The Brikama Art Market

It’s been tough the last few weeks trying to get coherent sets of photos out of Patrick. He’s starting his last term in college, which is great, but he’s been fighting an infection of some sort, which is not great. His first mention of it to me he told me he’d gotten intestinal worms from drinking well water in his village. He doesn’t exactly live in Brikama, see—he lives in a small village on the outskirts. Within the Brikama city limits you can expect to get water at the very worst from an outdoor tap connected to the municipal water system, which I gather has at least a degree of filtration going on.

Well water is a different matter.

I suggested he ought to boil drinking water each day, and in fact the doctors he talked to had already told him to do this. The local health clinic gave him some anti-worm meds but it didn’t do any good, probably because worms weren’t the problem. When he was finally able to a go to a decent clinic in Serrakunda, they kept him all day and finally let him go with antibiotics. So, probably a bacterial thing.

In any event it’s real drag on his capabilities, though he continues to work like a fiend. Hopefully the drugs are doing their thing by now.

So although I don’t have any good photo essays of Brikama or the countryside, I do have something to share. A few weeks back I started thinking about the possibility of buying some arts and crafts with Patrick as an intermediary, to try to sell them for a profit here in the U.S. There’s a really superb art market in Brikama, featuring the work of a whole army of talented wood carvers and basket makers and seamstresses. I asked Patrick to run by and take some photos. He sent 40. Lots of really great stuff, and at a price that might allow for this idea to work, assuming we can keep shipping costs down. Anyway, here’s the best of the best:

That last thing is awesome. The artist wants 2500 delasi for it—about $40. What do you think? Add maybe $20-30 for shipping to the U.S. Is there still room for a profit? I don’t know but I expect we’ll find out. Please drop us a line if you have any insight on how we can manage this.

Until next time, take care.