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Grace Joe with a bracelet of beads she made herself.

Grace Joe with a bracelet of beads she made herself.

Grace Joe, Bead Maker
Bead-Making Center (Krobo)

Grace Joe is 44 and has been making beads for so long, she scratches her head, laughing, when she tries to remember how old she was when she became an apprentice. She thinks she started at 10, putting in the hours after mornings at school. But when she finally left school at 15, she didn't go into bead-making straight away. She had to raise money to buy the moulds, dyes, fire irons and other tools needed to make the beads. For nearly two years she was a street-seller, balancing on her head bowls of bread, peanuts, sugar and gari (similar in texture to couscous but made from ground cassava). It wasn't exactly plain sailing once she had enough money to start up her bead business. Grace's third pregnancy ended tragically and her doctor told her she couldn't do any heavy work. Despite the bead-making tradition in the Krobo region of Ghana, nobody else in her family had taken up the craft, but Grace says bead-making was her heart's desire, and she loves making things with her hands. She was determined to keep on working so she taught her brother the production process, and now he helps her with grinding up old glass bottles or window louvers, baking the beads and then shaping them, freeing up Grace to concentrate on the more delicate work of designing the complicated patterns. She has also passed on her knowledge to her daughter Gladys Adjimer, who has also joined Global Mamas, assembling beaded products.


Now Grace does most of her work for Global Mamas because she knows she will get paid on time. The money she earns helps to keep her nephew in school and covers the food bills for her son, who lives away from home and is training to be a mechanic. She is looking forward to being able to save money so she can build her own family home which will give her peace of mind, and set up a shop where she can sell her own beads directly to customers.


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