Ghana

Update: September, 2010: Attempting to have the artists of Dungu send their paintings here to market them online resulted in a lot of misunderstandings, the end result of which was that Basit left Dungu for Accra. The laptop remained in the care of Rashida Isaah, a teacher at the Dungu Experimental school. Rashida and I communicated by email. According to her, the children broke the power cord to the laptop so that it doesn't work. She is unwilling to pay to repair it.

Above pictures are of Basit at his drums, and his little son Joe.

UPDATE: In October 2009, the village of Dungu received their laptop from the Enabling Support Foundation. It is intended to enrich the education of the children in the village, but it may also to help the village develop their resources.

One of the resources of the village of Dungu, is the Centre for National Culture Center to develop Native Handcrafts. Young adults who are students at this art school produce Native Art that consists of painting, sculpture and more.

UPDATE: In July 2009, the village of Dungu received it's first donations from Enabling Support Foundation. The first shipment included personalized books for all the children of the village, some balls for the small children, pens, pencils and desk supplies, a magnetic drawing board and a digital camera.

The purpose of the digital camera is to allow Basit to take pictures of the artwork produced by the students at the Art School in Dungu, so that it can be marketed on the web. The hope is that African Americans who trace their ancestry (or likely ancestry) to the Gold Coast of Africa will want to own this artwork. Ghana is the modern name of the colony called the Gold Coast owned by Great Britain.

Pictures from Dungu

START:This project began with correspondence from two young men in villages in the Tamale region of Ghana. Hamza Fuseini, 19, a student lives in the village of Gurugu. Abdulai Basit is in his twenties and lives in the village of Dungu. Basit has a three year old son named Joe. The correspondence also includes Hamza's teacher Mr. Rauf Jamal. Basit is of the Dagomba tribe.

In July, Basit received a digital camera but found out that he was unable to use the camera to upload pictures through the computers in the Internet Cafe. In October, Basit received a laptop computer for the village. One of the first things he did was take some pictures and share them with us. The children look bright, beautiful and healthy. Dungu must be a good place to live. The art in that set of pictures will be offered for sale to help support the village.

Page created August 23, 2009. Anne Pemberton. Updated Wednesday, September 15, 2010 . AP.

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