Talking kente in Tafi Abuife

You know you’re in Tafi Abuife when you see the enormous tree at the side of the road. It looks like a frozen waterfall and seems unfortunately in an advancing state of death.

There’s nothing to immediately distinguish the village from any other. It is composed of a scattering of mud and thatch dwellings baking in the sun, wandering bunches of goats, stray chickens and the ever-present jungle, which crowds close by seemingly in wait to reclaim the patch of clear ground for itself.

Kids in shirts but no pants, or pants but no shirts, appear and look on in wonder as seven whiteys pile out of a car. Word of our arrival travels quickly and we’re barely all out and stretched when Aikins, the resident guide, appears.

The village and its evolving tourist-minded consciousness is the work of a Peace Corps volunteer who is unfortunately traveling the day we arrive. So the work of explaining the famed Ghanaian kente cloth and accompanying us around the village to see it made falls to Aikins, and his sister, Paulina. “She is just learning about be tour guide,” he tells us.

A short distance from the car, one can already hear the distinctive clack clack of many looms at work. Everyone in Tafi Abuife learns how to weave kente cloth. It is a birthright, a responsibility and a lifelong enterprise. Before a child is 10, they have already committed many of the complex designs to memory. When I asked Aikins, age 22, how many designs he knew, he puffed up his face and shook his head.

“More than 100?”

“Oh, yes, more than 100.”

“More than 200?”

“Yes.”

“More than 500?”

He waves off continuing our fun guessing game. “Too many to count,” he says.

We stroll through a cluster of mud huts as the rhythm of the weavers gets louder. In a clearing a group of six or seven work with the kind of calm speed and precision that only comes from practiced expertise. Beside the dull brown of the huts, the yellows and reds and oranges of the thread seem of a different order of brightness.

The weavers glance at us out of the corner of an eye. One, a boy of 12 or 13, sneaks a peek at me from inside the hood of his sweatshirt. Meanwhile, their feet move, their hands move, and line by laborious line the cloth is weaved. Incredibly, the looms, which to me seem no less complex than the human endocrine system, are fashioned from sticks taken directly from the surrounding forest.

Each of the numerous designs has a story. Back at the simple “visitor’s center,” which can only be called that because we happen to be visitors and happen to be inside it, Aikins describes the background of a half a dozen of the designs. Shawn and I end up buying two, one bearing what’s called the “small eye” design and a second using “the hunter’s path.” They cost a mere US$5 each.

It is many minutes after leaving the village, rumbling down the dusty road, before the pleasant, percussive rhythm of the looms begins finally to recede.