and warm bag in hand I cautiously got into the back seat of the car and off we went. I had to figure out how to use this bag. I knew the corner had to be bitten off, but I also knew I had to support it somehow because there is no integrity to the bag once the skin is broken. Swerving and bumping down the pothole infested road the ride did not help me either. I cupped my left hand around the bag with my fingers cradling the sides and bit off a small part of the corner. The gray liquid stayed inside the bag, but now I had to figure out how to get it out. It was a liquid and not the oatmeal paste I am used to eating with a spoon, so I tried slowly squeezing the bag. This worked as long as my fingers supported the sides of the bag. The taste was strong of ginger and the consistency was a bit like I imagine library paste might be if diluted with warm tap water. It actually complimented the bean flour fritters and helped the dry bits slide down comfortably when I swallowed.

Once that was over, still not having had my coffee, I tried to concentrate on the beautiful country we were driving through. We were approaching small but steep mountains on the left of the highway. They were dotted with large trees that had dark green tops leaving open space in between so one could see the gray and white granite outcroppings showing brightly in the sun. As the highway progressed we began to climb into the hills and the plants became more lush and thick. Then we abruptly turned right, onto a red dirt road and continued to climb. The road was so narrow and closed-in with vegetation that when we met anyone walking they had to back into the tall grasses and plants and in effect disappear as we slowly passed by. After twenty minutes or so we came to a fork, turned right and soon were driving into an opening with a small settlement of mud houses (15 or 20) that were scattered over a flat ridge. We drove by three or four places then stopped. We got out and walked around a house to meet Wofa (uncle) Anang. Adjetey and Cedi sat and talked with him for a while then we all got up and walked between a few more houses and a hundred yards or so, to an opening next to a building, then through two court yards into a final courtyard and met Wofa Nyangkpo. Wofa Nyangkpo is the elder of the village and the one who would perform the ceremony to accept me into the family, if that is what they decided to do. So, after introductions, we all sat down and had a lot of discussion between everyone, including much lobbying by Adjetey. It was decided that I was indeed worthy to be made a member of the family. We could have one of the sheep rams that had been left for ceremonies by other family members for a sacrifice to the ancestors and the ceremony could happen.

Things had to be prepared and arranged, so, Eric, Adjetey, and I walked into the cultivated areas behind the village that were thick with vegetation. There were plantain and banana trees, coconut palms, and cocoa pod trees, all densely packed together, sometimes each variety growing right next to other. On the edges of the cultivated areas were densely packed trees and grasses and shrubs. Very unlike Mr. Klu’s pineapple farm there were no vistas here. Every view was close and verdant. This was repeated in the courtyards. The intimacy created by the buildings surrounding the small cooking and/or gathering areas was complimented by the inclusion of an ancient tree or two and when you could see over a rooftop the giant trees of the forest seemed to be bending in.

When we walked back we went into one of the first courtyards we had walked through to meet Wofa Nyangkpo who greeted us standing next to a huge umbrella of a tree. It covered most of the area touching three of the four roofs that bordered us. This courtyard had great grandmother’s house on one side and great grandfather’s house opposite, and in the corner was the entrance to the village shrine. This was a very important spiritual center of the village. In fact great grandmother had wed a man from another area that had strong juju and had brought it back to this village to begin the shrine.

Wofa Nyangkpo and a man, Satchimo, who would help with the ceremony, led us to a raised area at the entrance to the shrine where they sat. In front of the raised platform there were five chairs arranged for Adjetey, Cedi, me, Eric, and Wofa Anang. We all sat down and Wofa Nyangkpo began prayers to the ancestors and spilling libation (schnapps) to honor them. Since there are many ancestors this took several minutes. We then all drank and spilled libation on the ground to honor the ancestors. Then Satchimo produced a large wooden bowl in which he had placed a tightly woven wreath of leaves and vines that he had gathered from the forest. These plants have strong spiritual power for the village and were to be used to pass the family’s juju to me as well as Cedi and Eric, much to their surprise. Satchimo poured water over the leaves and vines and began to work up a greenish froth from the mix with his hands . Once done, more prayers were said and the ram was sacrificed. The blood was dripped around the bowl of plant froth to honor the ancestors and seek their support.

Cedi was led by Satchimo to the other corner of the courtyard where Cedi took off his shirt and sandals. He was asked to bend at the waist and receive the froth in his hands and rub it on his body as if he were bathing. This covered his skin with the plant froth. Eric was next and did the same, but he cupped his hands and took some of the liquid to his mouth and drank. Now he was asked if he wished to have cuts made on his skin to allow the juju of the plants to enter into his body. This was something that we had discussed for me, but not something Eric had planned for himself. He decided to do it and this allowed me to see what I was about to do. Satchimo produced a new razor blade and took it out of its wrapper. He delicately pinched a bit of skin from Eric’s chest with his left hand and cut 4 or 5 very shallow quarter inch long cuts with the razor in his right. Satchimo continued the same process at each of the top of Eric’s wrists, side of his elbows and shoulders, each side of his chest under his arms, once at the base of the neck and twice at the lower back, left and right. Afterward a black, chalky substance, later described as medicinal plant material that had been burnt and crushed, was shaken out of an old bottle and rubbed by Satchimo into and over each wound.

After Eric sat down it was my turn and I went through each step as they had done before me. When it came time to do the cutting Satchimo was very gentle and careful. He left and returned with another wrapped razor blade, but before opening it, he cleaned some of the bits of leaf and vine from my hair and skin. His touch was gentle and firm. The cuts were minimal. In fact I have had figure pricks for blood tests that felt more invasive. The process as I had seen with Eric took a while and as Satchimo was close to finishing I began to feel the lightheaded sensation associated with shock. The blood was leaving my head and draining to my body core. With a bit of disbelief I was laughing to myself thinking, “This can’t be happening”. Satchimo finished, and as he reached for the bottle of burnt herbs I leaned forward trying to get my head lower then my body core. All the while I was trying to explain to everyone the symptoms of shock and how cuts sometimes initiate it and that I may need to sit down. Someone brought a chair, I sat down, leaned my head forward while Satchimo rubbed blackened leaves into the cuts.

This was the end of the ceremony and Wofa Nyangkpo and Anang left. Cedi and Adjetey went off in search of gin. Eric and I sat, cleaned off, and put our shirts and sandals back on. I was now part of the family Kane. Satchimo asked me if I would like to go into the family shrine which I could not do before as a non-family member. I took off my sandals and followed him in. It was a very sobering and I felt honored.

To See a Craftsman’s Work in Use

2009-07-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

It is another thing for a carpenter to walk around a town and see the new entryway he designed and built for that store, to learn from a direct experience and from chatting with others of its functional and aesthetic achievements and shortcomings, and to modify future work in accordance with this running feedback that is picked up in the course of daily activities.

Talbot Brewer

"When the maker’s activity is immediately situated within a community of use, it can be enlivened by this kind of direct perception. Then the social character of his work isn’t separate from its internal or “engineering” standards; the work is improved through relationships with others. It may even be the case that what those standards are, what perfection consists of, is something that comes to light only through these iterated exchanges with others who use the product, as well as other craftsmen in the same trade. Through work that has this social character, some shared conception of the good is lit up, and becomes concrete."
Shop Class as Soulcraft: An inquiry into the value of work, by Matthew B. Crawford, The Penguin Press, New York, 2009. Pg. 187.

Eric had promised early on in our communication with each other that he would arrange for me to be present at a funeral. With that in mind he talked to a family that had ordered a canoon, the wooden fishing boat of Ghana, coffin for their elder, Ataa Annoh Kow’Bzo Afan, who had been a fisherman in Teshie. The funeral happened this last Friday and Saturday.
Eric had met an anthropologist (Silvia) and invited her and a friend (Charlie) to join us for Mr. Afan’s funeral. She is from the Ontario Museum in Toronto and is interested in commissioning a coffin from Eric for the museum’s African collection. Charlie is an MFA student from U. of Michigan. We sat for several hours in the heat waiting for the in-coffin-ment of Mr. Afan. During this time many people dressed in their best streamed through the tent which held Mr. Afan to pay respects. While this was happening, a fellow dressed in red with a red scarf tied around his head seemed to be playing the fool or a comedian as he sat on the concrete at the corner of the tent. He would occasionally attempt to wash someone’s shoes or feet with a small broom dipped into a bowl of water. Eric later explained that he was an herbalist or a medicine man (not to be confused with a fetish priest) and it was not uncommon for him to be a bit of a comedian while doing his tasks.

The four of us were surmising that Mr. Afan had long retired from fishing, being in his 80’s, but this was his town and fishing was his life and that is why the family had chosen the canoon. Even so, Eric understood that there was some controversy surrounding where he would actually be buried. Mr. Afan’s wake and the initial placing of his body in the coffin were to happen in the courtyard of his house. His interment, on the other hand, was planned to be in Accra, because that is where the main part of the family lives. But the faction that lived in Teshie was lobbying hard for the local cemetery. It was resolved by having a Fetish Priest get in touch with Mr. Afan. In a trance, she contacted him and answered the family’s questions about placement. Mr. Afan told them that he definitely wished to be buried in Teshie. This was all done at the last minute. We didn’t realize that they would stay in Teshie until the young men in the family began to maneuver into position to carry the coffin through the streets of Old Teshie. If the burial was to be in Accra there would have been a short informal march carrying the coffin through the neighborhood near the house, and then it would have been placed inside a van or truck and off to Accra.

So, as serendipity and unexpected hospitality stepped in, we, Charlie, Sylvia, and I, were physically pushed toward what was jointly considered by the family elders to be the most advantageous photo positions (right at the end of the coffin) and we proceeded to video and photograph every aspect of the funeral from invoking support from the ancestors through spilling libations (gin) on the ground, to witnessing several women priests go into trance and call on the ancestors to greet and help Mr. Afan as he was about to join them, to sacrificing a sheep and spilling the blood over the coffin (both Charlie and I had to jump back to avoid getting red stains all over our clothes), to dancing through the neighborhood with the coffin on the heads of four rather testosterone-filled young men, to parading between old buildings along a narrow winding road in old Teshie to the other side of town and finally to the cemetery for burial, a trip of a few miles.

As they danced and paraded with the coffin many young men were running alongside singing in answer to continuously yelled out call-songs initiated by one or another of them. Those carrying the coffin would occasionally be replaced by other young men just as pumped as the originals. Every now and then the ones carrying the coffin would bring to a halt their dancing march and turn the coffin in a circle stopping the whole procession of several hundred people. At one point, early on, a group of drummers accompanied the dancing and parading for a short block. All the streets were lined with others watching as we made our way through winding turns and under tents that occasionally covered the narrow roadway.

Every now and then Charlie and I would catch each other’s attention and we would exchange looks of disbelief or big smiles on our faces. Being swept along with everyone was exhilarating and there was always a feeling that something unexpected could happen from the dancing, to the fetish priests in trance, the drumming, to the spontaneous twirling of the coffin in circles, to the final placement of the coffin in the grave. As we came to the cemetery we proceeded right through and headed down a trail into a thick grove of trees. We hurried to catch up as the coffin disappeared behind some trees and just arrived as the canoon was rather quickly and unceremoniously slipped into an open grave. Some enthusiastic souls started pushing sand and clay onto the coffin and some even slipped into the grave. Order was quickly restored and an elderly gentleman began a prayer. But that was no sooner done then the young men around the grave grabbed whatever they could including using their feet and hands and began filling up the grave.

The day was long, the heat always present, the waiting made longer by not knowing when or where things would happen, the dancing procession bracing, and the final burial almost anti-climatic in its quick and almost un-noted summation. I was exhausted. When we got home I laid down to rest and woke up 12 hours later.

I Am Seeing Spirit

2009-07-14T12:38:00.001-07:00

This week has been an experience of a combination of hard work and being knocked on my ass, physically and spiritually. The beginning of the week we began work on a hammer coffin that needed to get done quickly. It was ordered by a family, apparently for an elder who just died who was a carpenter. This provided new opportunities for me to learn some very different things.

The first was construction of a new form. And by new form, I mean it was new to the crew as well. They have an old hammer coffin in the display area that is about 25 years old, which puts it in (grandfather) Kane Kwei's era. The problem with this older form as seen by Eric and his father, Cedi, is that it is too heavy and bulky in form. It is heavy for the coffin bearers to carry and too heavy in shape. They wanted to lighten up the form and make the proportions more true to a real hammer. Another problem that has to be considered is that you have to also place a body within it once it is fabricated. So, they brought out a brand new 16 oz. claw hammer and placed it on a bench and gathered everyone, including me around it and asked for suggestions as to how to proceed. A lot of conversation was carried on without my knowing what was being said. But pretty soon someone got out a piece of wood and began ripping 5 inch wide, 6 1/2' long boards. Still not understanding what the process was, I stood back and watched while the senior apprentice, Adjetey, took the four boards and began to measure and mark them into segments, all the time looking at the hammer. Once all the segments were marked similarly on each board, another apprentice, Aigbei, took one of the boards, placed it flat on the bench, took the cross-cut saw, and started cutting the first line across the width of the board. He stopped just short of cutting all the way through and kept from cutting into the bench which I assumed was going to happen. The next thing he did started to make sense to me. He started another parallel cut just a quarter of an inch to the right of his last cut. But the angle of the saw was pointed to the bottom of the first cut. When he finished the second cut he had made a 'V' cut ¼" wide at the top and stopped just short of going through the other side. I have done similar cuts with plywood that I wanted to bend. By relief-cutting the back of the plywood board every so often it allowed the board to be bent to a tighter curve. What was happening with this piece of wood for the hammer was that cutting each segment, anywhere from 10" to 18" apart, either on the front or the back allowed the board to be bent in a zigzag sort of form resembling the ins and outs of the hammer handle edge as it ran up from the bottom to where the hammer head would be connected.

Once four of them were made, each section was bent in its appropriate direction and nailed across the bend to hold its shape. Then again a big group discussion happened, and by group I mean the masters - Eric and Cedi- and all the apprentices from senior to the last. The discussion centered on the size and shape of the ends of the handle. A lot of measuring of shoulder widths and round or oval or truncated square shapes discussed. Once that was decided I was given two boards and told to edge nail them together. This became one of the ends after I cut the shape that Cedi drew on it and I smoothed the cuts with a hand plane into a roughly circular shape. Someone had cut the other end and shaped it. Now we placed the two end pieces on the ground about 6 ½' apart and laid the ends of the first zigzag board on the top edge of each end piece. The hammer was taken out again and held at arms length toward the edge the zigzag board and the board was deemed accurate, so it was nailed on to the end pieces. The other three boards were nailed on a ¼ turn from each other so that they were equally spaced around the ends. This gave the skeletal outline of the handle and all the information needed to fill in the spaces in between with the cut and fitted pieces. This process was similar to the one I had done for the airplane coffin.

Now, I was given my second lesson. Since, this a rush order, two other apprentices and I were asked to fill in all the space between the four boards to create the handle shaped form. I felt only minimally competent in creating the individual pieces, from my leisurely, learn-as-you-go experience with the airplane. Now, I was expected to contribute not only competently, but with speed, as well. I felt very intimidated, not by the speed and competence of the two other apprentices but by my expectation to do well and not make mistakes. This is where I found more of the kindness of fellow apprentices. They would step in occasionally and point me in the right direction and at other times allow me to take my time by working around my section and going to the next. I found the time used to do self-conscious analysis of each step and the need to figure what action to take each time created pressure that slowed me down. But then things became a bit easier, less thinking was going on and my pace began to pick up. So, repetition, under pressure forced me to be less self-conscious and more action-conscious, uncomfortable but successful.

And, in retrospect, the third lesson I took from the building of the hammer was the power and empowerment of collaboration. The energy, both creative and productive, was huge. Problems were solved and acted on in a very short period of time and the result was a more proportioned, sleeker and lighter hammer coffin which was the task asked of the group. This does not come from a group of individuals that work independently. These guys eat together, they joke and laugh with each other, they finish each other's work, they trust each other.

The hammer head was designed and built in a similar manner and things slowed down a bit as all the voids and spaces were filled in to finish the shapes. This was a lot of work in a very short time and I was exhausted each night, going home to bed and sleeping 8 to 9 hours each night. And then Wednesday night I was feeling extra tired I decided to have a quiet night of reading and writing and go to bed. In the middle of writing for the blog the glands in my neck felt swollen and sore. Five or ten minutes later I felt a chill, very strange for 80 degree weather. Then more and more chills. I turned off the overhead fan because the breeze felt too cool on my skin causing more chills. I went to bed and covered up, having always slept on top of the sheets since I arrived. The night before, Tuesday, I remembered that I had taken breakfast at a different place on that morning and I did not remember taking my malaria pill, Malarone. This is a daily dose of malaria prophylaxis meant to prevent any traction of the parasite in my body if bitten by a carrying mosquito. Believe me I have been advised and practice many defenses against mosquito borne disease. I got out all my Malarone pills and counted them three or four times and then compared my numbers to a calendar and figured I had taken it and just hadn't remembered doing so. But on Wednesday night, fever and chills running through my body, I was not so sure and was thinking more and more this could be malaria. Malaria is easily managed and rid from the body if you get it treated soon after symptoms start. So, the next morning, Eric took me to a doctor who specializes in malaria. After a lab test of my blood which took an hour to process, during which time I could not stay awake, the doctor explained that I did not have malaria but an upper-respiratory bacterial infection. The lab test showed that I had a high white blood cell count, and the doctor said from that information that three things were true. It was not a viral infection and it certainly was not malaria, unless bacterial infection and malaria were happening at the same time (highly unlikely). The third, she said, was that the high white cell count showed my body to be 'robust' and very healthy for someone my age! Thank you, very much.

Well, with a gazillion pills in hand I headed back to my bed some 20 minutes away and once there proceeded to sleep through 24 hours. The pills began to help, as well as, the sleep and by Friday I felt like going out to eat something. Saturday I went to the workshop for a short while, doing errands with Eric. This Sunday I finally felt like myself and I look forward to going back to the shop on Monday to work again.

While all this was going on and I was drifting in and out of sleep, I was having very vivid and odd dreams for me about death, bodies, and dead spirits. My usual dreams, if I remember them at all, are typically very benign and low key. I have been around and witnessed death and its process. It is not a frightening thing for me. In fact I see it as some of the hardest work a person can do. Especially for someone whose body is healthy, but the spirit is working to leave. It is the last, hard process we go through, both consciously and particularly physically. I don't fear my own death. On several occasions I have stopped and looked at my life choices, what I have learned and experienced, and have felt very lucky and whole. There are things I regret, but those experiences helped me grow and made for more informed choices later in life. So, if my life were to end I would be greatly saddened for the loss of my relationships. I wish those could continue forever, but I have had a good life and it could end today. So, these dreams didn't seem to be coming from a death anxiety. They were dark and colorful and if I step back and look at the content, rather gruesome. Other strange things about them are that they seemed to occur while I was in a transitional sleep state, between deep sleep and wakefulness, and the gruesomeness wasn't apparent to me while in the dream. I did not feel threatened or in danger.

I told Eric about them and he sucked in a breath and said that I have to be very careful, that these sorts of dreams tell the truth and I have to be careful how I deal with them. He went on to say that there are people who, through no cause on my part, may wish me ill will, and they can cause spirits to do me harm. He said both he and his father have felt these forces and have had to deal with them. Eric went on to explain that most of this is related to the work we are doing, creating containers for the dead. Dealing so closely with the dead opens us up to all kinds of spiritual powers. He said some people use the church and their Christian belief to help them deal with these forces and some use Ju Ju, the traditional practice to balance spiritual energy. Some, he said, suffer physical pains and stress and that is how they deal with it. He went on to say that since he has been heading the business, making it stronger, more successful, and well known, he feels protected. He feels that his ancestor, Kane Kwei, is protecting him and the shop. This is why when there are celebrations, initiations like mine, and significant things that happen with the shop and the family, Eric and others, when drinking to celebrate a special time at the shop first will first spill libations (gin) on the ground to share with his grandfather. This is why the sheep was sacrificed and the blood dripped on my feet and then to the ground to include and honor Kane Kwei and connect me with Kane Kwei, to let him know I was here and why. These tributes honor him and the ancestors, and acknowledge their protection of the shop and what the shop does and, further, their protection of the family and what they do.

I felt uneasy and a bit circumspect about my dreams as he first spoke and then more assured and then included and protected as we finished talking.

I have had no dreams since.

Elmina and Cape Coast

2009-07-11T12:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday of the third week Eric, Elias, and I took a ride in a large van west of Accra to two small, veryold coastal towns. They both are fishing centers,

Elmina Lagoon

cannon lined up on shore

where fishermen go to sea in 40 ft to 50 ft hand made wooden boats called Cannon that look like very large canoes. The cannon are made in a similar method to the coffins, or perhaps it is the other way around. They are brightly painted and appear frightfully small out on the ocean.

Elmina Castle looking back at town

Another note worthy aspect of Elmina and Cape Coast is that they were centers for slave trading. First started by the Dutch and then taken over by the English. Previously, these areas were centers for gold trade. In fact for many years Ghana was known as the Gold Coast. But two things happened to change the trade to slavery. The value of slaves outstripped the value of gold and once people began to be captured the amount of mine workers declined and sources of gold began to diminish.

The local people would capture others likely to be used as slaves and the Europeans would trade for them and ship them to the Caribbean or the British colony in America. To protect their trade and assets the Dutch had taken over a Portuguese fort in Elmina and expanded it into a castle, made of rock and brick. The English later built a fort on a hill over looking the castle that the Dutch had used previously to attack the English after they had taken over the castle. All very convoluted and even more interesting when you find out that the Danes were involved for a time as well.

Positioned at the ocean's edge of an extraordinarily picturesque colonial town, the castle of Elmina is an imposing white structure that efficiently held and processed hundreds of men and women at a time. The guide who explained the several areas and uses of the building pointed out how the Dutch governor would stand on a balcony of his 4th floor living quarters and have his men bring out into the courtyard all the women being held. This was so he could choose one to rape. This woman was secreted up through the building and finally through a trap door outside the governor's bed chamber for his use. It is a very eerie feeling to listen to so matter of fact a description of such cruelty and inhumanity.

The whole time we were there the rain poured and poured. So, it was a quick trip or so it seemed. After the castle, we went to dinner at a restaurant in a colonial era building right on the lagoon across from the castle. Perhaps you can see it in some of the pictures. At the end of dinner, we caught a cab (they are everywhere and quite inexpensive compared to US taxis) and raced as only Ghanaian taxi drivers can (there should be a thrill ride somewhere called Ghana taxi driver. Have I mentioned I have only seen three functioning stop lights and no stop signs since I arrived) back east toward Cape Coast.

Cape Coast Castle

Once there, we were to load on to another van taking us back to Accra and eventually home to Teshie. Well, vans like these have no schedule. They sit until they are full and then they leave. We happened to arrive as a van just filled up and was leaving which meant we were the first in the next van and a wait in store. So having not seen much of Cape Coast I took off walking toward where I thought the castle might be and sure enough found. But before getting to the castle I walk up to a skeleton of a building that a sign described as the future home of the Cape Coast Slavery Museum. The structure is beautiful in its bony, hulking appearance. Somewhere it was mentioned that it used to be a church and it seems fitting. From there I walked on to the castle and took the panorama picture you see here. Then I got a call from Eric who said the van was getting close to full and that I better get back quick. So, I started to jogged back as quickly as I could, having stretched my 15 minute walk into about 30 minutes and fearing I might be left behind. As I was doing my 60 year old style jog a woman who was walking towards me with a group of other women all dressed in blue and white printed dresses with matching head scarves yelled out "Oh, a race!" and proceeded to jog along with me for 100 yards or so shouting exaggerated encouragement. I thanked her for support with a laugh and waved goodbye as I hurried on my way. Getting to the van, a bit breathless, I proceeded to jump through the open side door into my seat sopping wet and sat there for another 30 minutes waiting for one last person to fill the van.

Luckily, I found a place to lay out my rain jacket so it could dry (if anything ever really dries during the rainy season in Ghana) and could watch a family and friends dancing (the music was probably at 85~90 decibels, as is most music I hear here) in the rain, mostly under a tent, in front of a church celebrating something. When the last person appeared we closed the doors of our brand new (this is a rarity) Ford full sized van holding 15 passengers, the driver turned the AC up to max which blew out of the console in the ceiling right at my chest. This felt great for the first 30 seconds and then it became really cold. As I was trying to enjoy my first sub 80's~low 90's temperatures and 90% humidity since I have been here, the driver plugged in a DVD and a TV flipped down from the console right in my face and began showing the Best of World Wrestling Federation. I thought I could probably avoid watching it but it was getting dark quickly and it was fast becoming the only thing I could see, except something else I will describe a little bit later. Now, to act as background music to US mega wrestling, the driver popped in a CD of American Soft Rock Gospel music and proceeded to hold one hand in the air with palm forward waving side to side to the beat of "Our God Is an Awesome God" and singing along. At this moment I am thinking I am pretty used to new experiences and sensory overload coming my way in Ghana, but this is something to write home about. And then I realize that this guy is going 80 miles an hour, on an unlit two lane highway, where every three or four minutes there is a big red roadside sign that says "Over Speeding Kills - 12 people died at this spot". And I only wonder for a moment about the use of the word "Over" with the word "speeding" which already carries its own baggage of being "over". I wondered if 80 miles an hour qualifies as over-over speed. And then I see why he is going 80 miles an hour. We are coming up on a slow moving truck that is approaching a blind curve and I know the driver figures he has to get around this slow moving truck before anybody comes screaming around this blind curve and gets there before we do. And you know "Our God Is an Awesome God", so, nothing is going to happen to us anyway. I think for a moment that I could scream that the dashed lines in the middle of the road have become solid, which means that passing may be unwise when to my surprise the single solid line becomes three solid lines and I figure this should slow his pace but no he kicks it up to 85 and zzzzooooomm around the truck at light speed and by golly there is the glare of lights ahead coming from the blind curve and the van just barely zips in between the truck and the on coming car!!! I look around. Two guys are asleep and everyone else is watching 'The Undertaker' whip some guy named 'Brad' into the corner post of the ring, but Brad's got it all figured out because he jumps up onto the ropes and does a back flip and catches The Undertaker's head between his legs and slams him to the mat. And then the guy next to me says he heard that this wrestling isn't real……..
The driver found no vehicle and no road situation impassable for the rest of the trip back to Accra. I watched the entire Best of WWF and sang along with "Our God Is an Awesome God" when it came around again with hand raised, palm forward waving side to side to the beat.

I Am an Expert

2009-07-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

"10,000 hours is a common touchstone for how long it takes to become an expert." Richard Sennett, The Craftsman.

The 10,000 hour rule - The amount of time spent practicing the thing which one becomes known for. Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers; the Story of Success.

Since the average hourly work year is 2,000 hours, one could expect to be an expert in five years. I think of myself after five years as a woodworker and I don't think I had the slightest allusion to being an expert. I was still muddling my way through trying to make a living at something I was growing to love more each week. I have been a professional worker in wood of one form or another since 1975. If I added up all the hours in 34 to 35 years of woodworking, I could easily be six going on seven kinds of an expert!

But I am an expert. That does not mean I am the best at what I do or the knowledge that I have is superior in any way. All it means is that I have expertise. I have clocked a certain amount of time doing what I do to be considered having expertise at doing it. I am now at a point that I looked forward to when I began woodworking. I do not have to think about each choice, each action before I do it. I have a certain amount of acquired knowledge that allows me to think more about the direction I wish to go rather then how to get there. My expertise may not be of interest to everyone. But for those who do have interest it is there for their consideration. As a teacher (Oregon College of Art and Craft and Catlin Gabel School, both in Portland, Oregon) I obligate myself to consider the most effective ways to share my expertise and experience. What the people, the students who care to listen, to watch, to discuss with me do with what they find out is up to them.

Eric Annan Kwei is an expert. Though only 25 years old he has been working in his grandfather's (Kane Kwei) woodworking shop, building coffins on and off since he was 8 years old. He has been running the business for the last four years, so he is almost an expert at that, too. He is a strong master and a good friend at the same time, a rare combination. He is quick with a joke or a funny story and metes out discipline when necessary. He realizes what he has been given is an incredible gift and that it is also a huge responsibility. When he demonstrates something to me it is with a kind word and a bit of patience, but with a directness and firmness of expectation, an expectation that I take what he has shown me and make it mine.

As a student, I am trying to listen intently with my eyes, my hands, and my mind while I am here. This is my only way to absorb the thinking, the choice making, the body/tool/material connection that makes a Ga coffin maker. Whether I will become a competent coffin maker or not will be judged later when I begin to make some the common choices unconsciously that will allow me to make other, more creative choices consciously. The techniques will become second nature giving my brain the cognitive space and freedom to create new form or modify old.

When I am in my role as a teacher, I am aware that my students are listening with what they have, and at times only what they are allowing themselves to listen with. Whether from attention or wiring, some things just don't get through. So, I attempt to inform in many ways: through demonstration (usually successful), explanation (probably the least affective), and sometimes with my hands on their hands helping them get the feeling (usually affective after a demonstration wasn't quite enough). Sometimes using a drawing helps, either the student's drawing or mine or a combination of both. But what works most of all is the student's willingness to take what they understand and risk it. Their attempt to do what they saw and heard by using the tools in the manner that they think will affect the material in the desired way is a leap of faith. This willingness to try can reap success, but there is a high risk of failure. Failure is uncomfortable for a person who likes to feel competent in his or her world, but it happens to all makers, including teachers and experts. Fumbling through failure can give as much or more information as success. It just so happens most learning situations are public and there are many levels of competency in a room of learners. So the pain of failure is mixed with the risk of public ridicule and…empathy. Luckily, most students are in the situation with others going through the same experience.

Here there are seven or eight apprentices. Everyone is at a different level. Some are more competent then others. Some (me) need more coaching and attention. I feel awkward at times when I repeat an operation several times and still don't get it. But I feel empathy from the other apprentices, because I am trying and I continue to work. Sometimes there is a little impatience if I am slowing up a process. But many times someone steps in to help and I can see how it is done correctly. What I have to suppress is the little person inside who wants to yell, "But I know how to do it, this way!" This happens rarely because the techniques are different, the tools are different, and the thinking and problem solving are different.

Learning a process of making, learning to diagnose a problem within a process, either design or mechanical, is about learning the rules and usually the rules are assumed and what is worse ordinarily the rules cannot be verbalized easily or at all. What are the rules for riding a bike? Well, keep your balance while moving in the direction you wish to go, lean into a turn, lean back to upright when going straight and when you get to your destination, slowly apply the brakes with plenty of room to stop so that you can put your foot down as your speed slows causing you to loose your balance again. That sounds more like a description then a set of rules. But can you be more precise? What is the rule for keeping your balance? How fast do you have to move before the rule for keeping your balance kicks in? What is the rule for how much you lean into a curve? What does leaning into a curve mean? And finally how slow can you move before you eventually loose the aforementioned balance and have to stabilize yourself and the bike with your foot? The precise wording of the rules you need to be successful might very well be impossible, but you certainly know when the rules start to happen for you! It is the same thing about learning the effective way of manipulating material with tools. The action can be demonstrated and explained. But only you know when the rule works and when it doesn't. And you have to remember what you did (how you moved) just prior, during, and typically afterward, as well. The motion prior gets the tool ready and in position, the motion during maintains the position of interaction with the material, and then follow through makes sure your body energy and motion do not degrade to the point that the motion stops short or becomes inefficient at the end.

One can give detailed physical rules about proper angles and speed and pressure and force but it isn't going to mean a lot to someone who has never used a hand plane or a saw or chisel before (even for experienced tool users it could only be of curious interest without much value for tool use). The best a teacher can do after "riding the bike" around the area for a bit, giving helpful hints is to point you in the right direction, give you a gentle push, and have you fail or stumble a bit as you gain your "balance" with the tool/material interaction. And you repeat the process over and over until your body and brain start to understand what all the demonstrating and verbiage was about and assimilates the rules for you, so that you can call on them when next you dare to chance fate and zoom off again. And the best is when you become an expert and you forget to think about the rules. Your self-consciousness is gone and you can push off to enjoy the scenery, fresh air, forget about how to do it and just make it happen in new and expanding ways.

As a student I have to keep aware that information will be coming at me in many forms, from direct instruction to the casual glance at another apprentice's work, from having instant "aha" moments of immediate success to re-doing the same operation over and over until I finally "get it". In fact I am finding from day to day I have to redo/relearn some operations because the "rules" are not there in the background yet. According to Peter Dormer in his book, The Art of the Maker: Skill and Its Meaning in Craft and Design, an expert is one who must forget the rules in order to become one. According to Dormer, to have expertise, rules directing the expert's actions and diagnostic choices must become second nature and unconscious. If one has to think of each rule before acting nothing would be done in a timely manner and hardly with competence and speed. The expert has the freedom to formulate all kinds of creative choices about what to make without continually thinking about how to make it.

It has been almost two weeks

2009-06-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday the 21st, Eric, Elias (Eric’s friend and number one apprentice) and I traveled a short distance north on a very torn up, bone rattlingly rutted highway to a beautiful mountaintop pineapple farm. A taxi wound around and around the low, lush mountainside until we stopped at a short, dirt road. It turns out Adjei, one of the apprentices lives here with his family on the weekends. The feeling is intimate and expansive at the same time. Adjei’s family lives in a complex of small buildings. The patriarch is Mr. Klu, a pleasant man who has a huge smile and ruemy, thoughtful eyes. He greeted us and began to show us around. Behind his house was dense with foliage, a school was being built across a pasture and then back down the dirt road we walked off, machete in hand, toward the pineapple farm. This is when things started getting expansive. As far off in the distance as you could see to the west the mountain continued on as part of a chain of mountains. Huge trees stood as sentinels to the farm sections. In fact when I asked about a smaller bushy tree that looked like it had palm fronds growing all over it I was told that it was a tree used by farmers to mark the corners of their plots because the tree never dies. One can to cut it down, push it over, or pull it up and as long as some root material stays in the ground the tree will regenerate.

Saw starkly present red earth mounds created by wood eating red ants (not termites), big black splotches of black ants that create an open nest around an elbow or crook of a huge branch high up in the massive trees, the jointed stalks of cassava plants (the root of which is a starchy staple in Ghanaian food), and the thick co-mingling of sword shape leaves of pineapple with their prickly fruit and flower nestled into openings of leaves.

Mr. Klu pulled off several fruit and trimmed off the top flowers and we walked back anticipating the taste of fresh pineapple. After walking back along the ridge of the mountain taking in the scene in reverse, we sat comfortably on Mr. Klu’s porch and gorged on the sweetest pineapple I have ever tasted. And later had banku, which is a starchy paste made of cassava root and corn meal pounded together and eaten with a pepper spicy stew of goat meat and tomato paste and vegetables. Adjei was interested in the running shoes I had on so I told him if he brought pineapple to the workshop every week they were his at the end of my stay.

This week I worked much more in the shop. I have built and shaped the fuselage of an airplane coffin, contracted some sort of rash (cause unknown), also contracted a cold, learned to find my way to breakfast and the shop by myself in a taxi, and eaten a lot more banku and foo foo (very spicy, very yummy).

Imagine a very thick, six foot cigar made up of 50 to 60 pieces all hand shaped and planed on edge and end to create a loosely coopered, angular barrel. This the plane fuselage. Coopering is the skill of making the staves of a barrel. With a barrel all pieces are approximately the same. Each edge is beveled (an angle less then 90 degrees which allows the required amount of pieces to be put tightly together creating a polygon) so that when the staves are nestled together inside metal hoops the pieces fit neatly together in a rough circle, each edge touching completely the next edge. Because the staves are straight and are wider at the center and narrower at the ends, the only place they touch when first put together are at one end inside the first metal hoop holding the staves against a round wooden end. Now the inside of the staves are heated, traditionally with a fire. This makes the wood pliable and allows it to be bent. A second metal hoop, a bit larger, is hammered along the outside of the staves away from the first hoop as the staves soften from the heat and begin to bend. As the hoop travels along it forces the wood to come together, closing up tightly the spaces between the beveled edges. Because the staves are wider at the middle the barrel diameter gets wider as the hoop forces the staves together. Once the second hoop travels maybe a third of the way along the staves a similar size third hoop is forced over the opposite ends of the staves, further bringing the staves tightly together. Now this hoop is driven a third of the way neatly bringing most of the length of the staves together. The fourth and last hoop, the same size as the first, is forced on and brings home tightly the rest of the edges and the end of the staves around the other end piece. The 'barrel' shape, which necessitates narrow ended/wide middle staves, comes from the long ago discovered mechanical advantage that wood pressing in on wood under the tension of bending forces the edges to become close to leak proof. The final tightening of the joints, with the desired impermeability, comes when each stave absorbs liquid and expands, using powerful hydraulic pressure against the metal hoops and in turn one stave against the other. Once the staves become dry again they will shrink and the barrel will leak.

The staves and therefore the volume making structure that make up the airplane coffin are created a bit differently then a true barrel. There are no hoops holding the staves together from the outside, and the beveling is quite different, as well. To hold each piece to the next, nails are driven from the newest piece made into the previous one. The desired angles are created by sight only on the next piece to be attached. In other words the top edge of piece that it is attached to is usually always square.

I began with two center pieces that are as long as the center section of the plane, about four inches wide and edges parallel to each other. I then added a piece to the each end of the center pieces as long as the next sections forward and aft. Each of these second section pieces is made perhaps a half inch less wide on the end toward the nose or tail (So, four inches to match the center section piece and three and a half at the opposite end). This allows the plane to begin to get narrower top to bottom as it gets closer to the ends. These pieces were then beveled on the end that was to be attached to the center piece, making their opposite ends closer together when attached. This allows the plane to begin to get narrower side to side, as it goes to the nose and the tail. Finally, the tail and nose sections are begun by creating foundation pieces that are three and a half inches wide at one end and one inch wide for the nose and about three inches down to two and one half inches at the tail end. The ends of the tail pieces that attach to the second section are beveled so that they can be attached by nails but first very ends are beveled at an acute angle on the inside faces and brought together, similar to an axe edge. The nose ends are kept apart about two inches and the opposite ends beveled so they can be attached at their correct angle. Now, there is a completed frame that will act as the foundation for the rest of the fuselage.

Each piece added in the center section is beveled on the bottom, connecting edge (The top edges are left square). This allows the pieces to tip in toward each other in an arch to be connected with a final 'keystone' top and bottom to complete a rough, polygonal cylinder. The ends of the center section pieces are all square and ready for the second section pieces fore and aft to be beveled and attached. Each piece of the second sections is beveled on the connecting edge and the connecting end and the width narrows as it gets closer to the nose/tail. This creates a truncated, conical shape as the pieces come together one by one. Finally, the tail and nose pieces are beveled on a connecting edge and end and the width narrows to zero or in some cases an inch to half an inch. These become the final rough cone shapes of the tail and nose.

Each of the pieces is cut from a rough cut hardwood lumber called Wawa, by using a hand saw, either manual or electric. In the case of the manual saw, the tool is held vertical, above the board, with the teeth facing away from the cutter and in essence "pulled" down through the wood (the motion is like pulling a bell rope down). When I first did this I was very skeptical, but it took very little time for me to get comfortable and begin using this new technique. If the piece needs to be tapered (narrower at one end then the other) it is done now by sawing. When making the central foundation pieces each edge is hand planed flat and straight, but square is not paramount. The attaching end of the second section pieces and the nose and tail pieces are beveled using the hand plane before being nailed on. This is relatively easy because Wawa is reasonably soft and the wood is green. (Green means the moisture in the wood has not been dried out, either by letting the cut lumber sit covered and allowing the moisture to stabilize with the surrounding air or continue to force moisture out by slowly cooking the water out in a lumber kiln.) The moisture in the wood keeps the end grain wood fibers from bending or collapsing as the hand plane blade is pushed against the wood in an attempt to cut it. The only issue for me is keeping the hand plane straight as it moves over the end of board that can be as small as an inch wide.

Each new cut piece is ½ inch wider and an inch longer then what is needed to accommodate beveling and adjusting the fit of the piece. The newly cut piece is set on the top edge of the foundation frame where it is to be attached. The new piece is then tipped on the back corner of the edge toward the center to what is the presumed angle to start the cylinder. The gap between the top front corner of the edge of the foundation piece and the bottom front corner of the edge of the new piece is the amount to be taken off the back corner of the edge of the new piece. This is where you take the gap you see and transfer it to the back bottom edge of the board by holding a pencil point at the presumed distance from the edge and with the aid of one or two fingers on the edge move the pencil parallel to the edge along the length of the board. Now the board is placed in a vice and the hand plane is used at an angle to take shavings off the corner of the edge of the board until one side of the plane blade hits the pencil mark and the other side just barely touches the opposite corner of the edge creating the anticipated bevel. Take the board back to where it will be connected and see if the angle is correct. If not, redo until it is right. The more experience you have the greater the accuracy the first time. If the end of the new piece needs to be beveled it is done at this time as well. Sometimes the end has to be adjusted to accommodate the bevel of the edge and vice versa.
Once the piece fits and is at the correct angle it is nailed on using 6p box nails. Box nails are the only nails available, and box nails have large heads. The form building process includes forcing the heads of the nails below the surface of the wood with a punch so that the surface can be shaped and rounded. Sooo, each head of each nail has to be reduced by hitting the edge of the nail head with a hammer on an anvil. The 'anvils' are old, cast car or truck parts with various flat surfaces. These 'anvils' also serve as hold downs to keep boards steady while cutting with saws. When the nails are set into the green wood they begin to rust and grab the fibers around them and hold very fast. In fact the actual pounding of the nail bit by bit into the pushes the wood fibers out of the way but the fibers push back and grasp the nail after it has been fully set. Using nail guns to shoot nails saves time but the physics between the nail and wood is not the same. The force of the gun tends to make the nail rip the fibers and the grab is less strong.

How did I get here?

2009-06-24T11:52:00.000-07:00

In one sense the ride has been very linear. Each step leading to another, and another, and another until the beginning has become a distant memory. A memory that seems familiar like an old story repeated many times, but it's just that, an old story as if experienced by someone else. I can see how the beginning relates to what is happening now and there are a string of experiences that tie the two together, but it is not a recognizable continuum. It's more like a jumble of short stories where some of them leap forward as others end, and others run simultaneously side by side some ending for moments and then lurching back to life later on to run contiguous with new stories.

It was 1969 and I was standing in Jimmy's half dirt, half concrete floored, garage. Jimmy was pretty skilled when it came to Volkswagens. He could pull an engine in a view minutes in his dark, old garage and start stripping it before I realized what was happening. He wasn't an old pro; he was the same age as me. But somehow he had gained enough knowledge to be able to diagnose problems and go after them with confidence. He'd gone a couple years to college, but part of a liberal arts education didn't get him where he was. In fact it most assuredly had gotten in the way and working on cars was one of the reasons that he was no longer in school. Fixing Volkswagens was a full time job for him. When I asked him about it, he told me he started by fixing the little niggly problems that were a constant with old cars. He couldn't afford to pay someone to do it so he did it himself. That made sense, but he was doing stuff no weekend mechanic could dream of doing without leaving half the parts he started with on the floor with no clue as to where they went. Then I found an old spiral bound book on a shelf above his work bench. It looked like it had RC Crumb comic type caricatures on the cover peeking through layers of greasy fingerprints. It was How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive: A Manual of Step by Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot. Here I thought he was a genius and he was using the first "SOMETHING for Dummies" book. The reason I was there, beside the good conversation, the brakes on my VW Bus were mushy and I was hoping Jim could squeeze me in. He saw me with the book and said "why don't you look up bleeding brakes in the back?" I did and started reading about some no nonsense descriptions about how to and how not to bleed brakes. I had used tools before, but not on something I depended on as much as I did my old VW Bus. The descriptions were kind of funny and wise at the same time. Like a friend telling a joke about how he screwed up trying to do something ending with the clichéd, "Well, I'll never do that again". Here was a book telling you a couple of bad things along with the good things that could happen if you did a certain procedure. Every technique book I had read before had been very linear. If you do 'A', then 'B' will happen. This book was like "If you do 'A', then 'B' or maybe 'C' could happen, but you better watch out for 'D' 'cause that could cost you a couple more days and a lot more trips to the parts store".

This was a book that thought like me. I could always see a couple of different ways of looking at things. I knew one or two were better then others, but I didn't always know why. This book and another that just recently came out, Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford, talk about making choices that can have more then one outcome. They both give value to the experience of making mistakes and the knowledge gained. In fact Crawford's book argues that there are many situations where the written, analytical logic will tell you one thing, but the 'doing' and the combination of physical and cognitive experience learned by 'doing' will tell you different. This is because analytic logic is linear and the real world is always throwing a curve. There are always more variables then can be written down in a manual.

Another data base or source that I have repeatedly gone to in the past was "Fine Woodworking Magazine". It seemed early on, every time I was looking at a problem in my woodworking, there was an article or section that addressed that specific quandary. The problem was putting the information provided by the words into something that made sense in the midst of a 3D problem in a 3D world. The pictures helped, but something was still lacking. It was my deficiency of experience to plug the information into that kept me from making sense of my problem.

This leads me to the question, "How do I acquire knowledge?" And by 'knowledge' I mean 'tools' that I have with me (information, successful experiences, mistakes made, etc) and information bases (for detailed explanations, and speculations) that I know I can use because I have been there before or have heard about them and have recollections of general information headings which may have details that might be helpful. Then there are two more questions: "How do I retain that knowledge?" and "How do I apply that knowledge to a new situation?"

First of all, to be open to acquiring knowledge you always have to accept that you and your choices may fail. Not because you are a bad problem solver, in fact a good problem solver is someone that can postulate several scenarios try them out and see which ones have a chance of working and carry them out until they do or don't succeed. If they don't, start making more educated guesses and…..You see where this is going. Secondly, to allow yourself to gain knowledge you have to be active. You have to get your hands into the middle of it all and "mess around".

I found I could acquire information by watching other woodworkers do there work. I asked them questions and watched what they did. The watching made so much more sense then their words. Once that process was over the trial and error period began where I would try out what I thought I had seen and heard. This was when all the information started to become knowledge. This is when the information I had received through my filters and prejudices was tested. When the processes worked as I thought I had seen or heard them described, my experience validated the information and became knowledge that I could use again. But just as trustworthy a tool as success, failure could give me enough information to back track and make different choices to seek out new ways to validate the information. It seems that speech and writing are very limited when trying to teach or learn how to craft a thing or even diagnose a situation to make good choices to resolve a problem. These processes are cognitive and sensory all at the same time. Each decision becomes reinforced by an action and the analysis of the result. These are micro and macro. A process is made up of small steps. Each step has to be evaluated as to its effect on the success of the larger procedure. The successes or failures of these steps reinforce the choices made in a string of actions and analysis that can be productive in solving the present situation, as well as, future situations. And the ability to recognize similar situations allows one to apply the accumulated knowledge that is continually reinforced by success and near successes. The real pleasure is recognizing an application of knowledge to a new problem or situation that on initial analysis doesn't seem to apply. It seems that by putting together two or more seemingly unrelated bits of knowledge can address a problem from an up to now unseen direction. To keep this knowledge current and accessible I have to practice the several elements that make up the decision making, the application of choice, and then the analysis of attaining the desired outcome. This practice deepens the quality and quantity of my experience.

This is all leading to how I became an apprentice coffin maker. While in graduate school I was studying the arts of the Yoruba groups of Nigeria. While on the internet looking at sources, up popped images of colorfully painted sculptures from Ghana that were also coffins. I was stunned. I had not seen imagery like this before and certainly not anything like it for the ritual of burial. There were fish, trucks, bottles of beer, boats, writing pens, almost anything one could imagine were assembled out of wood, carved and painted to be used as caskets. The more I learned, the more amazing the whole story became. It seems that a man named Kane Kwei was a carpenter in mid-20th century Ghana. He was well trained by the best carpenter of the time. That carpenter had made among other things, palanquins for chiefs in the villages and towns around and in Accra. One palanquin was made in the form of a cocoa pod and delivered to a chief just before his death. The chief's family decided to bury him in the cocoa pod.

Some time later Kane Kwei's grandmother died and inspired by the cocoa pod palanquin that became a chief's coffin, he decided to make an airplane coffin for her. Her long held but unrealized hope was to fly in an airplane so Kane Kwei gave her dream to her after death. Many were taken by his idea and his sculptural talent and encouraged him to make more. From this a business grew and his work became known not only in his home town of Teshie but around the world. Examples of his work were the amazing things I was finding on the internet and eventually in a book I found by Thierry Secretan.

Less then a year ago I found a website by a woman, MaPo Kinnord-Payton, who often traveled to Ghana leading groups of students studying different arts. She had images of the wonderful fantasy coffins of Teshie on her site and I contacted her. I asked if anyone of the artists she knew would be interested in having someone come study with them. She did, and she gave me the email address for Eric Annan Kwei, the grandson of Kane Kwei. This was an opportunity for me to learn first hand how these amazing sculptures were designed and constructed. I emailed Eric and he responded favorably. During a several month period, we communicated back and forth to work out all the details. And, in a short time, June 15th arrived and I was on a 20 hour flying marathon that put me in Kotoka International Airport in Accra.

The first four days seemed like a month. I was immediately welcomed. I have met many of Eric's family (there are many more), begun an airplane coffin, been initiated as an apprentice and eaten with great pleasure Banku and FooFoo, and will soon visit his family village. I am staying in his father's house which is a few kilometers from the shop. The shop is in Teshie on the main highway from Accra to Tema. It is the same place his grandfather had his business until his death in 1992.

The initiation started by gathering all the material and objects and …. a sheep. The material and objects were gifts to the family and apprentices. The initiation included the elders of Eric's family; Cedi, his father; Adjetey, his uncle from his Grandmother's family; and Adjei, his uncle from his Grandfather's family. They gave prayers and spilled libations on the ground to honor the ancestors, not the least of which is Kane Kwei. After Eric presented the new apprentice and the giving of gifts to the elders, pencils were given by me to the other apprentices, to me and also to make a connection of sharing work. Then I gave each apprentice two boxes of matches to help light his fire. The women of the house, members of Eric's family, who live next to and behind the shop were each given three boxes of matches for their fire. This introduced me as a new apprentice and let them know I will now be around. Then everyone is given a gift of soda.

The beginning of the last part of the initiation starts with my taking the sheep to a table to be sacrificed to connect the ceremony and the apprentice to the ancestors. I took off my shoes to connect with the earth. Spilling the blood of the sheep on the earth is to honor the ancestors and I placed both feet under the dripping blood to make a link through the sacrifice with them, a very serious moment. The sheep is then prepared and butchered for the feast of a cassava root/corn paste and a spicy hot sheep stew. The paste is balled up in the right hand and dipped into the sauce and eaten with occasional piece of meat. This feast is a communal occasion and anything but serious. Around the table sat the master, an uncle and the other apprentices all telling stories and jokes on each other. As one said next to me "It is boys being boys".

The first thing I started as an apprentice was an airplane coffin. I started with the window section of

each side, extending the section forward and back until there were two pointed ends. When the two parts just forward and behind the window section were to be cut to the angle that would begin the narrowing of the plane body toward the front and back points, Eric asked his senior apprentice, Elias, to come look at the frame from the front end and judge whether the angles were correct. Instead of going to the existing plane coffin, taking off the lid, and rather awkwardly projecting a measuring tape in toward the back and front to measure the distance between the sides, he judged the position of the four pieces by eye. I asked why he didn't measure. All Eric said was, "He just knows".

Then the upper sections are formed using a wooden hand plane to bevel the edges and then nailed one on top of the other starting at the base. The result is an approximation of the roundness of the fuselage but in a faceted manner. The middle section is built up until a 3" to 4" wide opening is filled at the top with a key piece beveled on both edges. Then the front and back sections are built piece by beveled piece to each other as the each piece's end is beveled and connected to the mid section. Once this is done, it will be turned over for a similar process until the fuselage is complete.

The manner in which the edges are beveled is again by eye. A bevel square is taken to an existing plane coffin and the angle that the two faces of edge joined pieces create is captured by laying the two connected parts of the tool, one on each face directly across the joint until each part lays flat on each conjoined face. This angle tool is then taken to the newly constructed base frame and one piece is set one on top of the other and the top piece tipped until the two pieces approximate the angle on the tool. The gap between indicates how much is to be taken of the back edge of the top piece to create the correct angled bevel. Now I would ordinarily measure this gap and transfer with my measuring tape the gap size to the back edge and with a straight edge or marking gauge draw the line. But Eric and the apprentices are teaching me how to approximate the gap by eye and with the last two fingers grasping the edge and the other three fingers keeping the pencil at the "eyed" distance draw a parallel line to indicate the stopping point of my bevel that I will create with the hand plane. Now, if that was hard for you to read it was just as painful for me to write and I still don't think I did a thorough enough attempt at explaining it. Needless to say it took less then 30 seconds for the demonstration and about the same time or less for me to get a reasonable approximation of what was desired. After a few tries I was beginning to get it and each time I do it I am more efficient and accurate. It wasn't explained to me verbally; in fact communication is hard because of our different accents and choices of words to explain things to each other. But the demo and practice with a few words of description, encouragement, and "No, no, like this" and then another short demo. I am doing exactly the same thing demonstrating and encouraging everyone to try a power grinder that I brought to help shape wood. Up until know they have used hand planes and spokeshaves to shape. The grinder can the same operation faster and in most instances can be more accurate. The same sort of non-verbal communication is going on here, as well, to great effect. Some are picking it up quicker then others and this seems to relate to experience, touch, and a 3D physical sense around an object.

Also, during this last week Eric and I have been running back and forth to Accra (Teshie is about 12 or 13 km outside of Accra) by taxi trying to help him prepare for going to Belgium the 3rd week of August for a month long show of his and his grandfather's coffins in a gallery in Antwerp. He and I will leave Aug 19th for an opening on the 21st. I will stay until the 24th and Eric will stay for the month long duration of the show.