West Africa, Togo, capital - Lome
I was in West Africa not too long time ago, and visited Togo. Togo is not exactly the digital culture hub, it is still a rural country where majority lives on $1 a day.
look at how colorful this world is and how genuine are the smiles
Yes, no fake smiles:)))
If you want to learn about Togo you may check this link, but what I wanted to talk about is Togo artisans, women and men artists producing beautiful pieces of art being it jewellery or mahogany carvings or T-shirts with hand made paintings..Lome is also a capital of Voodoo -scary stuff ...
I had a driver, and guide who helped us get around, Anatol. Here he is. Anatol has his taxi and drives the tourists around, but he is so much more than a taxi driver..he knows everybody and everything.
Anatol took me to the market, where I wanted to find few gifts for my daughters. What I found was amazing.The whole market consisted of several little shops with artisans' products, but nobody in the shops buying this stuff. No customers.. . I chose my gifts with care. Three dresses, few necklaces, a piece of designed cloth, a colorful bag, and a few carvings, All this for $30 and after the women came out of their way to sell me more and more stuff. Under the benches I saw their sleeping children. Anatol knew all of them. I really felt like this is a place that should have some more recognition.
I really felt those women deserved to get more for their beautiful work...I desperately felt I wanted to help them push their products to American markets.. they should definitely be connected with the customers who like me would love to buy these beautiful things they create...but how?
I found that there is a new open organization that does just that in East Africa. It connects women with the online markets. It is called SasaAfrica
Sasa Africa is an organization created to support women entrepreneurs operating in the emerging economies. It creates a platform for the artisans across Africa who do not have access to the internet to create their online presence with e-commerce stores and pictures of their products for everyone in the world to see, and sell them using mobile phones. I could not think about this myself, but somebody else did. What a wonderful social networking marketing tool for otherwise invisible artists in Africa.. I just hope Togo women artisans know about it. I have to call Anatol and ask him....
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