Trailblazers

4 Little Beads

By Chantal Duke

It all started with four little beads.....
The beginning of a passion and a part- time
business, 12 years ago.

I remember that day well, summer of ’92, the last days of my family’s tour in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Our tour in Ethiopia had been full of events, some good, some tragic (Congressman Leland’s plane crash, two attempted coups, a peaceful but long lived liberation movement which toppled a communist regime which had lasted 17 years in Ethiopia). We were leaving good friends behind and good memories but were also ready to move on; we knew our departure date was final, and preparing for the next post was unavoidable and necessary.

While living in Ethiopia, we had enjoyed collecting baskets, textiles and antique silver crosses, for which Ethiopia was famous because of their historical and regional meaning. In three and half years, we had acquired 12 beautiful pieces, a very good result since those crosses were becoming more and more difficult to find. We had our favourite silver shops in the Mercato (city central market) and around the city of Addis Ababa. I also had made friends with a silversmith merchant who was also extremely passionate and had an extensive knowledge of the crosses’ origin and how to recognize them. The fact that he shared the exact same name as the last reigning Emperor’s, H.E. Haile Selassie, was an interesting twist in this communist regime, and because of that name similarity, he had gone through some tough times. Haile had amassed a fascinating collection of very rare and antique silver crosses and he and I shared many hours talking and admiring his prized pieces.

One day, we were in one of our favourite crafty shops when my husband spotted some colourful glass beads among the silver and horn adornments piled up in a rickety box full of nails, broken pieces of mysterious origin and dust. Intrigued by them, he asked the merchant what they were. The response from the owner of the shop : trade beads but he did not know much more about them than that. My husband bought them. I had no idea what they were at that point. We were only days from our departure from Addis, so I packed the beads away in my jewelry box and promptly forgot all about them.

Fast forward three months : N’Djamena, Chad, our next posting. Not a very exciting place at first after Addis Ababa. It was such a small and sleepy town, with most buildings torn up and in shambles from past attempted - or successful coups, one main street only (aptly named Avenue General de Gaulle), and everywhere sand, bushes, dirt roads with potholes and dust. We soon found out that N’Djamena had its charms, one of them was to watch the hippos in the Chari river during the weekends and even go boating on the river itself when it was high enough to approach them in the water (there were not many other pastimes!) or standing by the path of the caravans of camels and their riders coming down from Lybia in the summer in search of greener pasture (south of N’Djamena). Our home was indeed a surprise; large by Chadian standards, constructed by bits and pieces over years with certainly no order nor rhyme. The combination of rainy and dry seasons would play havoc on the thin clay/sand foundation during the drier months. That in turn resulted in very visible cracks in the walls where daylight could be seen. I dealt with the problem with painting a tree on my living room wall, right over the larger crack. At each new crack in the wall, I would paint another branch to hide it. My kids loved the tree in our home and friends and guests found it original as well. This and the challenge of constantly be wary of termites could occupy our days!! Termites, I learned in Chad, were incredibly tenacious in eating their way through clay, sand and cement to find just the right spot in a leg of a chair or a table and comfortably start chewing away. We soon learned to move the furniture around every two weeks to prevent finding ourselves one day sitting at a table which would disappear into a hype of termite-produced dust.

I had completely forgotten about these four little beads. One day, we were invited by one of our American colleagues who had lived for many years as a male nurse on Native Indian reservations before being posted to Chad for a couple of years. When he lived on the reservations, he had taken an interest in glass beads, made in Venice and brought from there through Alaska by French traders and exchanged for furs with the native Indian tribes. He was already close to leaving Chad and had accumulated an impressive amount of trade beads coming from the same source as those he had seen and researched in the US. During the evening, he brought out some books on Venetian trade beads, and when it was my turn to have a look at the story and pictures of trade beads, I was transfixed. Right there in front of my eyes, were pictures of those same four beads we had bought in Ethiopia!

Amazed by the coincidence, I asked our host to borrow his books and went on learning more about the history of these glass beads. I was hooked!! I wanted to know more about them, and anything to do with the African bead trade. How could one resist becoming passionate about objects with names such as millefiori, chevron, yellow hearts, bodom, hebron, sandbeads, rocaille, fancy, rosetta, nueva cadiz, camel bone, aggrey, carnelian, yellow hearts, hematite, kakumba, cowry, amber? I learned very quickly that Chad was not one of the main trade areas for valuable goods sought by Europe (such as Nigeria or Ghana) but happened to be on the path to those countries from traders coming from the Middle East and East AFrica) so some of those beads, on their way to other countries and large trade centers, ended up staying in Chad.

I began going to the market the following week, and I just loved searching for beads. It reminded me of the flea market in Chile which I visited almost every weekend during our tour there, and which used to be full of rusty treasures, broken pieces and yet, from time to time, would the perfect collection piece be available.

In the N’Djamena market, nothing of the sort. It was large, filthy, very noisy, mostly full of bulky and cheap items imported from Nigeria through Cameroon. But then, in between merchants selling little piles of cloves, Arabic gum, plastic bags or roasted grasshoppers, would sit a bead merchant. Most bead sellers in Chad were women; the would be sitting on their rump, with a piece of cloth in front of them and on that cloth a mix of old and new beads, often pretending that all were rare and expensive. I soon became good at recognizing the old and the new, a question of necessity really with bead selling being such a way of life in Chad : many of the so called “old” beads were actually new imports from India or China, countries which had become expert in copying the old intricate glass beads I was searching for. I amassed quite a few good beads, and was delighted with finding beads that closely resembled the beads in my trade bead books. I remember once going with a friend and interpreter to a bead seller in the main market. He was referred to as “Hadj” (he had made the holy trip to the Mecca) sitting cross-legged on a sisal rug. Someone had explained to me how to find him. The hadj was rather large, and smoked a narghileh when I was there. I asked about beads, he pointed toward a dusty box at in a corner of his makeshift tent, apparently not inclined to make any effort for a foreigner. I began searching through the box, which had apparently been left lying there for a very long time, judging from the dust on it and all around it. I soon found a bead which took my heart away…an antique Venetian fancy bead!! I pulled two or three non-valuable beads together with that ONE, and trying not to show my interest, showed it to the merchant for his price. Still smoking his narguileh, he gestured his price, and then the haggling started. The merchant completely ignored me during the transaction, preferring to deal with my friend who was a male, and finally agreeing on a price, obviously too high for a bead had been lying in a box and probably forgotten in there for years. I finally got away with my treasure, having paid more than I had expected, but the combination of the find and the whole ordeal was sweet success.

The search continued during our two years in Chad, and so did my collection. After Chad, we were posted to Lagos, Nigeria. Having become a passionate – and knowledgeable - collector of beads during our posting in N’Djamena, and knowing that Nigeria was at the center of the bead trade in the height of the West African trade, I could not wait to get there and start exploring the local markets. Easier said than done!!

It took a while to find my way through the most lucrative (bead terminology) local markets in Lagos. Moving around the city was certainly a lesson in patience and wit, with thousands of cars wanting to go down a two lane road at the same time, and it took for ever to get from point a to point b, let alone in one piece!! I then heard of Jankara market, a big hush place, located in the center of Lagos, feared by many for its reputation of being a “gri-gri” place, where potions and magical powders were prepared, ground, bought and used, apparently often enough for mischievious purposes : my maid told me that some of these potions were made from human bones and used for some evil deeds. I finally found it one day (it took me months to enquire and get an approximate location, places in Lagos were often not on a road map and this market was in one of the most run down areas of the city) and was “in heaven” so to speak really because the place was an incredible array of new and old things, in the middle of a midst of mud, piles of corrugated roofs, open sewage with thousands of families living on the premises, with no water or bath facilities. I realized soon enough that I was always the only “white face” roaming the stands, stores, and dark alleys full of desiccated monkey heads, hands, snake vertebras, and birds’ bones Whole families lived along these very narrow paths with sometimes 3 bunkbeds stacked on top of each other, and human bodies slowly emerging from those beds when a customer entered that little space… it was a ery strange feeling altogether.

I soon found my way straight to the “good stuff” although it was not that apparent at first because of the complexity of the pathways. I don’t think there was anything made or built with a straight line.. And all my visits were echoed with the thumping of men’s beating on cotton printed cloth, cross legged over a half cut trunk, striking the cloth with a wooden pestle, rhythmically, to tighten the cotton fibers and give them a high shine, a preceding method to our more modern starching process. It was fascinating to observe and to walk accompanied by that rhythmic sound and it reminded me (if anything needed to) how far I was from technology.

I also found that some live animals (turtles, chameleons and African hedgehogs) were also sold in Jankara market, and their fate left little to guessing. If nothing else, the poor creatures were piled up in tiny cages with no food or water. Some very likely suffocated from the lack of air and food, the strongest survived, possibly only long enough to be sold or killed on sight for the next potion to be prepared. I soon started the ritual of purchasing 3 or 4 hedgehogs and the same number of chameleons. They were always the equivalent of $1.00 each. I would take them home, get them acclimated to the type of vegetation growing in our compound and after a few days would set them free. My children and their friends were fascinated with the hedgehogs and how tame they were. These tiny creatures, most fitting in the palm of one hand, would first be so tense and pricky, but would relax quickly after a while, and unroll their bodies, let us scratch their tummies and tiny feet, settling contently and chewing away on palm nuts, a very oily reddish nut which they were crazy for. The chameleons were fun to set on different plants and see them change colour, but although they looked slow, they were always the first ones to disappear into the luxuriant vegetation surrounding our house, not to be seen again.

I began going to Jankara once a week, walking down the same path with a large empty basket (the market was quite large and I did lose my way a few times at first) and would go straight to my regular bead sellers. In Jankara, all beads sellers were women, coming from northern areas of Nigeria, selling old beads and lots of new, gorgeous recycled glass beads from Ghana. I learned that there was a tradition in West Africa of “bead sellers”, sometimes going back generations where men or women would travel to remote villages in search of beads whose owners would sell when they needed cash. In some villages, those beads had been there since the Dutch or British traded them in the 1900’s for gold, indigo clothes, ivory, or slaves. The beads stayed in the village and added to the owner’s worth. Most of the largest ones, the blue in shape of star (chevrons or rosetta) would be owned by the chief of the village, who would wear it to show his wealth. When misfortune struck, those beads were sold to itinerant bead traders who would then assemble them on strings with other beads of lesser quality, and would take them to Lagos, Accra, etc. to resell.

I soon began good at the searching, seeking and finding aspect of my trips there : after sifting through piles and piles of stringed beads, suddenly findind “a” bead, one which really stopped my heart for its shape, colour and what I knew about it. Often enough, there was only one or two beads on a string which was worth bargaining for, and often enough the thrill was that I knew what that bead was and the bead seller sometime had overlooked it. What a thrill that could be!!

I soon started a bead club, where several expats and I would meet on a monthly basis and review our finds, search my books to find out exactly the origin of our beads, investigate the source. We would invite bead traders to our monthly gatherings and they would show off their treasures for sale. Some of these beads were so valuable that they would sell for hundreds of dollars, I saw a few strings worth $5,000. Out of my league but what a pleasure to see, touch, examine beads which were the dignitaries of that bead trade in West Africa and which likes adorned the more known museums in the world.

I saw some incredible beads, beads which were/are 200 years old, some had been buried some have been in the hands of tribe chiefs, some were exchanged for food, ivory, slaves, some were coveted for their deep blues or reds, their intricate layers of coloured glass for which the Italians were so famous, and all part of the history in the making of the colonies and the commerce from Europe to West Africa. Such tiny works of art, so much history, work, desire, sweat, happiness and sadness behind them!! I purchased many of them, and the excitement was from finding them, recognizing them, bargaining for them and bringing them back home.

My collection soon grew to such an extent that making jewelry to show those beads was a logical next step. I began a bead making/jewelry group with several members of the international community in Lagos and we met once a week with our beading supplies and beads purchased in markets and made necklaces to sell at fund raising events for Nigerian orphanages. I enjoy mixing beads of different countries (clay from Kenya with bronze from Ghana and glass from India, or silver from Indonesia glass from Italy and stone from Rwanda), different textures, colours and shapes for a striking and unique effect. I moved to Mexico afterwards where I continued bead jewelry and sold my pieces at craft fairs around Guadalajara in the State of Jalisco. I enjoyed tremendously selling my jewelry there and the camaraderie with Mexican artists offering their wares in pottery, baskets, weaving, silver. I made good friends that way, while learning about ancient techniques dating back from pre Columbian times and still in use in some parts of Mexico for “artesania”.

Jan 2005
Chantal Duke